TON Core on The Gateway

Alex and Andrey talked in detail about last year's releases, including development tools and some plans for the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZbrVFrbMrQ

https://www.okx.com/ru/learn/developer-stories-02-ton-makes-web3-fun

My interview that I gave to OKX in August but which was published not so long ago.

Some things have changed since then: HMSTR has been minted, TOLK has been released, an exclusive agreement between TON and Telegram Mini Apps has been signed, the peak MAU has increased not 20 times but 50 times.

We're consistently moving into a really mass audience.

Note that the article is my personal point of view.

About the "Developer Stories"Series

Web3 developers have made significant contributions to the advancement of the crypto industry. Their innovation and technical capabilities have injected lasting vitality and motivation into the entire industry, not only improving the technology itself but also providing support for future applications and business models. However, despite their active contributions, they often receive little to no attention.

The "Developer Stories" series, launched by OKX Web3 in collaboration with Chain Catcher, aims to help readers understand the roadmaps, technical insights, latest trends, market dynamics, and comments on hot topics of the day from the perspectives of different chains' core developers. It seeks to enhance the voice of Web3 developers, bring these most active and interesting people closer to the audience, and provide them with the greatest support.

TON Kernel Contest Results at CodeForces

As a reminder, TON is a sponsor of CodeForces.com - world's sports programming platform.

Recently, a contest with $51,000 prize fund was held to find the most efficient block compression algorithm that can be used to reduce traffic between TON blockchain nodes.

783 programmers took part in the contest, the winners showed compression more than doubled (47% of the original size). We are exploring approaches that can be applied to the TON main network.

Note that the tasks were prepared by kernel developer SpyCheese - legendary GM on CodeForces!

Congratulations to the winners!

We remind you that winning such contests is the best opportunity to join the TON Core team.

TON Kernel Contest at Telegram Contests

And right now there is a contest from Telegram and TON Core with a prize fund up to $200,000 - the last chance to make it.

The first task asks you to find the best way to optimise block validation, and the second task asks you to make a bulletproof bridge between Layer 1 of TON Blockchain and abstract TVM sidechain.

Winners have the chance to join the Telegram or TON Core teams, or receive support to launch a real TVM sidechain for TON. The best optimization solutions may also be implemented to enhance the TON main network.

https://news.1rj.ru/str/contest/393

TON Core: Report for December-January

48 updates, from small to huge. Moving along the roadmap: first part of the Accelerator, new tools for validators, TVM sidechains, new versions of TOLK and API, support for extra currencies and BTC Teleport, and other.

https://telegra.ph/TON-Core-Dec-Jan-2025-Updates-02-02

Partial Liteservers — January Highlight

The TON 2024.12 kernel update is the first step of the “Accelerator” update series. The update contained many improvements and new Partial Liteservers functionality.

Now fullnode or archive node can monitor only masterchain and specific shard. Recall that previously each node was required to monitor all shards on the blockchain.

This allows you to spend less resources if you only need to monitor and read data from one shard (for example, if you are only interested in one network address), or to split your infrastructure into different servers.

Liteservers also supported partial mode. We made a new proxy liteserver that can send a request to the right node depending on the shard. Thanks to the proxy liteserver, existing services can migrate seamlessly.

Services that find the new functionality useful for them can start using it in production. However, at the moment it is not necessary for everyone to switch.

Partial and proxy liteservers documentation »

Improved Validator Telemetry — January Highlight

Validators now share their software version information by ADNL protocol even if MyTonCtrl validator tool is not used.

Now it is possible to understand more accurately and faster the process of updating network validators to a new software version.

The TON Core team has already started building a user-friendly public dashboard based on this data.

Validator Restore-from-Backup functionality — January Highlight

With new functionality in MyTonCtrl validator tool the validator administrator can quickly bring up a validator on another server and switch to it. For example, in case of force majeure in the data center where the validator was located.

Better discovery of changed nodes' IPs in TON 2025.02 complement this update.

Documentation »

Validator support for Prometheus metrics — January Highlight

We have received many requests from the community to support the popular Prometheus monitoring system.

With new functionality in MyTonCtrl validator tool the validator administrator can collect validator metrics in Prometheus.

Documentation »

Remote validator controller — January Highlight

Now MyTonCtrl validator tool can be installed on a separate server other than the server on which the vailadator is running. Some validator administrators may find this functionality useful for security reasons, easy migration of the validator to another server, or other reasons.

Documentation »

Introducing the Domain API

Now the /accountStates method returns the TON domain bound to the specified account in the address_book field.

