News for NFT creators

— Telegram channel Givemeton has unveiled its software-as-a-service Monster Bot that NFT creators can use to automate pre-sales, auctions, lotteries, and airdrops.

— NFT project TON Diamonds has developed a guide on deploying NFTs and an open-source script so you can list your NFTs on the mainnet.

The guide is available here:
https://github.com/tondiamonds/ton-nft-deployer/

TON ecosystem update

The TON Foundation has been hard at work creating a fair and decentralized process for ecosystem participants. Incubation Partners should be supported at earlier stages via grants, technical advisory, and marketing and distribution efforts. The TON Foundation is a nonprofit organization and thus focuses on grants and technical advisory. Therefore, we value expansion efforts by various participants, including crowdfunding launchpads and independent co-ops.

Meanwhile, the TON Foundation has listened and taken note of the developer and builder community voicing the concern that these groups alone do not offer a wide variety of pathways for incubation. Here are some scenarios:

— The project’s team is well-established in the blockchain industry, and there are in-house developers actively advancing TON design knowledge and occasionally engaging with the core team.

In this case, the team is advanced enough and seeks to incubate its own projects and identify potential projects via its network. Thus, joining a co-op or submitting its idea(s) to a launchpad that is managed by another team will not fulfill its larger-scale plan to contribute to the ecosystem. Furthermore, the TON Foundation has to incentivize these teams to realize their potential such as bringing on strategic partners — e.g., venture arms of major exchanges — which is possible by equipping the team with the right tools, such as an official title.

— The team has expertise and experience in incubating talent pools rather than building projects and wants to work with officially vetted Incubation Partners by running hackathons, developing training programs, and adding to the developer stack.

In this case, the team seeks opportunities to identify and work with Incubation Partners in the ecosystem that have gone through preliminary diligence. As they do not seek to build standalone products, there are no submission ideals for a centralized launchpad. Also, matching boards by co-ops that do not screen for Incubation Partner qualifications could be inefficient.

Therefore, the TON Foundation will officially recognize a new channel (details to follow) as a collective for Incubation Partners and Ecosystem Funds. The new channel will accompany a website that will have developer forums, blogs, and more.

What are the designations?

— Incubation Partner: Established teams with a vision to help the TON ecosystem grow and prosper through building and incubating projects, bringing strategic partners, or running educational programs.

— Ecosystem Fund: A fund comprising one or more of the Incubation Partners to incubate and invest in emerging projects. Funds are incentivized to prioritize ecosystem growth, as they will hold reserves in Toncoin for incubation purposes.

The TON Foundation will provide grants to the Ecosystem Fund and project-level grants that will result from the incubation’s efforts. In addition, technical advisory and opportunities to shape the upcoming standards can be available. In the coming days, we will follow up with how teams can apply for the competitive program and the official society channel and website where this will be available. For independent developers or smaller teams, submitting projects via ton.org or the Ecosystem Fund-specific webpage will provide the opportunity to be connected to the right teams (based on product-team fit).

Ecosystem Fund launch

The first TON Ecosystem Fund will be announced during the launch party on April 11 at Terrasse de l’Alcazar in Paris. For those in the area, tickets to the launch party are available here.

Stay tuned for more exciting news!

TON Community Weekly Digest

Here’s a roundup of the ecosystem’s most exciting news from the past seven days.

Network stats update:

— The number of new accounts created on TON from April 3 to April 9 grew from 384,109 to 397,515 (+3.5%).

News:

— The Q1 2022 report was released.

— We published material about the importance of a TON DeFi standard.

— The Givemeton Telegram launched the first software-as-a-service in the TON ecosystem for NFT creators.

— NFT project TON Diamonds released a guide on deploying NFTs and an open-source script for creators of NFT collections.

Stay up-to-date with the latest developments brewing in the TON ecosystem by turning on the notifications to this channel. You won’t want to miss a thing!

​The official channel of @tonsociety from the TON Foundation has announced the launch of the ecosystem’s first fund, TONcoin Fund, whose $250 million will help with finances, incubation, and grants for TON-based projects.

