TON's early core team members: 10 key factors that influenced TON's early development

Author: Dr. Awesome Doge, an early member of the TON core team; Translation: Jinse Caijing xiaozou

TON Foundation may be known to everyone, but few people know the story of its early contributors, the NEWTON team (TON core team).

Through voluntary technical contributions, NEWTON was recognized by the official team of Telegram in 2021, achieving the greatest "community takeover" technology handover in the history of blockchain.

As an early member of NEWTON, let me tell you this story.

1. Introduction: Joining the NEWTON team and the team's mission

When I joined the NEWTON team, our main task was clear: to maintain the stability of the TON testnet2 code while enhancing development tools.

Since we do not directly control the TON blockchain GitHub repository, but need to continuously update the code, we created a new organization called NEWTON. To ensure smooth network updates, we encourage the community to use the validator developed by NEWTON as the standard version.

From its inception to June 2021, the NEWTON team has completed several groundbreaking development and infrastructure projects. Let’s take a closer look at the 10 key contributions that influenced the early development of TON.

(1) mytonctrl: Automated Node Management Tool

Our first major contribution was mytonctrl, a powerful automation tool for node installation and validator setup.

It provides some basic functions such as wallet creation, contract deployment, transaction history retrieval, and even a DNS registration system - interestingly, the DNS at that time was different from the modern NFT packaging DNS we see today.

mytonctrl can also configure validators, liteserservers, and litclients, making node data access and parsing simpler. In 2021, we added CPU-based mining scripts and automated power testing to simplify TON minting.

(2) tonmon: Visualizing blockchain health

Having a node and getting data is not enough; we need more visualization tools to monitor the health of the blockchain.

To better monitor the health of the blockchain, we created tonmon. The key metrics tracked by the tool are: block creation time, shard status, dPoS election schedule, validator count and weight, and mining contract status. We can react quickly to any network anomalies.

The network is very small in its early stages, with only about 80 validators worldwide.

（3）tonmine: Monitoring Giver Contracts

We developed tonmine to track TON mining activity. While the TON blockchain initially had a mix of large and small givers, only 10 small givers remain by 2021. Tonmine displays daily mining statistics for each contract, averaging 20,000 TON per contract per day - a total of 200,000 TON for all contracts.

Mining difficulty varies greatly between different givers, depending on the number of miners - some givers have lower difficulty due to fewer miners, while others have extremely high difficulty.

（4）Cross-chain bridge

Before TON has jetton or NFT standards, we recognize the importance of cross-chain compatibility. The NEWTON team has developed a TON native bridge for ERC-20 tokens on EVM-compatible chains and successfully tested it on bridge.ton.org. This enables seamless transfers between TON, Ethereum, and BSC.

(5) @cryptobot: Telegram Bot Wallet

In 2021, before the emergence of Telegram's mini app, a team member developed the @cryptobot Telegram wallet. It initially supported BTC, TON, BNB, and USDT. After the launch of Telegram's mini app, the wallet was thoroughly updated.

（6）toncenter: Simplifying blockchain data access

With toncenter, developers no longer need to set up a full node, study litecliclient or liteserver, or worry about serialized data formats. toncenter provides a public API that greatly simplifies on-chain data access for various wallets and block browsers.

While TON’s infrastructure has evolved to have more API provider options, such as today’s tonxapi.com, toncenter continues to serve developers, a testament to the strength of its design.

(7) explorer.toncoin.org: TON’s first block explorer

The first TON blockchain explorer was built into the core codebase of explorer.toncoin.org. While incredibly fast, its data presentation is too technical for most users.

(8) ton.sh: A new generation of browser

To address the complexity of explorer.toncoin.org, we created ton.sh. After solving the challenge of deserialization of blockchain data, we released it with a public API.

ton.sh focuses on basic functions: wallet balance, transactions, and especially memos. Memos were crucial for early TON users, and before TON Connect or complex DeFi contracts, memos were command operations, especially for deposit operations on exchanges.

Although new browsers like TONScan and TONViewer have emerged since then, ton.sh is still a historic milestone in TON development.

（9）TonWeb: Basic JavaScript SDK

Since TON smart contracts use two challenging languages, Fift and Func, the NEWTON team developed TonWeb, a JavaScript SDK that simplifies wallet creation, deployment, and transactions.

（10）TON Wallet: My first TON wallet

This TON wallet can be traced back to the Telegram era. It is my first wallet and I still use it now.

2. Historic recognition: NEWTON's open letter to the official Telegram team

By June 2021, the NEWTON team had made significant contributions, including running public liteserver, DHT server, and archive node to maintain network stability. Then, toya-yanot wrote an open letter to the TON-blockchain team, documenting our work for a year and requesting institutional permission from GitHub.

The letter lists NEWTON’s two leaders and key team members.

Yes, I (Dr. Awesome Doge) am also on the list.

At that time, I thought it was just an open letter - a good way to show our contribution to the network without expecting any response.

But to our surprise, the official Telegram team responded on June 30, 2021.

This marks the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the TON blockchain.

3. Looking back on the past and looking forward to the future: Builder's Notes

Looking back on this incredible journey, the early contributions of the NEWTON team went far beyond the code. Every line of code, every tool we developed, every sleepless night of maintenance work - all these efforts laid the foundation for TON today.

TON's explosive growth in 2024, with thousands of builders joining the ecosystem, validated our belief in those challenging early stages - TON's potential is worth fighting for.

NEWTON members are spread all over the world, each supporting TON in their own way. My focus remains on developer needs and development in Asia (I am the only team member who speaks Mandarin). My team TONX and I are building the necessary infrastructure for the TON ecosystem:

• TONX API: Powerful RPC & API for all dapps

• Tonkey App: Multi-signature wallet managing 400 million assets

• TonStake: The largest staking pool

• TON Research: Community center for developers

• TON hacker house activities spanning Hong Kong, Bangkok, Taipei

Stay tuned in the future.

NEWTON's spirit lives on. This is just the beginning. Let's build TON together.