Compiled by Wu Blockchain Blockchain
Although the TON Foundation is a more widely known name, few people know the story of its early contributors—the NEWTON team (the TON core team).
Through voluntary technical contributions, the NEWTON team gained the approval of the official @Telegram team in 2021, ultimately achieving a technical handover, marking the most important "community takeover" in blockchain history.
As one of NEWTON's early members, let me share this story. — @drawesomedoge
Introduction: Joining the NEWTON team and its mission
When I joined the NEWTON team, our main task was very clear: to maintain the stability of the TON testnet2 code while enhancing the developer tools.
Since we cannot directly control the ton-blockchain GitHub repository, but still need to continuously optimize the code, we have formed a new organization called NEWTON. To ensure smooth network updates, we encourage the community to use the validators developed by NEWTON as the standard version.
From our inception until June 2021, the NEWTON team completed several groundbreaking development and infrastructure projects. Let's delve into 10 key contributions that shaped TON's early days.
1. mytonctrl: An automated node management tool
Our first major contribution was mytonctrl, a powerful automation tool for node installation and validator setup.
It offered important features including wallet creation, contract deployment, transaction history retrieval, and even a DNS registration system — interestingly, the DNS of that time was not the same as the DNS used in modern NFT packaging today.
mytonctrl can also be configured with validators, liteservers, and liteclients, simplifying access to and parsing of node data. In 2021, we added CPU-based mining scripts and automated performance testing to streamline the mining process.
2. Tonmon: A blockchain health status visualization tool
Having nodes and acquiring 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 developed tonmon. This tool tracks key metrics: block generation time, shard status, dPoS election schedule, validator count and weight, and mining contract status. It allows us to respond quickly to any network anomalies.
In those early days, the network was quite small, with only about 80 validators worldwide.
3. tonmine: Monitors the Giver contract
We developed tonmine to track TON mining activity. Although the TON blockchain initially had many large and small givers, by 2021 there were only ten small givers left.
Tonmine displays daily mining statistics for each contract, with an average daily output of 20,000 $TON per contract, totaling approximately 200,000 $TON per day across all contracts.
The mining difficulty varies significantly between different Givers, depending on the number of miners — some Givers are easier because there are fewer miners, while others are extremely difficult because there are many miners.
4. Cross-chain bridge
Even before TON had its own jetton or NFT standard, we recognized the importance of cross-chain compatibility. The NEWTON team developed a native cross-chain bridge for EVM-compatible on-chain ERC-20 tokens and successfully tested it at bridge.ton.org. This enables seamless transfers between TON, Ethereum, and BSC.
5. cryptobot: Telegram bot wallet
Before the Telegram mini apps were released in 2021, the team developed the Cryptobot Telegram wallet. It initially supported $BTC, $TON, $BNB, and $USDT. Later, with the launch of the Telegram mini apps, the wallet underwent a complete overhaul.
6. toncenter: Simplifies access to blockchain data
With toncenter, developers don't need to set up full nodes, study liteclient or liteserver, or worry about serialization data formats.
Toncenter provides a public API that greatly simplifies the process of various wallets and blockchain explorers accessing on-chain data.
Although TON's infrastructure has evolved with the emergence of more API providers such as tonxapi.com, toncenter continues to serve developers, and its powerful design has become a classic.
7. explorer.toncoin.org: TON's first blockchain explorer
The first TON blockchain explorer is built into the core codebase and is located at explorer.toncoin.org. While it runs extremely fast, the data presentation is too technical for most users.
8. ton.sh: A next-generation blockchain explorer
To address the complexities of explorer.toncoin.org, we created ton.sh. After solving the challenges of blockchain data deserialization, we launched a public API for ton.sh.
ton.sh focuses on core functionalities: wallet balance, transaction history, and especially memo. For early TON users, memo was crucial, serving as a carrier of command operations, particularly important for deposit operations on exchanges, before the advent of TON Connect or complex DeFi contracts.
Despite the availability of more advanced browsers like TONScan and TONViewer, ton.sh remains a historic milestone in the development of TON.
9. TonWeb: An important JavaScript SDK
Because TON smart contracts use two relatively complex languages, Fift and Func, the NEWTON team developed TonWeb—a JavaScript SDK—to simplify wallet creation, deployment, and transaction operations.
10. TON wallet: My first TON wallet
This TON wallet dates back to the Telegram era; it was my first wallet — and surprisingly, it still works perfectly today.
Historic recognition: An open letter from the NEWTON team to the official @Telegram team
By June 2021, the NEWTON team had made significant contributions, including running public light node servers (liteservers), DHT servers, and archive nodes to maintain network stability. At this time, tolya-yanot wrote an open letter (link) documenting our year's work to the TON blockchain team and requesting GitHub organizational permissions.
The letter listed NEWTON's two leaders and key team members.
Yes, I am on the list too—Dr. Awesome Doge.
At the time, I thought it was just an open letter—a nice attempt to demonstrate our contributions to the internet—and I didn't expect any response.
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.
Retrospect and Outlook: Reflections from a Builder
Looking back on this extraordinary journey, the NEWTON team's early contributions went far beyond the code itself. Every line of code, every tool we built, every sleepless night maintaining the network—these efforts laid the foundation for TON's development today.
Seeing TON's explosive growth in 2024, with thousands of developers joining the ecosystem, validated what we believed in those challenging early days—that TON's potential was worth fighting for.
