The Open Network (TON) — A Deep Dive into How It Works, Popular Memes, DeFi, and Airdrop Farming on TON
Good day, ladies and gentlemen.
For nearly the past three months, I have been developing successful CoinSniper signals for EVM chains, which proved to be more challenging than expected. I will release further documentation about this on my Substack, or you can try the signals as an API on orbitrum.net. Once this became profitable, it was time for a new challenge. So, I spent the last two weeks diving deeper into The Open Network (TON) and started programming a few things there.
TON is completely different in many aspects from the EVM chains I usually work with and is probably new to most of you. My initial approach of jumping straight into development and using trial and error without understanding the basics was painful.
Therefore, before we start automating things with Python, I will provide a general introduction article covering the most important things you should know, some interesting projects, and a basic ecosystem tour. These are the steps I take for all new chains and Layer 2 solutions, and maybe they will be helpful for you. This article is geared towards developers and delves into details that “normal” users might not care about, so feel free to skip some sections.
Hint: I am new to TON, and some things might not be correct. My observations may be random and dev-focused. This is just a snapshot of my current knowledge after less than two weeks. Nothing in here is a buy recommendation or financial advice. Always do your own research and double-check all links, that is why i do not link them but provide them as plain text. This article is not a complete overview of TON, but rather what I have figured out and found interesting.
Why TON?
My primary reason for exploring TON is its integration into Telegram, one of the most successful messaging platforms with approximately 800 million monthly active users and 4 million paying users. This positions TON as a strong alternative to major US tech companies. If executed correctly and gaining traction, it could present a significant opportunity, as it has what most other new Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2) solutions lack: a substantial user base. Currently, we are very early in this development stage. Being early means facing potential issues, complexities, and challenges, but it is also where substantial gains can be made. Joining the Ethereum Mainnet or engaging in Eigenlayer staking as a small developer now doesn’t make sense for me. I love the challenge, learning new things, and just playing around.
For a deeper understanding of “why TON,” you can refer to the TON whitepaper. The concepts outlined in the whitepaper were ahead of their time and are essentially what many current L1 and L2 projects are striving for with the modular chain narrative. However, some parts are excellent, while others are nearly impossible for me to understand.
Telegram originally started developing TON back in 2019, raising $1.7 billion through an ICO using a token called grams. However, they encountered issues with the SEC, settled with a fine, and abandoned the project in 2020. The community took over TON as an open-source project, and in 2023, the TON Foundation was established (https://ton.foundation/en).
With the recent resurgence in crypto adoption, they decided to reintegrate TON into Telegram. This initiative seems to be working well, with significant activity, developers joining, new projects being built, and the TVL (Total Value Locked) on TON growing by approximately 50x this year alone.
Alright, that’s it for the short history lesson. Let’s get started.
Some interesting technical details about TON for developers
Here are some random observations about TON that I wish I knew before starting development. They are in no particular order but may be interesting if you want to understand how things work. I will compare TON to Ethereum and its L2s because that is my primary background.
TON uses Proof of Stake, and its native token is TON, an inflationary token with a relatively low inflation rate compared to other protocols like SOL or AVAX.
TON is not a single blockchain but a blockchain of blockchains, more similar to Polkadot or Cosmos, using messages to exchange information between different chains and contracts. This structure is termed “Infinite Sharding,” theoretically allowing millions of transactions per second. While Ethereum pursued rollups and bridges for scaling, TON’s approach involves three main “types” of blockchains:
1. The Masterchain: This chain manages general protocol information like parameters, validator sets, and the current workchains. As a normal user, you usually don’t interact with it because it’s quite expensive and not scalable.
2. Basechain (Workchain): Up to 2³² basechains can be connected to the masterchain, and they contain all the transactions and smart contracts. One thing to note is that the basechains can have their own specifications. So one basechain could use the TVM to execute smart contracts, and another one could be connected to the EVM, making this interesting. You could also build a special chain for Perp Trading, DeFi, a game, or an NFT marketplace. You could even exchange the native TON token for your own. As long as you adhere to the rules of the Masterchain and implement the correct message format, you have many possibilities here. These basechains commit their transactions to the Masterchain.
3. Shardchains: Up to 2⁶⁰ Shardchains are connected to a basechain and follow its specifications. Each shardchain contains a subset of accounts depending on the address prefix. In theory, the sharding can go down to the account level, which means one very popular contract, for example, would have its own shard.
To address any specific shard, account addresses are prefixed with a number. For example, the Masterchain always has -1, and a basechain could be 0.
