The Open Network (TON) has just displaced Solana to claim the spot as the world's fastest blockchain protocol.

TON Becomes World’s Fastest Blockchain

Join Our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage The Toncoin price jumped 7% to trade at $2.24 as of 8:10 am EST as traders position themselves for a potential breakout in TON’s price in the coming few days. This latest price ...

Toncoin Price Prediction: TON Takes Off But Investors Turn To Launchpad XYZ With Only Hours Left In its Bumper $2 Million Presale

Fiat24 is a Swiss regulated financial institution, and the only licensed fintech bank that has fully abandoned servers for a public blockchain on which to book client ledgers.

Swiss Banking is Coming to Blockchain: Crypto Payments Simplified

Fanton brings blockchain-based fantasy football to Telegram thanks to the IM service’s recent integration with the TON blockchain

Fantasy football game on Telegram: Fanton joins Cointelegraph Accelerator

The crypto market has retraced from its initial rally in the last two days after the Bitcoin ETF saga. Today, October 18, investors

Top Crypto Gainers on 18 October – TON, APE, And TWT

Dukascopy has rolled out a novel lending product that allows customers to leverage their cryptocurrency holdings.

Dukascopy offers crypto-backed fiat loans to traders

CM Shinde directed officials to develop a system to make the process transparent and free from human intervention. A presentation of the newly developed system, based on blockchain technology ...

Maharashtra Introduces Transparent Blockchain-Based System For RTO Inspector Transfers

Today, The Open Network Foundation (TON Foundation), the non-profit Swiss organization working towards growing a Web3 ecosystem within Telegram, has announced a collaborative endeavor with Blockchain.com, one of the world’s most trusted and popular ...

Blockchain.com and TON Foundation introduce Toncoin incentive program

Get the most recent info and news about Free TON on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

Everscale is a new and unique blockchain design that is capable of processing millions of transactions per second, with Turing-complete smart contracts and decentralized user interfaces. Everscale presents some new and unique properties, such as dynamic multithreading, soft majority consensus and distributed programming, which enable it to be scalable, fast and secure at the same time. It is governed by a decentralized community founded upon meritocratic principles via Soft Majority Voting protocol. Everscale has powerful developer tools, such as compilers for Solidity and C++, API, SDK that includes client libraries for 13 programming languages and all popular platforms, and a range of decentralized browsers and wallets empowering many applications in DeFi, NFT, tokenization and governance domains.

