Memories: 10 Key Contributions of the TON Core Team That Few People Knew in the Early Days

Author: Dr. Awesome Doge

Although the TON Foundation is a more well-known name, few people know the story of its early contributors—the NEWTON team (TON core team).

Through voluntary technical contributions, the NEWTON team earned recognition from the official @Telegram team in 2021, ultimately achieving a technology handover, marking the most significant "community takeover" in blockchain history.

As one of the early members of NEWTON, let me share this story. — @drawesomedoge

Introduction: Joining the NEWTON Team and Its Mission

When I joined the NEWTON team, our primary task was very clear: to enhance developer tools while maintaining the stability of the TON testnet2 code.

Since we could not directly control the ton-blockchain GitHub repository, but needed to continuously optimize the code, we established a new organization called NEWTON. To ensure the smooth progress of network updates, we encouraged the community to use validators developed by NEWTON as the standard version.

From our establishment until June 2021, the NEWTON team completed several pioneering development and infrastructure projects. Let us now delve into the ten key contributions that shaped the early TON.

1. mytonctrl: Automation Node Management Tool

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

It provided essential functionalities, including 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-packaged DNS we see today.

mytonctrl also allows for configuring validators, liteservers, and liteclients, making access to and parsing of node data simple. In 2021, we added CPU-based mining scripts and automated performance tests to simplify the $TON mining process.

2. tonmon: Blockchain Health Status Visualization Tool

Having nodes and retrieving data wasn't enough; we needed more visualization tools to monitor the health of the blockchain.

To better monitor the blockchain health status, we developed tonmon. This tool is capable of tracking key metrics: block generation time, shard status, dPoS election schedules, number and weight of validators, and mining contract status. Through it, we could quickly respond to any network anomalies.

In those early days, the network size was quite small, with around 80 validators worldwide.

3. tonmine: Monitoring Giver Contract

We developed tonmine to track TON's mining activities. Although there were many large and small Givers on the TON blockchain initially, only ten small Givers remained by 2021.

tonmine displays daily mining statistics for each contract, with an average daily output of 20,000 $TON per individual contract, totaling approximately 200,000 $TON across all contracts daily.

The mining difficulty varies significantly between different Givers, depending on the number of miners—some Givers are easier to mine due to fewer miners, while others are extremely difficult because of many miners.

4. Cross-chain Bridge

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

5. cryptobot: Telegram Bot Wallet

Before the emergence of Telegram mini apps in 2021, team members developed the cryptobot, a Telegram wallet. It initially supported $BTC, $TON, $BNB, and $USDT. Later, with the launch of Telegram mini apps, the wallet underwent a complete overhaul.

6. toncenter: Simplifying Blockchain Data Access

With toncenter, developers do not need to set up full nodes, study liteclient or liteserver, nor worry about serializing data formats.

toncenter provides a public API, greatly simplifying the process for various wallets and blockchain explorers to access on-chain data.

Although the infrastructure of TON has continuously evolved with the emergence of more API providers such as tonxapi.com, toncenter still serves developers, and its powerful design remains a classic.

7. explorer.toncoin.org: The First TON Blockchain Explorer

The first TON blockchain explorer was built into the core codebase, located at explorer.toncoin.org. Although it runs extremely fast, the data presentation is too technical for most users.

8. ton.sh: Next-Generation Blockchain Explorer

To address the complexity issues of explorer.toncoin.org, we created ton.sh. After solving the challenge of blockchain data deserialization, we launched a public API for ton.sh.

ton.sh focuses on core functionalities: wallet balances, transaction records, especially memos. For early TON users, memos were crucial as they served as payloads for command operations, especially during deposit operations on exchanges before the emergence of TON Connect or complex DeFi contracts.

Although more advanced explorers such as TONScan and TONViewer exist today, ton.sh remains a historic milestone in TON development.

9. TonWeb: Important JavaScript SDK

Due to TON smart contracts using the complex languages Fift and Func, the NEWTON team developed TonWeb—a JavaScript SDK that simplifies wallet creation, deployment, and transaction operations.

10. ton wallet: My First TON Wallet

This TON wallet dates back to the Telegram era, and it was my first wallet—remarkably, it still works perfectly today.

Historic Recognition: An Open Letter from the NEWTON Team to the @Telegram Official Team

By June 2021, the NEWTON team had made significant contributions, including running public liteservers, DHT servers, and archive nodes to maintain network stability. At this time, tolya-yanot wrote an open letter (link), documenting our year-long work to the TON blockchain team and requesting GitHub organization access.

The letter listed two leaders and key team members of NEWTON.

Yes, I—Dr. Awesome Doge, was also on the list.

At that time, I thought it was just an open letter—a good attempt to showcase our contributions to the network, without expecting any response.

To our surprise, the @Telegram official team responded on June 30, 2021.

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

Reflection and Prospects: A Builder's Remark

Looking back at this extraordinary journey, the early contributions of the NEWTON team are far more than the code itself. Every line of code, every tool we built, every sleepless night spent maintaining the network—these efforts laid the foundation for TON's development today.

Seeing the explosive growth of TON in 2024, with thousands of developers joining the ecosystem, validates what we believed during those challenging early days—that the potential of TON is worth fighting for.

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