So in the Ethereum world, the Masterchain would be Ethereum Mainnet (settlement layer), and the Basechains would be kind of the L2s like Arbitrum or Optimism (Rollups) committing their state changes to it. Having everything integrated into one scalable L1 is a big advantage for TON, in my opinion, because it removes all the bridges (which have a somewhat bad security history) and fragmented liquidity problems Ethereum has to struggle with. Also, it is much more decentralized, while most L2s on Ethereum currently have a centralized sequencer component to order and commit transactions.
The TON approach is called infinite sharding. Usually, if some database becomes too big, you split it into a fixed number of pieces. You can compare this with the zip codes. Street names might be ambiguous, but when you prefix them with a zip code, they are unique, and you know in which area to look for a location. The same principle can be used for big databases. You prefix some data with a shard identifier, and then you can distribute the data to multiple systems and still know where to find it. Usually, you take a fixed number of shards, like Ethereum, for example, suggested having 64 shards. TON took a different, quite unique approach where the chain can automatically “split into more chains,” each one having its own validator set, when there is higher demand or merge again when the demand is low. It’s not this top-down approach where you split from the top, but more like depending on the usage, you merge several accounts into the shard chains. That way, you can have an “infinity” number of shards. Not really infinite, but likely large enough to scale to any future demands. This was one of the really big inventions of TON and a good solution to the scaling problem most other chains have.
TON uses the TON Virtual Machine, and smart contracts are written in FunC (a quite complicated C-like language, but after spending more time reading FunC code, it wasn’t that scary anymore ;)) or Tact (much simpler, more similar to Solidity).
TON only has a single data structure to store information called a Cell, which is 1023 bits of data and up to four references to other cells. In the next article, when we start programming things, we will always fill up these cells with various information on what to do. So unlike Ethereum, you can’t build an array of arbitrary length, but you have to use some kind of linked list/tree structure. This again is a bit weird for programmers, but good for scalability.
If we want to interact with the TON API, send a message, or deploy a smart contract, we always generate a BOC (Bag of Cells) bytecode and send this package to the APIs.
Each smart contract on TON is an account (both terms mean the same, as every account or wallet is a smart contract as well), which means it has its own storage, address, code, and maybe a TON balance. All contracts can only communicate by asynchronous messages with other contracts. You cannot call other external smart contracts directly. All messages are recorded as transactions in the contract’s account. So every smart contract kind of has its own little blockchain. This enables independent transaction validation and in theory better scalability. This is different again from Ethereum, where every smart contract can call every other smart contract in a synchronous way with the big disadvantage that the global state of all accounts needs to be synchronized for every call, which makes it harder to scale.
The big question here is if it really makes a big difference. The issue I see here is, let’s say I have a very popular game or a new memecoin launching, then probably most of the accounts will want to interact with this specific smart contract. So yes, it helps to scale independent contracts, but in practice, I guess most users care more about interacting with the same few very popular contracts during peak times.
Smart contract code can be changed as long as you have the required permissions. This is different compared to Ethereum, where the code is fixed once it’s on-chain, and you work around this with something like an Upgradable Proxy pattern.
One really important fact about smart contracts on TON is that they not only pay a gas fee during execution, like on Ethereum, but you also pay a “rent” for block space. If the smart contract balance gets too low, a contract can become frozen, which means the data is hashed, the hash stored, and then the data is removed to save the block space. To reinstate such a contract, you need to upload the state matching the saved hash. I need to do more research here because this sounds pretty insane at first, considering that every wallet is also a contract, and sometimes you just want to buy and hold some tokens. From what I found, the rent is basically deducted at each transaction for the seconds passed between the last transaction.
Another interesting fact about the gas fees is that there might be partial executions of messages, which makes development much harder, I think. In Ethereum, if you provide too little gas for a transaction, everything will just be reverted. So as a developer, you don’t care. In TON, it’s different: The transaction will be executed until there is no gas left!
To make this even more complicated, you cannot predict the gas fees beforehand. So I guess what you do is overpay for a transaction based on an estimate, and the developer then is responsible for returning the excess amount. You see this returned value when you interact with smart contracts all the time. But having to consider all this makes smart contract development much harder on TON.
TON uses a message routing algorithm called “Hypercube routing” to send messages between all the chains/smart contracts. It takes between 5–6 seconds to confirm the first message on-chain, and then every further hop in the routing will take the same amount of time. So to reach a smart contract might take multiple hops during the routing and feel a bit slow. And a globally visible transaction, which takes at least 2 hops (the second to the masterchain), takes around 12 seconds. But usually, you only care about the first confirmation anyway. So yes, we are back to the good old blockchain trilemma between decentralization and speed here. Ethereum L2s are much faster but much more centralized, while TON transactions are slower but more decentralized.