TON Society has announced that a long list of prominent crypto investors, including Huobi Incubator, KuCoin Ventures, MEXC Pioneer Fund, 3Commas Capital, Orbs, TON Miners, and Kilo Fund, has invested $250 million in The Open Network for the first ecosystem fund supported by the TON Foundation.

Money from the TONcoin Fund will be used for incubating projects, issuing grants, hosting hackathons, and creating educational material for the community.

The fund has a wide range of sectors in which it wants to invest, including NFTs, DeFi, marketplaces, and crypto wallets. Benjamin Rameau, founder of Jenny Metaverse DAO and a former top manager at Binance, will be leading the fund alongside well-known crypto enthusiasts.

To learn more about TONcoin Fund, you can read this press release published on Cointelegraph.

We encourage our subscribers to join TON Society’s Telegram channel to stay updated on events connected with the fund’s investment activities, incubators, and grant programs in the TON ecosystem.

Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Republic of Congo have announced a partnership with the TON blockchain — Forbes reports.

The countries will run large-scale blockchain-adoption campaigns, with The Open Network at the helm.

As you know, hundreds of millions of people around the world are excluded from the global financial system. A perfect example is the DRC because, in 2019, over 40 million citizens had internet access, but only 12.4 million had a bank account.

This is a testament to the amazing potential of decentralized technologies. Therefore, we hope that, by using the TON blockchain, many people around the world will be able to gain access to financial instruments and the economy itself.

The TON Foundation team will be playing a key role in facilitating the transition of these three countries to a new economic era in which crypto will be a foundational pillar.

The DRC has been considering issuing a TON-based national stablecoin, as reported by the country’s minister of digital economy.

Official comments from the countries’ representatives, along with other details of future cooperation, may be found in an extensive article published by Forbes.

We’re excited to see TON evolve into a global product that’s making a difference in the lives of millions.

Telegram bots and what they mean for The Open Network

A short time ago, Telegram started testing bots, a service that allows the messaging platform to create and launch full applications.

What does this mean for TON?

A large fraction of services and apps based on TON are connected with Telegram one way or another.

So, if the functionality of bots allows users to make payments in Toncoin, it will provide a solid boost for the TON blockchain’s native token and significantly increase its recognition among Telegram’s 600 million active users.

Android users can learn more about using bots in demo mode on the @DurgerKingBot channel, a food delivery service.

​The TON Smart Challenge has drawn to a close.

Indeed, you remember that on March 28 in the TON ecosystem, the TON Smart Challenge kicked off, a big contest for blockchain developers.

Yesterday, April 15, the competition ended, but today, we’re going to share the results with you.

The TON Smart Challenge had 180 specialists as participants, 125 of whom split the prize fund of 22,022 Toncoin worth $44,000 at the time of writing.

The largest prizes won were among the top three winners:

1st place: 4,000 Toncoin (≈$8,000)
2nd place: 2,000 Toncoin (≈$4,000)
3rd place: 1,500 Toncoin (≈$3,000)

Congratulations to the top finalists, and thank you to all the participants!

We’d also like technical specialists to follow updates on the @toncontests channel.

Soon, the channel will announce a brand new FunC competition, the winners of which will get a chance at becoming part of the TON Foundation team.

You can find more TON Smart Challenge details and a complete list of the finalists on the competition’s website: https://ton.org/contest

Presenting the TON Jobs community

The TON Foundation has launched a new Telegram channel, TON Jobs, where projects on The Open Network can post job vacancies.

We recommend developers and all who wish to help develop the TON ecosystem subscribe to the @tonhunt channel.

Advantages of The Open Network

A new section has been added to the official ton.org website, “Blockchain analysis,” in which TON’s network statistics are compared with other decentralized blockchain networks.

You can access the site’s new section by following this link:
https://ton.org/analysis

​TON Community Weekly Digest

Here’s a roundup of the ecosystem’s most exciting news from the past seven days.

Network stats update:

— The number of new accounts created on TON from April 10 to 16 grew from 400,522 to 419,121 (+4.6%).

