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The Open Network: Backed by Telegram, explore the road to interconnection between Web2 and Web3

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Although Telegram is no longer involved in the development of the TON network, the TON network may still gain significant traffic by being tied to Telegram.

Original Title: "LD Capital: The Open Network: Backed by Telegram, Exploring the Path of Interconnection between Web2 and Web3"

Original Source: Jaden, LD Capital

August 14th is the 10th anniversary of Telegram. Founder and CEO Pavel Durov stated in his 10th anniversary message that Telegram's next step is to go beyond information transmission and lead innovation in social media. Due to its information encryption and privacy, Telegram has become one of the most popular communication software.

This year's Telegram Bot craze has also attracted market attention, but Telegram bots only use the Telegram application as an interface for the Ethereum protocol and do not directly interact with the TON chain. The TON chain is derived from the Telegram Open Network blockchain platform. The Telegram Open Network was launched by Telegram in 2017, but had to suspend development due to SEC accusations. Subsequently, the Telegram community renamed the network to the Open Network (TON for short) and continued to develop and grow the ecosystem. Currently, its governance token TON has a market value exceeding Polkadot and Polygon, ranking 12th and 6th in the public chain, respectively. Although Telegram is no longer involved in the development of the TON network, the TON network may still gain huge traffic by binding with Telegram, and Telegram bots have brought about a paradigm shift in user experience for low-cost and low-threshold entry into Web 3 based on Web 2 applications.

One, Network Framework

TON's structure is a multi-layered and multi-chain structure, including the masterchain, workchain, and shardchain. The masterchain acts as a central manager, while the workchain supports smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps). Different workchains only need to meet unified interoperability standards, similar to Polkadot. In each workchain, shardchains are implemented to enhance scalability and parallel transaction processing, with each shard responsible for a subset of account types.

TON Network currently adopts the PoS consensus mechanism. There are three roles in the network:

1) Verification Node: Participate in maintaining network security by staking TON tokens;

2) Fisherman: By sending invalid proofs, the verification node's diligence in completing the verification task is checked. If the verification node passes the invalid proof, it will be punished.

3) Proofreader: Proofread the state of the shard and adjacent shard and send it to the validation node. This task is usually assigned to the proofreader by the validation node as a reward.

二、Roadmap

1/ Strengthen the detection and punishment of non-performing verification nodes.

2/ Create a cross-chain bridge connecting Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

3/ Allow pledgers to participate in network-wide voting on the chain.

4/ Payment will support the establishment of payment channels between any two participants, allowing for any number of instant small payments, and free of charge. Only network fees need to be paid when creating and closing channels.

Three, Token Situation

Telegram Open Network testnet 2 launched with the minting of 5 billion tokens, of which 1.45% were allocated to developers and testers. However, SEC soon prohibited Telegram from issuing tokens to investors, and Telegram subsequently ceased work on the TON ecosystem. The Testnet 2 tokens were placed in smart contracts. All available Toncoin (TON) tokens are released through mining. These tokens are placed in a special Giver smart contract, allowing anyone to participate in mining, with a mining deadline of June 28, 2022.

After the initial coin distribution, TON entered the PoS stage. According to the whitepaper, the reward tokens for the PoS network are close to 20% of the staked tokens, with an annual inflation rate of nearly 2%. The total token supply is expected to double in 35 years. Currently, the total token supply is 5.093 billion, with a circulating supply of 3.441 billion.

Use Case

1/ Payment: domain name (DNS), data storage, TON proxy, on-chain gas, cross-chain fees, etc.;

2/ Pledge: To maintain network security, the portion of tokens confiscated from verification nodes will be destroyed (specific ratio not specified).

3/ Governance

Four, Network Data

The Ton network currently has 343 nodes in the verification stage, with a total staked amount of 486 million tokens, accounting for 9.5% of the total token supply and 14.12% of the circulating token supply. The amount of tokens destroyed is 41,600. Since January 2022, the total number of network accounts and active addresses has steadily increased, with a current total of 3.351 million accounts and approximately 765,000 active addresses. The daily trading volume is 160,000 transactions, and the daily increase in on-chain addresses is between 700-900.

Despite the number of account addresses exceeding 3 million, the Jetto wallet only has 133,000 users, with only a few deeply involved in the Ton ecosystem.

(Note: Jetto is the Ton Network token standard, and Jetto wallet is a wallet that contains any Jetto token.) The number of forged NFTs is 1.194 million. The number of sold DNS is 32,000 (the number of forged ENS domain names on Ethereum is 2.574 million), with a sales revenue of 6.205 million TON, which is expected to be 10.67 million US dollars at the current price, with an average price of 333 US dollars/DNS, which is relatively high.