Free TON

Distributed Ledgers: The Next Logical Step

Introducing the True NFT Solution

Contests and Hackathons in Blockchain: An Overview

Rebranding is a gargantuan task for any company or public entity at the best of times, but throw in a massive dose of anarchistic decentralization into the mix, and mission impossible becomes mission incredible. While several articles and press releases have been published in the flurry of the Everscale rebrand, I wanted to use my little soapbox to explore the mechanics of such a move and what can be learned from the experience from a community perspective. So, read on if you'd like to learn: Why Free TON felt the need to rebrand to become Everscale in the first place? Can you 'rebrand' a decentralised community movement while taking every voice into account? What are the challenges compared to centralized rebranding, and how are these challenges overcome? A Short (and Overtold) Story about Telegram and the SEC A long, long time ago, in a faraway land, a messaging app called Telegram decided they wanted to create a cryptocurrency. So, like many dreamers way back then, they held an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). A lot of people were very excited about this, and threw their life savings at the telegram team to build a better type of blockchain. But then... A grumpy group of killjoy suits called the SEC decided they didn't like ICOs. So they shouted at Telegram, a lot, and threatened to take them to jail. So Telegram gave all the money back, and just to annoy the SEC, they released the open-source code of their blockchain development. Back to Rebranding That was a lovely story, Ben, but why is Free TON rebranding to Everscale? Well, why did Google turn tail on the name 'Backrub', or Blue Ribbon Sports become Nike? Sometimes the sneaker just doesn't fit the foot. Since the SEC shutdown of Telegram's venture, Free TON has consistently built out and added to the foundational open-source software left behind (including on-chain NFT technology, Rust Nodes capable of world TPS records, and more). But the new name isn't only about proclaiming the power of our evolved technology. By pivoting toward this new positioning, Everscale sheds the weight of the 'Short (and Overtold) Story' above, and welcomes new adopters and entrepreneurs to a fresh page. Sure, much like I imagine some Google employees and were quite fond of  Backrub, a lot of our community remain adamant Free TON was and is fit for purpose. The difference between the former and latter of these examples though, is that Backrub was not striving for decentralization. Pleasing All the People, All the Time? I've pondered on topics of decentralization in its many forms throughout several of my Hackernoon pieces (and have even been nominated for a Noonie award in the philosophy category, *blush*), and without cutting to the predictable chase, the short answer is no; you can't keep them all happy. Decentralization isn't a tea or coffee type binary choice. It's a sliding scale. Ethereum, for example, has in the region of 10,000 miners who process transactions on the network, while Binance smart chain, by comparison, only has 21 (which some argue invalidates its status as a cryptocurrency). Even in the case of the holy grail of crypto governance, a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), seldom are the choices as diplomatically " as they may seem. of the people" A famous example is that of blockchain-based blogging social media platform Steem, which was subject to a hostile takeover instigated by Justin Sun (of TRX), Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex in early 2020. Although Binance and Huobi later withdrew from the ordeal, Sun continued to railroad and gaslight community efforts to retain control over voting mechanisms on the site. The truth is most DAOs are not the systems for the revolution they claim. They are tools of Anarcho-capitalism. Sure, anyone can and may vote on issues, however, the largest holders will have a larger slice of the democratic pie. Call it injustice, or just another example of Chicken Little syndrome, alternative mechanisms are tricky to conceive. It turns out, like much with real-life, important and/or emotional decisions can (and probably never should) be agreed upon by a sizeable enough group of humans. When it comes to Everscale, which one rather charismatic Hackernoon editor described as "the chaotic power of decentralization first", and the rebranding process we urgently need to undergo, well, there are some hurdles to overcome. Decentralized Solutions for Centralized Problems Soft-Majority Voting (SMV), contest proposals, and subgovernance token distributions are jargon that Everscale community types will be all too familiar with. Of these solutions, SMV, which could also be described as 'first past the post', is particularly useful for curtailing issues of voter apathy and obtaining a consensus-based decision from those who care most. Combined with a meritocratic system of Thinktank like subgovernance groups who are chosen to vote on topics within their elected SME, the suggestions box was overbrimming with potential names, logos and more for the new direction. Whittling the numerous lists down to a usable final brand concept suitable for a blockchain community such as ours, however, well this is a little trickier. Centralized Solutions for Decentralized Problems The first murmuring of the need to move away from the Free TON identity came to the surface in late September. Since this time, there have been at least 10 separate weekly community meet-up calls in which rebranding has dominated the conversation. The first unsuccessfully floated proposal was (believe it or not) to rebrand as Meta Chain. All the signs were right, and despite some concerns over the cliché of it all, it looked a promising direction to steer the ship. So, in true decentralized fashion, this concept was taken to a soft community poll vote and was subsequently torn apart (take heed Zucks). Why? It's debatable, of course, but I would speculate it could come back to the same reasons why SMV is useful for the majority of purposes. In this case, however, it was those who were displeased with the potential rebranding concept who were most rallied. The calmer, more agreeable, side of the community were more passive toward the move. Following the Meta Chain mishap, many other avenues were explored and SWOT'ed to the point of implosion, until a suitable champion emerged. Everscale, those responsible for the deeper digging analysis side of things presented, encompasses the unique aspects of our blockchains offering, has EVER lasting gimmick and puns-man-hash-tag-man-ship, and stands out among the multitude of other coins and tokens on the market. The issue now, as I saw it anyhow, was finding the best way to get this motion to pass without resolving to some obscure Boaty McBoatface compromise. The answer, unfortunately, did not come from decentralized means. An outside agency within the field was put to work, funded privately by the development team TON Labs. The results of these specialists' work was then first presented to the core contributors to the network: the developers, entrepreneurs, and commercial entities who build their products and services on Everscale. And then, upon agreement from the majority of these parties, the new name was presented to the wider decentralized community. Only this time it was presented not as a question, but a decision that had to be taken. I'll be frank here, I expected outcry, and was prepared for the worst. Much to my surprise though, the reaction was considered and appropriate. Even those who hated the name were agreeable to the need to streamline the process. So, all's well which ends well, right? Sort of. Nearly. Kinda... What EVER next? Choosing a name and an identity is only the first step in the overall process, of course. An important one, but just one nonetheless. There are websites to be redesigned and worded, technical documentation to be updated, and an ecosystem's worth of wallets, DeFi and NFT and other services that'll need to smoothly slide into the new shoes as well. Will decentralization hinder or help these next steps? Well, that depends on the scope of the task. But if you ask me, getting any project of this size through something as stressful as a rebrand requires the best of both worlds to achieve true potential. Want to tell me I'm wrong or learn more about Everscale? Join us on . Discord

From Free TON to Everscale: Anatomy of a Decentralized Rebranding

Marketplace to launch on the Free TON Network ahead of the upcoming FIDE World Championship in Dubai this November , the International Chess Federation, has partnered with , the core developer of the , to launch ChessNFT.com - a new, holistic chess non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem. This launch will position FIDE as the first-ever global sports federation to launch its own NFT marketplace. FIDE TON Labs Free TON Network With complete marketplace functionality due later this month, ChessNFT will welcome a new crypto demographic, bringing utility to both chess players and fans through the digitalization and gamification of iconic match moments, unique collectibles, chess-related art and many more exciting opportunities. The platform’s interface will accommodate the bid on and purchase of chess NFTs that live on-chain through the use of both fiat and cryptocurrencies. Alexander Filatov, Co-Founder and CEO of TON Labs, commented, “Pairing the classic and universally loved sport of chess with the world of blockchain and crypto has the capability of bringing chess to the forefront of the minds of an entirely new cohort of fans across the globe. Free TON’s unique technology will allow us to deliver a seamless experience to millions of users monthly. By creating this platform, we are giving the wider chess community the opportunity to explore their passion in a unique, fully decentralized, digital capacity as well as experiencing true NFTs.” This partnership comes as FIDE chose the Free TON Network due to its ability to process transactions on a global scale. This feat is made possible through Free TON’s multi-threading features with several workchains which dynamically scale to meet user demand. User security is ensured thanks to full decentralization and unmatched throughput of transactions per second. Arkady Dvorkovich, President of FIDE, concluded, “FIDE has started an exciting and ambitious journey of digitalization to bring new experiences and opportunities to the chess enthusiasts around the world. We are excited for one of the first steps to be a comprehensive NFT marketplace, coming right in time for the world championship match in Dubai this November.” About TON Labs Founded in May 2018, TON Labs is a global collective of experts in decentralized application development, and the core developer of the Free TON network — a decentralized, community-driven blockchain and its major component TON OS. As the core developer of Free TON, TON Labs is committed to optimizing the development of applications easily accessible to global communities and enterprises. True end-to-end decentralization is enabled by the TON Operating System (OS), a technology stack that expedites blockchain development, and lives on the community-driven Free TON blockchain. With absolute trust and legitimate data ownership, developers are furnished with the tools to foster mass adoption of liberating and integrous tech. About FIDE The International Chess Federation (FIDE) is the governing body of the sport of chess regulating all international chess competitions. Constituted as a non-governmental institution, it was recognized by the International Olympic Committee as a Global Sporting Organization in 1999. It was one of the very first International Sports Federations, alongside the governing bodies of the sports of football, cricket, swimming, and auto racing. It is now one of the largest sports federations, encompassing 196 countries as affiliate members, in the form of National Chess Federations. Wachsman E: For Media Enquiries Tonlabs@wachsman.com David Llada FIDE: press@fide.com

