Toncoin (Ton) is the native cryptocurrency of the decentralized layer-1 blockchain, The Open Network (TON). The TON blockchain is open-sourced and supported by many network contributors, including the Switzerland-based non-profit organization, the TON Foundation.
Since 2017, the Telegram team had been developing the codebase for a blockchain network, then named Telegram Open Network (TON), with a native cryptocurrency named ‘Gram.’
In May 2020, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov announced the end of Telegram’s involvement with the TON Blockchain following a court order by the SEC. The Gram token was never issued.
Since 2020, the technology has been developed by an independent community of developers and blockchain enthusiasts. The non-profit TON Foundation is the most prominent of these supporters.
The blockchain was renamed from “Telegram Open Network” to “The Open Network,” with Toncoin now the native cryptocurrency of the TON network. The whitepaper contains part of the original codebase written by Dr.
Nikolai Durov, co-founder of Telegram and brother of Pavel Durov. Toncoin utilizes the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model for network scalability and reliability.
TON Foundation’s vision is to empower 500 million users to own their digital identity, data, and assets by 2028 by empowering developers to build a Web3 ecosystem in Telegram Messenger.
The Founder of Ton Coin
The Open Network (TON) is an open-source and decentralized blockchain.
The TON Foundation, which launched and developed The Open Network (TON), was established by Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelianenko.
The Circulation of Ton
The TON network has its native token, Toncoin, with a circulating supply of 3.47B and a maximum supply of 5B TON.
Toncoin was designed to be a utility token that fuels dApps within the ecosystem. TON can be used to build decentralized applications (dApps), with Toncoin used to pay transaction processing fees and cross-chain transaction fees.
The token can also be used as a staking payment to secure the blockchain. The list of use cases also includes payment for decentralized data storage, TON DNS/TON Proxy, and other fees within TON-based decentralized services. Validator fees are also paid in TON.