News:

— The TON ecosystem’s first fund, the TONcoin Fund, launched and subsequently attracted $250 million in investments.

— Three countries officially announced their partnership with TON.

— TON’s official ton.org website welcomed a new section, Blockchain analysis.

— The results of the TON Smart Challenge were posted.

— A new official channel about TON grants, investments, and incubation launched, @tonsociety.

— TON launched yet another channel — this time, @tonhunt, a channel to post job vacancies in the TON ecosystem.

Stay up-to-date with the latest developments brewing in the TON ecosystem by turning on the notifications to this channel. You won’t want to miss a thing!

​Toncoin’s ticker is to change on the OKX crypto exchange.

On April 20 at 07:00 am (UTC), Toncoin trading on crypto exchange OKX will halt momentarily due to changing the token’s ticker symbol.

Moreover, on April 21, starting at 06:00 am (UTC), deposits and withdrawals of Toncoin will be unavailable.

Later on April 21, the exchange will count all the Toncoin in users’ wallets, including spot and margin accounts.

To avoid confusing its users, OKX will delist perpetual swaps for the Toncoin/USDT pair and close all pending orders. Open positions will be recalculated per the exchange’s rate at the moment of the delisting.

OKX has yet to inform us on how long the technical maintenance will take, but as soon as we get more information, we’ll report it immediately.

More detailed information on the scheduled technical maintenance pause is available on OKX’s site:
https://www.okx.com/support/hc/en-us/articles/5560562681997

Due to the scheduled pausing of token trading, there may be some volatility with the token’s price on the exchange. Users should close all of their open positions ahead of time and transfer their tokens to their spot wallets to avoid potential losses.

​TON will have the capacity to use NFTs from other networks

We’re excited to tell you about a new integration. Soon, the TON blockchain will get cross-chain bridge support for the XP.NETWORK company.

With this service, you’ll be able to transfer NFTs from other popular networks to TON and vice versa.

Integrating with XP.NETWORK’s cross-chain bridge will open new opportunities. For example, users will be able to store and use all of their NFTs on a single network, and they’ll also be able to trade them on the world’s biggest marketplaces regardless of where they acquired them.

This integration will help The Open Network become a serious competitor in the worldwide NFT market, whose value is somewhere in the neighborhood of $41 billion at the time of writing.

XP.NETWORK is a team that creates convenient solutions for the ever-expanding NFT market.

Currently, the team’s bridge supports more than 10 blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, BSC Chain, Tron, Tezos, Elrond, Algorand and a few NFT platforms, and continues to grow while uniting more ecosystems and projects.

We're confident that this partnership with XP.NETWORK will catalyze further TON NFT growth and form a gateway into the world of metaverses, GameFi, and other blockchains.

There has been an uptick in scamming activity.

A new type of scam has popped up on our radars. This time, bad actors entice users to “create a crypto wallet” and deposit crypto to receive a “welcome bonus” from the Telegram messenger.

These scammers use phishing websites that have the same appearance as official TON resources, but of course, The Open Network has no connection whatsoever to such “projects.”

We’d like to take this opportunity to remind you all that you can find official and reliable Toncoin wallets on TON’s official website: ton.app/wallets.

You know the apps and wallets in the TON Apps suite are trustworthy because they have a checkmark verification given by the TON Foundation.

Be extra careful out there and don’t forget about our digital safety rules.

​​​The TON Foundation has raised more than 527 million Toncoin.

On April 7, the TON Foundation team announced the creation of its new Toncoin reserve and asked TON ecosystem participants to make donations.

Since then, people have sent a record 527 million Toncoin to the reserve’s wallet, which equates to $1 billion at the time of writing.

As far as we can tell, this is one of the most successful blockchain project fundraisers in the industry’s history.

We’d like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who made a donation to the TON Foundation, regardless of how much they gave. Moreover, we also want to say a special thank you to the Toncoin whales who made generous contributions — without asking for anything in return — and believe in TON’s future. We’re honored to be a part of such a positive community that’s all in for the long run of TON’s development.