The Sport's First Global NFT Marketplace is Happening in Partnership with FIDE and Free TON

Last year, Free TON ran a contest which gained the network over 400 validators. The contest, dubbed 'The Crystal Game' (homage to Glass Bead Game) had validators compete in validation cycles recurrently in order to win the title of "Magister Ludi" and of course token prizes. This year, those same validators (plus new blood) entered into a new validator contest: . The Rust Cup sought to outperform all layer 1 blockchain protocols throughput in real network conditions with TON nodes written in Rust. The Rust Cup After quite a heated and frustrating few months for all the race participants (validators) involved, the Free TON Rust Cup has reached the finish line with overwhelming success, crowning a brand new, stable network--one that’s faster than any other network in the industry. At over 55,000 TPS (and still increasing), the Free TON blockchain is officially the fastest blockchain in the world. As of September 1st 2021 (one week after hitting 64k TPS in one datacenter testnet) the network has already reached all-time-high of 55,000 TPS during the final laps of the Rust Cup. How Free TON Broke World Records in Throughput The Free TON network has been outperforming all expectations since its launch in May 2020. In just one year, developers have replaced all of the original protocols including the core, which resulted in the first truly end-to-end decentralized, multi-sharded, multi-threaded blockchain allowing for the parallel execution of smart contracts--resulting in faster validator rotation and execution parallelism. Multithreading parallel execution enables each shard to scale to execution capacity levels only constrained by node network connections and interfaces. The explains why the original code can not accommodate what Free TON is now capable of and is significantly different from the architecture that Dr. Nikolai Durov proposed. Free TON Whitepaper “It’s a very complex engineering task. But we are doing it in record time. The funny thing about all this is that it took us six months to reach 3,000 TPS and two weeks to reach 60,000 TPS.” said Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO and co-founder of TON Labs, during the Free TON AMA session. The team comments that the numbers could reach a million transactions per second with more validators. The Free TON network has not only increased in throughput, but also in size. With over blocks in the masterchain (with an average block time of 0.2 seconds) and over 350,000 accounts, the network sees an average of 2,500 new accounts made each day. This number is set to exponentially increase with the list of pending of partnerships the network will be welcoming to their ecosystem this fall. 264 million A Perfect Ecosystem for Entrepreneurs With its lightning-fast network speed and negligible transaction fees, it’s no surprise that entrepreneurs and developers are flocking to the platform to build their dreams. Due to Free TON’s competitive angle of proven superior speed, reliability and security, the platform has garnered a faithful group of supporters and allies. Notable upcoming integrations with World Chess--which is integrating Free TON as a backend to be exposed to 150 million regular chess players--and DePass--a JV with one of the largest software ticketing platforms with over 15 mln tickets sold per year --is certainly turning heads and garnering interest among enterprises and other entities which require networks to handle both heavy and near-instant processing. The type of partners which require support by both heavy processing power and throughput is a good example of how Free TON excels. Why Speed Matters With the use and availability of cryptocurrencies, it makes sense to question the specific infrastructure of such technology. The throughput of transactions per second (TPS) is one such question. TPS straightforwardly determines the rate of which your transaction is processed by the system. Any system which handles the finance of private individuals and corporations alike, the emphasis of security cannot be overstated. In a system with a slow connection, the delay in transfer can not only give reason to doubt the system as the user scrambles to find their money. This is especially amplified in a trustless system where no one can be held accountable than the user. This delay does not only degrade the trust and support for a system, but also have direct consequences for the affected in the real world. The purchase of a house, the order of raw materials, investments or even just a day-to-day rent payment all have something in common: deadlines. In a best-case scenario, the breach of a deadline is only a formality without severe consequences but in the case of house purchase or an order of raw materials, the delay in payment means you are in breach of the agreement and could be used as cause for renegotiation, termination of the contract or losing the opportunity. Another side to the importance of TPS is the infrastructure of blockchain. Blockchain works through the use of nodes validating each other. The internet is unfortunately not perfect and requires regular maintenance. When a video starts buffering unexpectedly or a message fails to be sent, it usually has something to do with this maintenance. The trustless system verification would prevent the total failure of transfers caused by local maintenance and simply return the funds in case of an error, however, as is the case with Bitcoin, the transfer can in some cases take up to four days to be completed. This, combined with the possibility of the price of Bitcoin dropping 11% in one day, make such an error disastrous. Get to Know Free TON If you’re an entrepreneur searching for the right platform and tools to realize your vision, or a blockchain enthusiast looking to get involved with an innovative and inspiring community, then Free TON is right for you. There are infinite ways to get involved but the best one by far is to participate in or to or join the community Telegram chat to share your ideas here . contests start your own https://t.me/TONCRYSTAL