In other methods, such as transaction list, you will also find domains in address_book.

In case there are several domains bound to an account, the shortest one is returned.

Mainnet API

Introducing the Action API

The Toncenter Indexer now recognizes user-friendly actions among transaction series, such as staking, exchanging Jettons on DeDust DEX, or sending NFTs. A set of filters is available.

Supported Actions:

Basic
— Toncoin transfer
— Call contract
— Contract deploy

System
— Deposit stake to elector
— Recover stake to elector
— Tick-tock

Jettons
— Transfer
— Burn
— Mint

NFT
— Transfer
— Mint

Nominator Pool
— Deposit
— Withdraw

@stakee/TonStakers
— Deposit
— Withdraw

DeDust DEX
— Swap
— Add liquidity
— Withdraw liquidity

Ston-fi DEX
— Swaps v1
— Swaps v2
— Add liquidity v2
— Withdraw liquidity v2

NFT Auctions
— Bidding (Fragment, Getgems)

TON DNS
— Renew domain
— Change DNS record
— Delete DNS record

W4R2 Toncoin Subnoscriptions
— Subscribe
— Unsubscribe

The Toncenter team will continue to work and will be adding new action types in the next versions.

Also the /trace method now supports the incude_actions=true parameter, which will also return a list of actions related to this transaction series.

Mainnet API

Testnet API

Introducing the Emulation API

Using this API you can simulate the result of sending a message to the blockchain, before sending it.

The API predicts not only raw transactions, but also recognizes known user-friendly actions among them.

This will allow the user to see what happens if they sign the send, as well as estimate the total fees.

Mainnet API

Testnet API

The new Domains, Actions, Emulation functionality in the Toncenter API is made to improve the overall UX of the TON ecosystem.

Products and services can show user-understandable actions (such as “Exchange 1,000 USDt to TON on DeDust DEX”) instead of raw transactions, show what happens before sending a message to the blockchain for the user's convenience and safety, and make greater use of TON and .t.me domains.

Multisig Basic UI 1.02

— Support for sending arbitrary messages.
— Support for single-nominator operations.
— Additional orders and multisig security checks.

multisig.ton.org

Support for extra-currencies in local ton-http-api

In ton-http-api v2.0.53, which you can install by yourself on your server, support for extra-currencies and a number of other improvements have been made.

Recall that earlier support for extra-currencies was made in the public Toncenter V2 and Toncenter V3 APIs.

https://github.com/toncenter/ton-http-api/releases/tag/v2.0.53

Improved Metadata API

Last month we started providing metadata for Jettons and NFTs in the V3 API.

We are pleased to report a number of improvements:

— The metadata now enters the API in advance as soon as the token appears on the network. In the previous implementation, the metadata was indexed the first time the token was requested.

— Images and JSON are now proxied via toncenter.com. 3 image sizes are available, as well as original non-proxied urls for JSON and images. IPFS is supported.
Using a proxy increases security (you don't make requests to third-party hosting) and speed of downloading resources.

Introducing Telegram Bots with notifications for TON validators and nodes

We recommend that validator administrators use one or both bots to monitor their validators and receive alerts if a validator is having problems.

1. General bot @validators

This bot is for tracking the public status of the TON node/validator(s).

Supported alerts:

Telemetry

— Node is out of sync
— CPU is overloaded
— Node's db usage is more than 80%
— Network is overloaded
— Disk is overloaded

Fines

— Validator has been fined in the last validation round

Informational

— Alerts for validator's sent (or not sent) stakes

Network-wide

— Announcements
— Software update requests
— Requests for voting
— All approved complaints for the last validation round.

To start using it, open @validators and press /start.

2. A private bot that you can run personally

Supported alerts:

— Validator's wallet balance is less than 10 TON
— Node's db usage is more than 80%
— Node's db usage is more than 95%
— Validator had efficiency less than 90% in the validation round
— Node is out of sync on more than 20 sec
— Node is not running (service is down)
— Node is not answering to ADNL connection
— Validator has not created any blocks in the 6 hours
— Validator has been fined in the previous validation round
— Validator's stake has not been accepted
— Validator's stake has been accepted (info alert with no sound)
— Validator's stake has been returned (info alert with no sound)
— Validator's stake has not been returned
— There is an active network proposal that has many votes (more than 50% of required) but is not voted by the validator

Private notification bot documentation »

Note that the functionality to run a private Telegram bot is available in MyTonCtrl version 2.5.0.

Type update in MyTonCtrl console to update to newest version.