The validator nodes guarantee that each message arrives at its final destination address and prevent replay attacks (double spending). But there are no time guarantees, so in theory, a message could spend hours being routed through dozens of shards.
TON comes with many handy features like TON DNS, TON Storage, or TON Payments. I haven’t used most of them yet, but I like the integrated, more unified approach over the very separate solutions other chains offer.
The TON Wallet
I took my first steps using the integrated Telegram Wallet. You can use the @wallet bot to create one, and the integration is good. You can buy TON tokens easily with Apple/Google Pay and basically stay inside Telegram all the time.
To get started, they have really good documentation here: https://wallet.helpscoutdocs.com/article/113-wallet-where-to-start.
The next step was to set up TON Space (docs here: https://wallet.helpscoutdocs.com/article/4-ton-space), another wallet app integrated into Telegram as a mini app. With TON Space, you can do swaps, payments, connect to dApps, pay for subscriptions, and do all the stuff most people are looking for. The UI is easy to use, making it a great start for beginners, who probably won’t need anything else.
For me, using only Telegram apps and doing these things on my phone didn’t feel right, so I was looking for a wallet that gave me a similar experience to what I was used to. Also, I couldn’t do some things on TON Space, like buying the low liquidity high-risk stuff I love.
So, my favorite wallet now is Tonkeeper (https://tonkeeper.com/). I tried a few of the others, but none of them came close. Tonkeeper works really well, looks great, and is easy to use for beginners. I even bought the pro version of it, but it just looks a bit different and has the multi send feature which i wanted to test. Otherwise it makes no sense to buy it right now. (If you consider buying it, use the code pro-50 to get 50% off).
I emphasize the ease of use several times here. Probably most of you aren’t beginners, but this is what drives mass adoption. How easy is all this stuff for the average person? My conclusion is that TON makes things very easy.
For developers:
The wallets in TON work quite differently compared to EVM wallets. All wallets are always smart contract wallets that have to be initialized first. You deploy the smart contract wallet code, and this code handles basic functions like message routing. In the next article, we will do a more technical deep dive into how things work and how to write Python code for TON. The default Wallet contract version now is v4r2 but in Tonkeeper in the dev options you can also allow the newer v5 wallet with some gas optimizations.
There are also “high load” wallet contracts, which allow you to bundle multiple transactions in a single message. This is useful for sending out Airdrops or other special purpose tasks ;)
TON tokens (Jettons)
Tokens on TON are called Jettons. Anyone can launch them with a few clicks and without prior technical knowledge. You can just go to https://minter.ton.org/, enter the details of your new token, pay a small fee of less than $5, and you’re good to go. It’s quite simple, so be careful out there with what you buy ;)
The Jetton standard is basically what the ERC20 is for EVM chains. It defines how tokens are minted, burned, and transferred. You can find its specification here: https://github.com/ton-blockchain/TEPs/blob/master/text/0074-jettons-standard.md, and if you want to read the code, check here: https://github.com/ton-blockchain/token-contract/tree/main/ft.
The biggest difference is that Jettons are more decentralized. In an ERC20 contract, you have a single smart contract holding a single data structure to store all holders and their balances. In TON, you have a Jetton Master smart contract that holds all the meta information like the name or the symbol. Additionally, you have a separate Jetton wallet smart contract for each user. So when you swap 10 TON for token XYZ, a separate XYZ wallet contract is instantiated for you. And when you want to transfer this token to someone else, your wallet only talks to your own XYZ wallet contract and sends a message to transfer funds to another user, for example. So there is no central state or authority; it’s a bit more like Bitcoin’s UTXO model, and multiple users can send the same token without interfering with each other or being dependent on a single authority. This has a few benefits, like better scalability in theory, and there is no centralized authority that can freeze your assets. But it also adds a lot of complexity for new developers, as we will see in the next article when we do some swap automations.
Besides that, there are also Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) like domain names, usernames, or random pictures, as you know from other chains already, but this is not really interesting for me right now.
So before we can buy a few cat and dog Jettons, we need to get TON tokens and find a way to swap.
Bridge to TON / Get TON Tokens
There are a few centralized exchanges (CEXes) where you can buy TON, such as MEXC. You can also use Apple Pay or Google Pay on your phone. Additionally, you can use Moonpay and similar providers, and there are already a few bridges available.
