It is an open secret that the TON Foundation is highly controlled. Early miners were basically all internal staff of the foundation. From July to September 2020, 96% of the tokens were produced in just 51 days, of which about 85% of the chips were controlled by the official. So how did they get 85% control? The following uses data and charts to give you a more intuitive display and analysis.

1. Basic Information

TON was originally developed by instant messaging giant Telegram, but was later taken over by third-party developers due to regulatory issues. However, according to on-chain surveys and historical data, TON may face the problem of highly concentrated token distribution. TON's token distribution mainly occurred from July 6 to August 26, 2020, and 96% of the token supply was distributed in just 51 days . Through on-chain data, it was found that at least 85.8% of TON's token supply was controlled by a few interconnected groups of miners. For the convenience of explanation, I divided these miners into seven groups.

1.1 Group 1

From July 6 to July 30, the group mined 1.1 billion TON, accounting for 22% of the supply.

Each address in the first group received the first reward between 18:55 on July 6 and 01:04 on July 7, and mining ended on July 30, a total of 36 addresses. These nodes were built and powered on synchronously within just a few hours after the announcement. It is almost impossible to create and start a mining pool with other miners in such a short time, so it shows that this group of addresses is managed by a large miner . December 10, 2021: The withdrawal interval for the last numbers z6oH, KKeo, and X0zB is three minutes; December 17, 2021: The withdrawal interval between the last numbers X2i3 and _QHG is 10 minutes; October 26, 2021: The withdrawal interval between the last numbers 5Dk8 and A1DI is 6 hours; one of them (the last number Pvgy) donated all the output to the TON Foundation and used it for staking;

1.2 Group 2

From July 30 to August 24, the group mined 1 billion TON, accounting for 20% of the supply.

The previous group of 36 nodes ended mining on July 30. When the first group was shut down on the evening of July 30, a new group of 26 nodes was started on the same day. The last reward time for the first group was 20:24:59 on July 30, and the first reward time for the second group was 20:25:47 on July 30. The time without mining rewards between the two groups was only 48 seconds apart . In the second group: 12 addresses donated 10% to 40% of their balance to the TON Foundation. 6 addresses donated 100% of the funds . 26 nodes were online in one night, which is the largest number of nodes online in a single day since July 6. Considering that there was a 48-second difference between the two groups of addresses without mining rewards, the two groups of addresses should have been coordinated by the same miner .

1.3 Group 3

From July 6 to August 24, the group mined 940 million TON, accounting for 18.8% of the supply.

The 14 nodes in this group were launched on July 6, but they were mining until August 24. This group of numbers is connected to the first group. The address ending in Vqwi in the third group and X0zB and KKeo in the first group have all collected more than 40 million tokens from each address into the address ending in wqrH.

1.4 Group 4

From July 19 to August 24, the group mined 859 million TON, accounting for 17.2% of the supply.

The addresses ending in n__T and oQMb in this group have indirectly generated several transactions with the address ending in putF (from the third group) through the address ending in BDa2 (the address ending in BDa2 has transferred funds to the address ending in CcQ8, and CcQ8 has received funds from putF)

The connection between the fourth group and the third group In addition, the funds ending in w2Qp (wzns) are also used to provide liquidity for OKX and FTX , which means that the address ending in w2Qp is very closely connected to the TON Foundation and even the entire project: OKX deposit link: https://tonscan.org/tx/L0jdMxystzZPo8QuEQlGZMBy0o5EOwuVl7v7I-QTcDQ= FTX deposit link: https://tonscan.org/tx/zTqflqMoA_ARGgHx0I5bc_NGA6R14vRBXQ__CDaOXwg= Therefore, the fourth group of miner addresses is strongly correlated with both the TON Foundation and the third group. Therefore, the above 4 groups of addresses are all interconnected, and these groups have mined a total of 3.9 billion TON, accounting for 78% of the total supply.

The connection between the first four groups

1.5 Group 5

This group consists of 13 addresses, mainly around two large miners: the last number w_VD and the last number NL1O. They both received the first reward on August 1 and stopped mining on August 24: the last number NL1O in this group sent more than 49 million TON to BDa2 (the middle address of the fourth group). In addition, the last number LJwP in this group sent TON to Oleg Illarionov (brainfucker.ton , co-founder of TON Keeper ) many times, and the last number LJwP also sent 600,000 TON to the last number d8O2 related to the Tonkeeper team .

Connections between Groups 4 and 5 and community members

1.6 Group 6

From August 8th to August 26th, this group mined 45 million TON, accounting for 0.9% of the supply. This group contains 68 addresses with similar behavior . From the on-chain data, it can be seen that the third, fourth, fifth and sixth groups are connected by the aforementioned tail number BDa2.

Connections between the third, fourth, fifth and sixth groups

1.7 Group 7

This group consists of 4 addresses that started mining on August 18th, and this group has several obvious connections with other groups: the address ending in iE3g sent all mining output to the address ending in LJwP of the fifth group; the address ending in PQY_ is connected to the sixth group through the address ending in dRZJ. The address ending in ceg_ was the first wallet to send funds to the first address of the TON Foundation (25 TON test transaction). In addition, it is the only address that received TON from the first address of the TON Foundation : 12 TON after the first transaction and 7.5 TON a week later. This is a clear sign of connection with the TON Foundation.

The analysis of the above seven groups of addresses shows that:

At least 85.8% of the tokens are distributed to several groups of miners that may be related to each other. Although it is impossible to determine who specifically manages these addresses, there are clear signs that at least some of the groups are related to the TON Foundation , as these groups provide liquidity of 10 million TON each to exchanges (such as OKX and FTX), and the foundation addresses have transaction records for these addresses.

Of course, TON also imposes restrictions on these “early miners”

In order to alleviate the appearance of high control, TON passed a proposal in February 2023 to freeze some inactive addresses for 4 years , accounting for about 20% of the total supply . It can currently be queried on the chain, and the address ranked first is the frozen address.

2. Conclusion

High control does not mean it is a bad thing. SOL is also highly controlled, but it can be pulled. This article only analyzes TON's holding structure from a data perspective. In the on-chain world, true decentralization is much more difficult than it seems on the surface. Although TON is one of the top 10 projects in terms of market value, do we really understand TON? We only know that Telegram has a large flow of traffic and TON has a good prospect. I think as a small leek, we need to be vigilant and have a deep understanding of the essence of the project, rather than just being confused by the superficial prosperity.

3. Reference News

Some of the charts in this article are taken from @whiterabbit__hq ’s Medium article. The link is as follows: https://medium.com/@whiterabbit_hq/ton-blockchain-a-group-of-related-whales-mined-85-of-ton-supply-2e3300cc93bc All data is obtained from the chain. The addresses and information of the above seven groups are organized into a Google spreadsheet. The link is as follows: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CKxmGXBaI5GdZsogam3RZmpVGwqYxrWs97XGSazf-64/edit?gid=1580264957#gid=1580264957