It’s Official: Free TON Broke the World Record and Then Broke That One, Too

, if you have a few tokens and you want to stake it in any Proof-of-Stake network (for example, in Ethereum), you can go to the big validator and give them your tokens for staking. But this is about centralization, and in this case users risk their tokens because we can’t eliminate the possibility of potential attack on the network. In Free TON users do not delegate their tokens to the validator. The user can stake tokens when he becomes a validator or he stakes it into (decentralized Pool) which is a smart-contract. Nobody controls it, and the user can take it back at any time he wants. This is a tokenized contract. So, it’s possible to vote with these tokens without validator holding like in much other blockchain networks. For first DePool , Free TON is about making . You really cannot do anything without having a smart contract. For example: in Free TON you can traditionally send tokens using your account, but you will be able to use your tokens only after deploying code because every active account has the smart contract. Secondly the largest smart contract platform In the blockchain network there can be hundreds of thousands smart contracts executed simultaneously. And the real problem of all blockchains is FAST execution of these smart contracts. Free TON is the 1st blockchain where inside one shard there is multi-threading the smart contracts’ execution which means that we can execute as many smart contracts as we need. So, unlike the other networks, Free TON network is not only “sharded” but it is also “multi-threaded”, which means very fast. is side chains which submit the data to the blockchain. Many networks use side chains. The problem is in trust. For example, you trust Ethereum, but why should you trust side chains? The third point Today we have about 99% cases indicated in the 2nd column on the diagram below - web server provides the user interface, which means that it is not fully decentralized: Free TON works on the principle – everything is happening from the user interface using (decentralized Bots), which are also smart contracts, but instead of being executed on the blockchain, they are executed in SDK. With SDK the user can execute the smart contract inside his virtual machine. It’s like a bot in the chat, and this bot interacts with the user with any smart contract working on chain. End-to-End decentralization DeBots Moreover, if you use WEB 3 application, then you need the back-end, and then you need to build the database on this back-end, so you need some developers to do all that. In Free TON the user just concentrates on his application, developing the smart contract, DeBot and front-end. You even don’t need a back-end developer because you can use SDK for communication with the data on the blockchain simply by installing the SDK. So, the key feature of developing the Free TON decentralized architecture is to have a system where the user can create his application as easy as it will be written on the firebase.

3 Reasons Why Free TON is the 1st Truly Decentralized Blockchain Platform

In short, GraphQL is a protocol that defines an algorithm for searching information in a database. It was born in the depths of good old Facebook as a response to the request of users and developers. The challenge faced by the creators was to optimize the algorithm for processing search queries on the platform. Before touching on the use of GraphQL in one of new blockchain platform - Free TON, let's talk about the protocol using a simple example. Let's say you want to find out who constantly likes posts about particular political party activities or to summarize people who put a laughing emoji under serious texts about harassment and violence. Recall that based on search queries on Facebook arrays of information about the preferences and attitudes of users, the use of which provides interest groups with tools of influence. Initially, the existing query algorithm allowed storing the received data as duplicate information, distributed by its characteristics on different servers. The optimization of this algorithm was the development of a syntax that describes to the user how data should be queried, then processes the databases, and finally provides the user with information sorted according to the query. This intermediary client is called GraphQL. GraphQL, adapted by TON Labs developers, is also used in the Free TON blockchain. There, it is an additional protocol layer, which can perform several complex operations: to collect information from various databases, process it and return to the client in a single request. Technically, it looks like this. Each full node contains all information about all blockchain transactions. GraphQL acts as a protocol to it, which is additionally installed by the owner of the node. The graphical interface of this protocol makes it possible to make a search query across the entire blockchain. For example, who and from which address made the transfer, data on the size of the stake, the share of personal contribution from the total investment in the DePool. GraphQL is installed on a full node of the owner's choice. The convenience for the user is that with GraphQL he can extract a large set of complex data with just one request to the service. Also, using the input fields, it can immediately determine in what form it wants to receive information. This gives the protocol flexibility: for example, you can select all the transactions for a single account, or you can trace the dynamics of the processes in the complex by adding new fields. There is also a subscription feature, which allows you to receive information about changes in any parameter, for example, information about transactions from a certain address — a kind of notification. There are also advantages for developers: GraphQL is a certain level of abstraction for the user, behind which the developer can hide a complex architecture, editable database. SDK Product Owner at TON Labs, Ekaterina Pantaz, Answers Questions Ekaterina noted that initially, users were inclined to use the more familiar REST API, but in the end, everyone quickly got involved and there were no problems specifically with GraphQL. How was the work on the API based on the GraphQL protocol? The TON Labs development team added basic blockchain access when developing the API (application programming interface), which allows to get information on blocks, transactions, messages and accounts, as well as to send external messages to the blockchain. API functions have been expanded to find SUM, COUNT, MIN and MAX by data, and the Counterparties function has been added, which returns a list of addresses with which the account has ever interacted, sorted by the time of the last interaction. What changes are planned in working with the GraphQL protocol? TON Labs is currently working on exchanges module that will allow to easily add TON to any exchange. The API already allows you to get all the proofs to prove the data it returns, and soon functionality will be added to the SDK, with which it will be easy to do this. Do you have data on how many nodes and full nodes this protocol is installed on? There are no such data now. We have three full nodes and I know other validators have a couple of nodes, but I do not have a complete list. Is there any monetization algorithm planned? Yes, there will be a contest of design economical system for Web Free Node soon with good prize money - 115 000 TON Crystal ( about 45 000 USD).