My preferred way is to buy Toncoin on Uniswap Ethereum Mainnet (0x582d872A1B094FC48F5DE31D3B73F2D9bE47def1) and then use the official TON bridge (https://bridge.ton.org/).
It takes a few minutes, but then you’re ready.
The Most Popular TON DEXes
The most popular DEXes on TON, where all the new tokens launch, are ston.fi and dedust.io.
For normal trading, there is no big difference; both do their job. Dedust.io seems to have more of the smaller high-risk gamble plays, while ston.fi has more volume, feels a bit faster and is home to the bigger, more established projects. This is probably because launching a new pool for a token on dedust.io is much easier and only takes a few minutes, while on ston.fi, it can take up to two hours and comes with a few other issues.
Trading is as simple as you would expect: connect your wallet, enter the smart contract addresses, and swap. If you have ever used any DEX, this feels like business as usual. The only issue here: it’s slow and quite expensive. Coming from Base, where everything works instantly and is really cheap, TON swaps just feel slow. It can easily take up to a minute to make a swap. You get used to it after a few days, but yeah…
The interesting observation here is that I actually like slowing things down. On other chains like Solana and Base, you have quick pump and dump within seconds, you have all the sniper bots, gas fee wars, etc … but on TON, this is also slow. Most tokens feel like stable coins on other chains and take their time. It’s good and feels relaxing for my nerves. ;)
Buying the most popular Memes on Telegram Open Network ;)
Whenever I come to a new chain, I buy the most popular memes and add some high-risk, low-liquidity memes with a good ticker or branding as well.
Some of the most popular ones are:
Resistance DOG $REDO (EQBZ_cafPyDr5KUTs0aNxh0ZTDhkpEZONmLJA2SNGlLm4Cko)
Resistance CAT $RECA (EQBwHOvf3UrPPJB7jeDHaOT-2vP0QQlDoEDBsgfv5XF75J3j)
Resistance GIRL $REGI (EQCcYUWKhjGxwqtk_je9LW2V4RoFmbhOUR9e404Y6FQTEXHh)
Povel Durev $DUREV (EQB02DJ0cdUD4iQDRbBv4aYG3htePHBRK1tGeRtCnatescK0)
Spotty (EQC24zbmyONM-m3DeCCYQpDRiinGjOu2cCHevwUFGWvdotAQ)
… yea and a few more
Telegram created this narrative about freedom of speech around it, and this is where this “resistance” meta originates. Pavel Durov is the Telegram founder, and then we have the usual stuff like his dog, a few cats, or random other more or less funny things. There are also lots of copies which are popular on other chains like Brett, Pepe, Andy, etc., but I usually only buy original new memes. Copycats rarely do well.
The best way to find those is to go to dexscreener.com and search by trending or liquidity. ( https://dexscreener.com/ton ).
In addition to these “big” market cap memes with high liquidity, I also always add a few low-liquidity ones which can do a 100x+. These are quite random, things I think are funny, things I like, or where I think they have a good community and build for long-term success.
TONy Stark $IRON (EQAQ1PBstjKhXut1Lp34MezF3WPHXslMr-dVZjD2neaH4Cln)
Mittens Telegram CAT (EQBwy-wJ-wCqh0mfJHoWjmulJ0oIRKEJJt75ULyrJNPcnn5z)
Tonald Trump (EQCX_vSR8q0OSN74_BSq_ZieLZuNGx7wt0sXq1t5EI0q2SRI)
Ok, I think you get the idea. Dogs and cats always work, in an election year buying a Trump coin might be smart, and IRON… everybody loves IRON Man, and it’s quite a unique combination of a dog and one of the most iconic comic figures out there. And yes, it’s as simple as that. ;)
Hint: Don’t try to buy everything. Choose a few high-conviction bets and go as big as you can. Don’t overtrade and try to time local highs or lows. If everything plays out, most tokens can make a few multiples without any stress. So, if you want higher returns, focusing on earning more might make more sense.
Hunting for some NFTs
Next step after getting some memes is to get some NFTs. To be honest, I never made any money out of these pictures. I think the NFT idea is fundamentally flawed with storing data off-chain on centralized servers, weak standards, and missing verification, and I think most of them are technically boring. But hope dies last, and maybe one day I will hit another crypto punk early. So, I always buy at least two NFTs from some of the early collections so I can sell one and use one for future bragging.
Especially for the target audience of Telegram users and using them as Telegram profile pictures, TON NFTs might be interesting.
