TON Crystal: What Is It and Why You Should Care

Sep 01, 2021
11:09
2 min reading

Choise.com team

Heard about TON Crystal and didn’t quite get it…? The fact is you are not alone. The good news? In this article, you are about to get answers finally. Get your scrolling going to learn what is TON Crystal, and why this token is part of Crypterium Wallet.

If you are a Crypterium Wallet user, you have probably noticed that TON Crystal is in our carefully curated selection of currencies. But before we explain what is this token all about, we have to begin with its network — Free TON. Here’s how it all began:

Back in 2020, we all got a bit pissed off because Telegram canceled the Telegram Open Network (TON) project. The idea of a cryptocurrency running through the veins of a messenger giant like Telegram seemed appealing at the very least. It was supposed to be a disruptive event that finally took cryptocurrencies mainstream.

As a company that’s fully committed to making digital assets as easy to use as possible, Crypterium was all-in from the start. Unfortunately, a long and exhausting legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission drained the project and forced it to shut down. And while that outcome did leave a sour taste in the mouth of all supporters, it also opened the doors to new opportunities.

What is Free TON?

Blockchain enthusiasts and developers joined forces in an attempt to keep the soul of TON alive, giving birth to Free TON — a blockchain network developed on top of the original TON OS engineered by Telegram.

Against popular belief, Free TON is not a fork of the TON blockchain developed by Pavel Durov’s team. Instead, a development firm called TON Labs and a community of solo developers and validators built this solution using the available repositories left by the original team. The network launched on May 7, 2020.

The Free TON network is positioned as a community-driven blockchain capable of running a wide array of smart contracts and hosting an endless spectrumof decentralized applications (DApps). The developers behind this multithreaded, sharded network claim that it might eventually scale to over one million transactions per second.

Just like Bitcoin, there’s no official website for Free TON. But no need to panic, they do have a ‘master catalog’ where you can dive into the multiple use cases of this blockchain and discover the projects that are currently being developed on top of it. Check it out here.

Looking for some formal documentation? While there’s no final version yet, the community has already shared a draft of the Free TON Whitepaper. You can read it here.

Free TON Network Features

As someone that might be considering supporting this project, it’s only natural to wonder what makes Free TON different from any other blockchain out there. Aside from the Telegram-related buzz, this network features a solid set of technological capabilities.

Infinite Sharding
Instant Hypercube Routing
Dynamic splitting and shardchains merging
Workchains and shardchains coupling
Proof-of-Stake governance
Shardchain block correction
Native token & multi-currency workchains
TON Virtual Machine
Configurable parameters
End-to-End Decentralization

By supporting segmentation and asynchronous execution, the multithreaded blockchain is able to reduce node processing and resource requirements by dividing and reassigning responsibilities to smaller validator groups. Overall, this structure results in lower transaction latency and higher throughput. So yes, the million TPS is less of a crazy statement and more of an ambitious yet realistic strategic goal.

Hooked? You should be… If you want to read about each of these unique features, we invite you to visit the Free TON Wiki.

What is TON Crystal?

Okay. We’ve made it to TON Crystal finally. In a similar fashion to CRPT, which fuels the Crypterium ecosystem, TON Crystal enables the TON blockchain ecosystem to function efficiently and securely and allows it to expand.

The initial token supply was 5 billion coins and that figure grows by 0.25-2% each year depending on network load. Unlike other Proof-of-Stake blockchains, this self-governed network opted to initially give out tokens based on community efforts. In other words, people actively involved in developing the Free TON ecosystem received TON Crystal for their services. That’s correct, there haven’t been Initial Coin Offerings or token sales of any sort.

TON Crystal Tokenomics

There are three core use cases for TON Crystal tokens:

Transaction Fees: network users pay fees to TON validators to process their on-chain transactions. In other words, TON Crystal is an incentive to validators.
Validator Stakes: Following its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model, validators are required to stake TON Crystal in order to prove their reliability and generate blocks.
Governance Token: By holding TON Crystal, network participants can actively participate in governance, voting for changes or submitting proposals.

How to buy TON Crystal?

Back in the days, it was a lot more challenging. You had to either join competitions or evaluate projects as a jury. You could also become a validator or engage in some staking. And while those still represent viable ways to get hold of some TON Crystal tokens, nowadays it’s possible to simply exchange them for other assets.

Crypterium Wallet allows you to store, buy, and manage your TON Crystal tokens with ultimate ease and from a single platform. You can instantly exchange any of your existing cryptocurrencies for TON Crystal or purchase tokens in seconds using any debit or credit card with a commission as low as 1% — yes, the lowest in the market.

The bottom line

While the original Telegram-developed blockchain is no longer viable, TON Crystal is very much on track to establish itself as a solid player in the DLT arena. As their community continues to expand and more businesses join them to develop DApps, it’s worth taking a closer at Free TON and consider the opportunities ahead.