GraphQL, the Universal Query Protocol, and the Free TON Blockchain

The Durov brothers fought for a very long time with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the adoption of the Telegram Open Network (TON) in the US, which led to the official statement by Pavel Durov to close the project and stop its development. Nevertheless, the open source code of the project gave a second chance. With the help of TON repositories, a group of independent enthusiasts collected all the best that was created by the Telegram development team and released their project called Free TON with the TON Crystal cryptocurrency. Like other POS networks that have their own decentralized management, Free TON has its own declaration, which spelled out all the ideas and concepts of the community and the Free TON decentralized network. All the philosophical foundations of the project can be found in this foundation of the declaration. The Declaration on Decentralization is gradual, it was not created in a few days. And while the process of creating a full-fledged declaration was going on, more and more participants joined the project – both from the side of developers and users, and from the side of users who were interested in this project. These members have formed a very active and large crypto community in a short period of time, which is currently one of the largest independent cryptocurrency communities. How it all began? From the very beginning, there were people who were very much involved in the TON project (which was directed by Pavel Durov). They were looking forward to launching all over the world. When Pavel Durov announced the closure of the project, these people were very upset. They decided that closing a project that they had been working on for over 2 years was humiliating. A lot of people spent a huge amount of time and effort on a project, which was then closed on the grounds that the money was not collected the way someone wanted – this is nonsense. It was these people who became the one that was used, helped to gain huge publicity among ordinary people and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. On May 7, 2020, the official launch of the Free TON project took place. In addition to launching the project, the TON Labs team published the main components of TON OS on GitHub. Free TON has grown very quickly as a truly decentralized community driven project. Today, Free TON is an active community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts with over 30,000 members worldwide who contribute daily to the development of both the Free TON blockchain and TON Crystal digital coins. The Free TON community is self-sufficient. All changes within the community and the blockchain take place after the approval of the community members and nothing else. There is no centralized governing body and project community. As a result of the interaction of all these factors and the efforts of the programmers, a wide range of software developments has been provided, aimed at significantly improving tooling and changes in protocols. The key differences between the original vision of TON and Free TON in its current implementation can be summarized in three key points: No legal entity is behind this project. Telegram as a messaging platform has publicly refrained from participating in blockchain development. If the TON project was developed against the background of Telegram and Pavel Durov, then Free TON was not. Free TON as an ecosystem, the community around the project is both the founding father and the driving force behind the project. The Free TON protocol is built on the ideals of decentralization both at the network level and at the control level. The original project was purely technology oriented and paid little attention to theoretical aspects of management. If the TON project was alive, the validators would vote to approve the changes in the protocol – this is roughly what the Telegram developers intended. Durov’s team focused on technology and cost efficiency rather than governance and tokenomics. They did not have a vision of how to involve the community in managing the platform, but the Free TON developers did. Decentralization of the distribution of tokens – the distribution of tokens occurs as indicated in the proposals (proposals) on the Free TON community forum. The proposal is accepted, for which the majority of community members and validators voted. In the TON project, there were no ideas and proposals in this regard at all. It is important to note that every member of the Free TON community accepts and signs a declaration of decentralization. Previously, it was forbidden to sign for US citizens, respectively, no American citizen could be an official member of the community and the Free TON project. The key idea from the project’s declaration is that the Internet was born free and decentralized, then large corporations and large states took over it, which began to control it; it’s time to bring it back under the control of ordinary people and bring it back to its true decentralized origins, as Bitcoin once did in the financial arena. What makes Free TON different from other blockchain projects? Free TON is a community-driven blockchain focused on decentralization based on the open-source TON protocol previously developed by Telegram. It has tremendous potential and tremendous capabilities compared to other blockchain projects. Free TON blockchain architecture The Free TON infrastructure is vastly superior to that of most other blockchain projects. The transaction speed within the Free TON blockchain reaches 0.2 seconds with a throughput of 10’000 transactions per second. Moreover, the cost of making transactions is much more profitable than in other projects (less than 0.001% of the transaction amount). The Free TON blockchain also uses an infinite paradigm, which allows for infinite blockchain scalability. Democratic distribution of TON Crystal tokens The Free TON project was started by the community and has never implemented an ICO of any kind. The developers and the community were faced with the task of developing theoretical coherent mechanics of token distribution that would take into account PoS rules. Developers and community members have done it. They created a token distribution model called Meritocratic. The concept is that the community offers contests that other members of the community can participate in. Each proposal for a competition is discussed by the community members, then a vote takes place, and if the majority agrees, a certain amount of TON Crystal coins is assigned to the competition, which, after the completion of the competition, is sent to the winners. Open-source code Free TON Another important aspect and basic tenet of Free TON is the preservation of open source, controlled by the community. Management takes place without affecting the main (deep) blockchain, which helps not only to protect against hacker attacks but also to ensure the stability of the blockchain thanks to a truly democratic (meritocratic) on-chain approach to the evolution of the network. Free TON Roadmap The network launch roadmap has been divided into three stages so that everyone has the opportunity to fully prepare for the launch of the project, create the necessary software, improve security, distribute tokens, etc. Stage I “Raging Bull” is a stimulated beta network with a decentralized time bomb (DTB). Phase II “Rumble Fish” is a stimulated beta network based on votes from validators deciding the network configuration. Stage III “Fight Club” is a decentralized network (mainnet). Stage I (Raging Bull) – Stimulated Beta Network with Decentralized Time Bomb (DTB) During this phase, TON Crystal tokens are distributed to developers to enable them to deploy and run their developments and distribute them to users and validators for customization and testing. In the event of any catastrophic event, the network will be restarted to its original “zero” state. Raging Bull Tips: Decentralize Pools (DePools) Decentralized Time Bomb (DTB) Soft Majority Voting (SMV) Referral Giver (RG) zkSNARK support Distributed Tokens (DT) Hashed Time-Locked (HTL) Raging Bull Contests: DePools Formal Verification DTB Implementation SMV Implementation C ++ Node Bug Bounty Rust Node Bug Bounty Validators Contest Social and Content Raging Bull Contracts: DePools deployment DTB deployment SMV deployment Stage II “Rumble Fish” – a stimulated beta network based on the votes of validators who make decisions about the network configuration At the beginning of this stage, a decentralized time bomb contract is executed, which resets the network configuration parameters in order to disable control over it by the developers, giving full control over the network to the validators. Rumble Fish Tips: Stable Coins (SC) Gas-Based Developer Incentives Collateral and Compound Interoperability Quadratic Voting Slashing Conditions Rumble Fish Contests: SMV Formal Verification SMV Bug Bounty Token Designes Implementation RG Implementation RG Bug Bounty HTL Implementation Documentation and Translation zkSNARK support Rumble Fish Contracts: RG Deployment Stage III  “Fight Club” – decentralized network (mainnet) This stage is characterized by a large number of validators and DePools on the network with a large number of active users. Voting is automated using SMV smart contracts. TON Crystal tokens are constantly distributed among a large number of active community members through competitions. Rumble Fish Tips: zkSNARK systems Performance improvements Rumble Fish Contests: Tokens Formal Verification Tokens Bug Bounty User Experience Contests zkSNARK systems Formal Verification Contests Quadratic Voting Rumble Fish Contracts: zkSNARK support Important events in the life of Free TON Autumn 2020 – launch of the first store-bot @FREETONSHOP_bot in Telegram. Autumn 2020 – the launch of the Free TON League esports project. September 2020 – Free TON received an offer to partner with World of Dogs, which was approved by the community. October 2020 – Free TON received a partnership offer with PokerTON, which was approved by the community. October 6, 2020 – Free TON received an offer to collaborate with Combot, which was approved by the community. October 27, 2020 – Free TON received a partnership offer with Cointelegraph, which was approved by the community. December 8, 2020 – Free TON blockchain members announced the launch of over 400 independent validators on December 22, 2020, making the Free TON blockchain one of the best decentralized projects launched in 2020. February 2020 – First decentralized merger of Free TON and Dune Network.First decentralized merger of Free TON and Dune Network Dune Network is a security and security-focused decentralized application platform. The platform supports multiple programming languages ​​for creating smart contracts and also provides a whole ecosystem of dApps and tools. In addition, it offers business and technical support aimed at helping entrepreneurs innovate and scale across the web, while facilitating the integration of existing businesses on its platform. Free TON and Dune Network began merging after a successful community vote to accept the merger proposal. More than 50% of community members voted to accept the Free TON/Dune Network merger proposal. This event is important for both projects, which will have a positive impact on the entire ecosystem of the project. Moreover, it will be the first effective and truly decentralized merger of two projects based on blockchain technology. The deal is valued at 9 million TON Crystal, which is equivalent to the market capitalization of Dune Network. The acquisition of Dune Network will further expand the Free TON community by adding more than 2,000 Dune Network supporters, as well as expanding the project’s reach by transferring all social media accounts and 16 ambassadors in the 6 countries that Dune Network is represented by. On the technical side, Dune Network attracts about 30,000 accounts and smart contracts to Free TON, a network with over 50,000 daily transactions and a community of over 90 validators, including 8 companies that can become validators. The deal will also give Free TON access to all the exchanges Dune is listed on, an introduction to Dune backing investors, and a new lab that will foster the development of Free TON. With its advanced technical stack, fully decentralized nature, unique partnership model, and growing community, Free TON has established itself as a strong contender for global adoption. For Dune Network, this is an opportunity to work on one of the best technical infrastructures and help in its development. Together, the Dune Network and FreeTon communities are growing stronger than separately. Joining forces allows projects to grow faster and more confidently. The Origin Labs, behind many of Dune Network’s developments, will now focus all its efforts on Free TON. It is one of the most productive research groups in the blockchain space. Origin Labs employs a team of 9 PhD research engineers trained at leading technological universities in France who are widely recognized as experts in blockchain design. Over the past decade, they have participated in a large number of projects of well-known companies (Jane Street, Samsung, Bloomberg, Facebook), and also developed tools for OCaml (opam). What is the future of Free TON? Free TON blockchain has the potential to revolutionize the blockchain industry. This project is able to achieve mass adoption and use on a par with popular payment systems (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal), instant messaging platforms (Telegram, Whatsapp, WeChat), social networks (Twitter, Facebook) and fulfill the dream of most cryptocurrency enthusiasts – to become the basic infrastructure of the decentralized Internet. Nevertheless, the opinion of the cryptocurrency society about the future of Free TON was divided – some are confident in the success of the project, others in failure. Negative investors and enthusiasts are confident that the lack of integration with Telegram and its huge audience will undoubtedly lead to the collapse of the project. Positive-minded investors and enthusiasts are confident that the project has enormous potential and will achieve significant achievements in the long term. In any case, for 9 months of its existence, the project has gathered an active community around itself, it does not stand still, it is constantly developing and the main example of this is the merger with the Dune Network. The cryptocurrency community is waiting for a huge number of interesting innovations and news about the merger of various projects with Free TON.