My criteria are quite simple again: buy something funny, interesting, with the most unique holders, maybe increasing volume/activity, and try to get the rare ones as cheaply as possible. It’s hard to brag with a <$10 NFT, but we are hoping for 10000x gains here ;) and I’m just not willing to spend too much on this stuff.
If I can identify an OG collection of known brands, people with big followers, etc., I might spend a little more and recommend buying them, but I couldn’t find anything like that on TON so far. The Pavel Durev collection might be close to it, but they diluted their supply by creating a second collection. Also, I think people are looking for NFTs they can identify with and feel unique and special, which is not the case here.
So, I randomly bought the cheapest ones with the most activity like:
Lost Dogs ( https://getgems.io/lostdogs ) — they have at least some utility, look cool, and are cheap
Moon Dogs ( https://getgems.io/moondogs ) — cheap and cute
…
DeFi and Utility Tokens
My highest conviction during this cycle are memes. Pick a few good ones, hold, and wake up rich. But from a technical view, I always love to see what’s possible, what’s new, and what the major utility plays on a new chain are.
There are a few projects like Crypton or Ton Inu that develop some tools around TON, such as trading bots, trending bots, token lockers, launchpads, etc. They make real revenue, which is distributed back to the token holders, so they might be a good choice. My general approach is just to check what works well on other chains and assume that it might do well on TON too. I will give you a short list here to begin with:
NFTs: https://getgems.io/ - works quite well, and you get the usual stuff
PERP Trading: STORM ( https://app.storm.tg/?ref=4A9NrkVzhp )
Liquid Staking: https://tonstakers.com / https://bemo.finance
Lending/Borrowing: https://evaa.finance/
Privacy: Ton Mixer https://tonmixer.xyz/
Good Trading Bot: Stonks https://t.me/stonks_sniper_bot?start=371d1ea8c66ebda985624af9e5e1a6fd
Games: Hamster Kombat (https://hamsterkombat.io/) — this is quite a hype right now, a simple Telegram click game, and I know so many “non-native crypto” people playing this right now. This shows the potential of TON, I think. Millions of people playing a game they enjoy without even noticing all the blockchain and complexity behind it (make sure to at least check it out).
So yea, I won’t list all of them, but you can find a list here: https://ton.app/utilities. My first impression was that all the usual tools are there and that they work surprisingly well. It feels simple, no failed transactions, and fast enough. I am not sure how many TON users are interested in utility projects, but we will see. Right now, my thesis is that normies just don’t understand or care about restaking, perps, and all this complicated tech. They want to get rich quick, have a friend who made it with memes, and memes are simple to understand for everyone. So yea, in the end, a dog with a hat memecoin becomes more valuable than an OG L2 chain like Arbitrum. But these Telegram games like Hamster Kombat might be a game changer; we will see.
For utilities like Storm, for example, you also have to consider the competition. There are extremely good projects out there like Hyperliquid or Aevo that work really well for PERP trading and have lots of liquidity. When you don’t have a unique/Telegram-specific utility, even if your product works well, you might likely lose to those much more established projects.
Airdrop Farming
Whenever I explore a new chain or L2, I check for tokenless protocols that might give an airdrop. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But airdrop farming is actually one of the best ways to still make your first 100k in crypto, and I have provided a more in-depth article about that topic here: https://medium.com/@crjameson/the-best-way-to-earn-100-000-in-2024-starting-from-0-airdrop-farming-new-crypto-projects-b43d0e03d37d
A simple strategy for farming multiple airdrops at the same time could look like this:
Buy a few TON and restake them on https://tonstakers.com or https://bemo.finance. Both protocols have no token yet, and you get tsTON / stTON and a small APY of 3–4%.
Now lend your restaked token on https://evaa.finance/ and earn some points and a small percentage APY there.
Then borrow USDT with your collateral. Make sure it stays healthy, so only go for like 50%; the APY here is like -10%, but all those numbers might change.
Now provide those USDT as liquidity on storm.tg and earn like 70% APY there.
Additionally, if you are into trading, you can generate some trading volume there as well and earn a few points. If you dont like the risk, hedge the position.
If you want the whole setup to be delta neutral, you could also just short your TON position on storm.tg.
Ok, that’s a basic setup which farms like four airdrops at the same time, and of course, you can add as many steps as you want.
Check out
for more strategies/projects without tokens that might be worth farming.
