Exploring TON (Telegram Open Network) and Its Potential for Custom Tokens and Subscription Services

Recently, people interested in blockchain may have seen the TON (Telegram Open Network) whitepaper, which is unusual because it was written by a single author, Nikolai Durov, and spans 132 dense pages that can take three days for a technically‑savvy reader to digest.

Nikolai Durov founded Russia’s largest social network VK and later created the popular instant‑messaging app Telegram; he is a renowned Russian mathematician and programmer.

Nikolai Durov picture from Wikipedia

Durov envisions a system where TON can support up to 2^32 (about 4 billion) different coins.

Because TON uses a multi‑chain structure—one chain per contract, one chain per distinct token—imagine a scenario where a content platform creates its own "LuoPang" token on TON to pay for a yearly VIP subscription. The token simplifies contract execution, lets users automatically receive content, and can be floated in value, encouraging users to acquire the token early.

With such a token, a few dozen lines of smart‑contract code can deliver paid content to subscribers via IM, provide a UI for consumption, instantly share revenue with authors (recorded on the blockchain), and enforce anti‑piracy sharing rules that only work through the platform’s contracts.

Running these contracts incurs gas fees, which are paid to the miners that execute the contracts on the network.

Before TON, similar use‑cases could be built on blockchains like EOS, but EOS does not naturally support issuing a custom token for each publisher and suffers from performance limitations; only a system with an Infinite Sharding Paradigm (ISP) like TON can handle massive, sudden user spikes.

The whitepaper’s first chapter states that TON will enable easy integration with third‑party messaging and social networking applications, making blockchain services accessible to ordinary users rather than just early cryptocurrency adopters.

For readers who want to dive deeper, the article lists additional resources on Bitcoin, Ethereum, third‑generation blockchains, PoW, PoS, transaction performance, and the Lightning Network, and invites them to join a blockchain learning group on the “High‑Availability Architecture” platform.

Author: Tim Yang (Weibo: http://weibo.com/timyang)

Reference Reading:

Discussion on Microsoft’s newly released decentralized identity system DID

Write Your Own Blockchain in 200 Lines of Go

Implement Your Own Blockchain in 200 Lines of Go – Block Generation and Network Communication

Blockchain and Bitcoin Beginner’s Guide

High‑Availability Architecture Changing the Way the Internet Is Built

Long‑press the QR code to follow the “High‑Availability Architecture” public account