Free TON: How It Started Vs. How It's Going

Free TON is a distributed system that uses the Proof-of-Stake algorithm of the BFT consensus to work consistently. The efficiency of the algorithm directly depends on the number and quality of network validators. Therefore, after the initial launch of the blockchain, the Free TON community set a task to attract competent, motivated validators and at the same time prevent the concentration of resources in one place. The required number of validators was determined to be several hundred. This goal is a real challenge, and in the case of Free TON, it was called Magister Ludi. The Crystal Game contest was announced in June 2020 and lasted for more than six months. Its winners were awarded the title of Magister Ludi — "Master of the Game". Another result is a set of 375 new Free TON blockchain validators. We talked to the organizers and winners of the contest about its main results, difficulties and achievements. "Capture The Flag" For Validators Although this is called a game, the validators had to solve non-trivial technical problems, respond to emergency situations and identify possible errors in the node software. Initially it was planned that the game will last four weeks, during each of which they will carry out nine validation cycles with a gradual increase in network load: from a routine check in the first stage to network overload at the last. For the performance criteria of the validator, special metrics have been developed that take into account the percentage of blocks produced, delay times and much more. Magister Ludi lasted longer, adapting to unexpected challenges and changing the reward system. The period for which the prize money was awarded and the number of winners changed: instead of 300, there were 375 of them. The winners of the game, based on the results of four stages, received a lock-stake award for a period of two years in the amount of 375,000 to 750,000 crystals, depending on their place in the ranking. Now validators can use these tokens for validation, which will bring them their own income. These funds allow the winners of the contest to keep the network in their hands and make it more difficult to enter the validation of teams whose competencies have not been tested “in battle". In addition, validators receive a vesting reward — from 120,000 to 240,000 crystals. Organizers Sum Up The Results Of Magister Ludi Results And Achievements Talking about the goals set, Sergei Zaitseff, Senior Data Scientist TON labs and Product Owner of TON Live Blockchain explorer, noted that the game solved the following main tasks: recruitment of validators who will gain the necessary experience in working with the blockchain during the contest and testing various network parameters. “I think the contest was great. Difficult, but interesting. We have completed all the technical tasks that we set for ourselves.” Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs More than 400 participants applied for the contest, 379 participating teams passed the cut-off threshold for points scored, and 375 teams passed the KYC procedure. At the moment, about 370 participants have received the award, who were subsidized in order to be engaged in network validation in the next two years. As a result of the contest in December 2020, partial decentralization was announced — now Free TON has not 40 validators, but 400. Sergei explained that at the moment this is more than any PoS blockchain and more than enough for Free TON, so there is no need for new validator recruitment contests yet. A corpus of validators has already been formed, which, in his opinion, is well versed in validation issues. In their , the validators answer the questions asked and explain the necessary things to beginners. Telegram channels In addition to recruitment of validators, the game helped to evaluate the parameters of the network and draw conclusions about what needs to be improved in the protocol design. “First of all, we will deal with security issues and improve the work of external messages. This part of the architecture will have to be revised almost completely." Mitja Goroshevsky Decentralization And Geography Of Validators Sergei Zaitseff said that initially it was announced that one team will receive only one prize: “Our goal was to ensure that a large number of crystals did not fall into one hand, and there was no monopoly. The KYC procedure was used, and although it was quite soft, and someone may have managed to get 2-3 prizes per team, but no more than that. There was no concentration of prizes in one hand." Sergei also commented on the discussion about a greater degree of centralization due to the participation of the Korean community, noting, in particular, that a significant number of Korean participants and winners, and there are about 160 of them, is due to the fact that they used hired DevOps, who themselves participated and helped other participants. According to Sergei, at the moment, approximately 40% of validators are the Korean community, and 60% are the rest of the world. Chinese validators are beginning to participate more actively, and participants from Western Europe appear — Italians, Maltese. After the merger of the Dune Network with Free TON, the French community will also be added. A Word To The Free TON Validators Anatoly Ustinov, one of the Free TON validators and contest participant, said that he came to the community at the very beginning of the game of validators. He knew about the TON project of the Durov brothers for a long time. He liked the technology itself, but their financial model did not suit. One of Free TON community developers convinced him to join, who once spoke about Free TON and the principle of meritocracy — tokens in the hands of the capable. To participate in the contest, Anatoly used AMD Ryzen 9/128GB RAM hardware, for 100 euros per month. The nodes were managed by himself, so there were no more operating costs. Anatoly believes that there were no difficulties with participation, everything was quite simple and understandable. Validator turb0cat said that he entered the game at the very first stage in May 2020: “I followed the fate of the Telegram TON and when the news about its closure appeared, I carefully looked at who and what was doing on its basis. The guys from TON Labs won over with their openness and approach to business." The validator said that he used a 12-core machine (24 threads) with 128 GB of memory and SSD disks to participate in the game. Also experimented with a 32-core machine and 512 GB of memory, but this did not lead to a significant improvement in the results. Renting a server cost an average of 100 euros per month, and at the time of the experiments up to 300 euros. The time spent is from 8 to 40 hours a week. In his opinion, a lot was decided by the location of the server and the analysis of competitors — the closer the server is to the network core, the better the results. About the process itself, the validator responds as follows: "There were some unpleasant moments with the scripts failing, which led to the loss of place in the ranking, but that's what the game is for." "Whoever wants to be a validator becomes one. Validation is not for the vulnerable and impressionable, you need to be understanding. In difficult and emergency situations, no one will personally hold your hand. This must be understood." Anatoly Ustinov Previously published at https://freeton.house/en/magister-ludi-results-of-the-first-large-scale-free-ton-validator-contest/

Meet Magister Ludi: The Process By Which Validators Are Chosen on the Free TON Blockchain