Usually, I don’t do any farming where I have to lock in liquidity. The smart contract risk, especially for new protocols, is very high, and just one loss of a bigger amount might ruin all your returns forever. Another reason is that for these strategies to make sense, you usually need to put in a lot of money. This is usually a whale’s game for people who spend like 10–100 ETH and don’t care. If you are broke and can’t do that, I recommend just doing this with very small amounts to get a feel for all the tech and then forget about it or focus on volume/transaction-based airdrops which we can automate with Python.
Random observations and thoughts
At first, I thought these Telegram Mini Apps were a cool idea and the next big thing, but later I realized I just don’t want to use them. I already have a working browser, and if the application has a good responsive design, there is just no need for mini apps. Focusing on good responsive web design probably makes more sense than having a mini app.
When researching for libraries/docs, there are so many 404 links and outdated examples. Most projects feel like they were abandoned a few years ago after Telegram left, so it’s quite challenging for new developers to get into TON.
It’s hard to find technical details or long-term content like podcasts or in-depth articles, which is how I usually learn about new stuff. I hope with this article i added at least one useful resource for newcomers.
TON uses the TVM (TON Virtual Machine), and smart contracts are written in FunC or Tact. At first glance, FunC looks confusing, but I thought the same about Rust when I first saw it. Once I got into it, many of the design decisions were actually really smart and made sense. So, I think it’s always a burden to learn a new language/tooling, which might make adoption harder.
The same goes for the whole infinite sharding concept. Every design decision you make as a developer has to consider it, and you really have to understand it.
If you want to develop smart contracts for TON, go for Tact, which seems to be a lot simpler and has good documentation here: https://docs.tact-lang.org/
The TVM uses the actor model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#:~:text=The%20actor%20model%20is%20characterized,restriction%20on%20message%20arrival%20order.) as its design philosophy, so maybe read a bit about it to better understand it.
800 million monthly active users sounds like a lot, but the daily active users are much lower, and the ratio between those numbers is much lower than their competitors like WhatsApp or Instagram. This means most users do not use Telegram daily as their main messenger but maybe from time to time to write to that random friend who cares about freedom of speech or check some groups.
TON network’s TVL grew a lot this year and sits around 687 million now based on DeFiLlama, and the TON token has an FDV of 39 billion. Compare this, for example, with Arbitrum, where the TVL is 2.777 billion and the FDV is 8 billion. So, the TON token is actually not “cheap.”
If you are on the whale side and are looking for deep liquidity, TON is probably not the right choice for you now. Your best bet would be to put a small portfolio aside and just ignore it.
FunC as a smart contract language, along with all the complexity and the lack of proper documentation and tooling compared to EVM-based chains, is a big challenge.
The market share of Telegram is very fragmented and dominated by users in Russia and India right now. So, even though there might be a big user base, it’s not that easy to market to them. As a non-Russian, I don’t understand most of the memes being hyped now … just to give you a random example ;)
Some Resources
My Hightlight:
An absolutely amazing course about TON development is here:
https://stepik.org/course/176754/syllabus published by Liza Chernyagina and Danila Vinogradov. If you really consider diving deeper into TON, this is a must-watch. Great simple explanations from someone who really understands what they are talking about and can express it in a very well-structured way! Definitely one of the best courses in that space I have seen so far, and learning resources like this might be a game changer. I just got into Python/EVM stuff thanks to one great YouTube lecture by Patrick Collins I mentioned already a few times, and this course is like that.
TON Whitepaper: https://ton-telegram.network/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/TON-Whitepaper.pdf
https://tonresear.ch/
TON contract verifier: https://verifier.ton.org/
TON API to submit transactions and get indexed data: https://toncenter.com/
Explorer: https://tonscan.com/
Official TON site: https://ton.org/
Ok, I am too lazy to link more stuff. If you find something, let me know in the comments, but we will look into more dev resources in the next article anyway.
The End
Ok, my final conclusion… this was time well spent. It’s an interesting ecosystem with quite a few good innovations and lots of potential. I recommend understanding the basics and learning the theory behind TON before starting development. It really saves you so much time. Just jumping in with a trial-and-error approach like I did feels really cumbersome. After finding a few good resources, I really enjoyed it and achieved my goal of learning something new and interesting
I will definitely make more deep dives on my Substack in the future, and I will stick around in the TON ecosystem and improve the integration into Orbitrum and my personal toolset.
If you find any mistakes, have additional information, or just found this article helpful, leave a comment and follow me here and on Substack for more content. If you want to discuss anything interesting, you can also reach me on Twitter: https://x.com/crjameson_