Today, many people associate blockchain with cryptocurrencies, in particular with Bitcoin. Most people don’t even know that blockchain is more than just cryptocurrencies. Society is not yet mentally ready for global online changes, in particular for the widespread adoption of blockchain and the use of cryptocurrencies. Nowadays blockchain and cryptocurrencies are perceived by most people as something complicated. Accordingly, in order to increase blockchain and cryptocurrencies, it is necessary to facilitate their adoption by ordinary people. Making blockchain more tangible to the average person will help attract millions of people. Interest in blockchain has grown significantly now thanks to decentralized finance (DeFi). Great attention is riveted to them. DeFi is a system of standalone applications or financial services that are not controlled by anyone. Decentralized finance shows more user benefits than traditional centralized finance. Along with DeFi, the NFT trading space is now hugely popular. Non-fungible tokens are cryptographic tokens, each unique in the digital world. The hype around NFT exceeded the hype around Bitcoin in 2017. Now, these trending tokens are talked about everywhere, even in regular media. The popularity of NFTs can be compared to the popularity of ICOs at the time. This significantly affects the popularity of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and also attracts new participants in the digital ecosystem. These are the two most important trends that are drawing more attention to the blockchain in early 2021. However, what other ways are there to draw attention to blockchain technology and the Free TON project in particular? Earning opportunity Who would not want to be rewarded or compensated for their time, knowledge or data? Today each of us has become an integral part of the Internet. The Internet presents much more opportunities to ordinary people than it seems. Everyone can earn from being at home, and quarantine around the world has proven this. Blockchain is a monetary system that transcends the real world. Cryptocurrencies are considered the native currency of the Internet today. It can be traded, it can be exchanged, it can be used to buy goods and services on the Internet. Cryptocurrency cannot be “touched” like metal coins, its value is not embodied in material form, and nevertheless, cryptocurrency may well be used in the real world. Blockchains can reward people for actions in the same way that consensus protocols reward computers for mining and validating transactions. Activity rewards always attract interested people. For example, Vox users have already received $ 55 million in rewards over the past 5 years. The Kin ecosystem rewards users and developers and has paid over $ 15 million to its mobile app developer ecosystem in the past 2 years. Free TON has been using this method of attracting attention for a long time. It is thanks to the reward for the activity that the project has gathered around itself a huge community of active cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Due to the fact that Free TON pays rewards for activity, an increasing number of specialists of various profiles are joining the project. In order to receive TON Crystal, you do not need to be a programmer or have powerful hardware – the project is developing on all fronts, so the tasks for the community members are very different. As practice shows, those projects that pay remuneration to active participants are more successful and popular than those that rely solely on their team. Unique value We are used to keeping all valuable items at home – money, jewelry, works of art. Keeping such things depends on how safe we ​​consider our home. If the value of things is too high, we turn to banks or other reliable organizations. They naturally charge commissions for their services. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies offer a large number of alternative options for storing value using cryptocurrency wallets. There are a huge number of wallets for storing digital money. With the help of cryptocurrency wallets, people independently manage their funds and assets. People no longer need to involve someone to ensure the safety of their own funds. Some wallets also allow you to store NFT tokens, which have become a trend in the cryptocurrency world in 2021. In the long term, banks and physical storage services are bound to lose their popularity and effectiveness. Digitalization is taking place in the world, hundreds of processes go online. In the long term, banks will not always be able to provide a high level of security. Being a place to store valuables is a chic option to grab attention. However, using such places to store digital assets should be relatively straightforward. People around the world will gradually move from the physical world to the virtual one, ceasing to store their assets in the real world and moving them into the virtual one. At the moment, the Free TON Surf cryptocurrency wallet only supports TON Crystal tokens. However, in the future, with the development of the project, wallets for TON Crystal will support other assets: NFT, TIP-3 tokens, mvip, and possibly other assets, like other multicurrency wallets. Expanding the functionality of wallets will attract more attention to the project and may interest investors. Digitalization of real documents and objects Each of us has different documents and things that provide us with opportunities. For example, you cannot drive a car without a driver’s license, and you cannot withdraw money or make money transactions without a bank card. Yes, now there are countries where virtual documents can be used, but the security level of these systems is insufficient, lower than the security level that blockchain technology can provide. These government systems have many vulnerabilities that allow hackers to steal private information. The world is digitalizing, governments around the world are translating the work of government organizations online. An excellent option would be the existence of a blockchain equivalent of different documents and things. Blockchain technology, combined with smartphones and biometric data, could be used to provide more opportunities in both the real and the virtual world. You can expand the functionality of Free TON Surf or create a separate application. The software will simply check to see if you have the appropriate permission to access something. All this can happen contactless (if we are talking about the real world). However, this requires the modernization of existing systems in the world. Such innovations in Free TON Surf will inevitably attract huge attention and new community members from all over the world. At the moment, there is not a single analogue of this idea, and even if there is, this project is still hardly popular. Community empowerment It’s cool when a project or blockchain is managed by a professional team, but it’s even cooler when community members decide the fate of the project themselves. The essence of blockchain is decentralization and most cryptocurrency projects do not correspond to this idea. Most blockchains and projects are managed centrally. Blockchain technology has all the necessary resources to enable community members to vote. Blockchain is ideal for empowering online project management. Early versions already exist within DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), but a lot of work needs to be done to get closer to mainstream adoption of glcjv. Early DAO-based versions require participants to have significant technical background. The Free TON project initially allows community members to influence the future of the project. Free TON is community-centric, all changes in the project are made after a general vote. This model is best suited to the idea of ​​decentralization. Free TON development management is not centralized, as in the case of most other projects, but decentralized. All community members, developers, validators have equal rights and opportunities. Everyone can express their ideas or dissatisfaction. True compliance with decentralization allowed the project to attract a huge number of active users from all over the world. Each member of the community feels like an important part of the project, since everyone can influence the future of the project, suggest ideas, express their opinion and influence decision-making. Conclusion The above four options for drawing attention to Free TON or any other project are very effective. As practice has shown, it is thanks to them that the project has gathered around itself a fairly large active community. The advantage of Free TON is that the project is already using these ways to attract attention, unlike other projects. The world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain has a huge number of ideas. New ways of attracting attention are constantly appearing, most of them, of course, are hype. NFT token and DeFi topics are very hype now. Free TON can create something that will attract a huge number of fans of NFT tokens and decentralized finance. Now every member of the community can earn real profit in the form of TON Crystal, being at home. Today, each member of the community can safely store their tokens using the special Free TON Surf wallet. Today, each member of the Free TON community can influence the development of the project. Not all projects have such capabilities, which provides a huge advantage for Free TON. It is these advantages that have provided the project with immense popularity in a short period of time.

FREE TON

freeton.org

201-500 employees

Since 2020

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FREE TON

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FREE TON

freeton.org

201-500 employees

Since 2020

COMPANY RANKING

FREE TON

EVERGREEN INDEX #50

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