The raised funds will go toward further developing the TON ecosystem. We’re confident that this new reserve at the TON Foundation will serve as a catalyst for establishing partnerships and attracting investors while creating a solid foundation to set the ecosystem on the right path to sustained growth.

Congratulations to all of our community’s participants and members for helping TON enter a new era! 🚀

Comparing TON with other blockchains.

A few days ago, the TON Foundation published a technical comparison of TON with decentralized networks Ethereum 2.0 and Solana.

This fascinating document sheds light on The Open Network’s technological advantages.

In 2022, TON has been one of the few blockchains that are truly scalable and capable of processing millions and tens of millions of transactions per second.

Toncoin is now listed on the CoinEx crypto exchange.

Trading is available in the TON/USDT and TON/BTC pairs.

CoinEx is a crypto exchange ranked by CoinMarketCap in the top 100 for its daily trading volume, which surpasses $70 million.

The exchange was founded in 2017, and it has more than 3 million users from over 200 countries and regions around the world.

​Altcoins based on TON.

When developers from the TON Foundation announced the finalization of their TON DeFi standard, a large portion of the community concentrated its energy on discussing NFTs. Unfortunately, the finalization of the TON Jetton token standard garnered much less attention and interest in comparison.

In reality, the release of Jetton tokens is a monumental milestone for The Open Network’s ecosystem because this standard allows developers to create their own cryptocurrencies on the TON blockchain.

Here’s a simple example:

The well-known native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain is ETH. However, many other popular tokens and coins have been launched on Ethereum, such as Shiba Inu, Tether, USD Coin, Uniswap, Curve, SushiSwap, and Olympus.

Now that there’s the Jettons token standard in the TON ecosystem, many different developers and projects will be able to launch new and unique cryptocurrencies.

There are already a lot of teams that have started working on launching new tokens on TON, and we can’t wait to see TON DeFi’s growth in the coming months.

New stickers!

The TON community’s official Telegram sticker pack has added 10 new illustrations, and they’re all available in the link below:
https://tg-me.sbs/addstickers/Ton_Duck

If you cannot see the new stickers, you’ll have to delete the collection and redownload it.

​TON Community Weekly Digest

Here’s a roundup of the ecosystem’s most exciting news from the past seven days.

Network stats update:

— The number of new accounts created on TON from April 17 to 23 grew from 420,956 to 443,708 (+5.4%).

News:

— Crypto exchange OKX initiated the change of TON’s ticker on its platform (but the technical work is still underway).

— Toncoin was listed on the CoinEx crypto exchange.

— A bridge integration from XP.NETWORK to the TON blockchain was announced.

— The TON Foundation’s new Toncoin reserve received over 527 million Toncoin in donations.

— A technical comparison of the TON blockchain, Ethereum 2.0, and Solana was published.

— Information on the new Jetton standard for TON was released.

— The official TON Ducks Telegram sticker pack added 10 new stickers.

— Scammer activity saw a significant rise this past week. We recommend reading this post to get up to speed.

Stay up-to-date with the latest developments brewing in the TON ecosystem by turning on the notifications to this channel. You won’t want to miss a thing!

​Tonkeeper opens its doors to developers.

The Tonkeeper team has launched TON Connect, an open standard that allows users to log in to internet services securely and without login names and passwords.

TON Connect streamlines the sign-in process on many internet platforms by using Web3’s advantages.

Unlike centralized services, TON Connect does not use personal data and passwords that could be compromised.

All private information — e.g., credit card numbers — is encrypted with a key and is only accessible on the client’s device; even if there’s a leak, user information and data will always be hidden.

Tonkeeper would like to invite developers for a collaboration and is offering education on its technologies: https://tg-me.sbs/tonkeeper/8

The documentation for the TON Connect SDK is available here:
https://github.com/tonkeeper/ton-connect.

Sending Toncoin directly within Telegram

A new and convenient way to send Toncoin without transaction fees to any Telegram user. The @wallet bot can now be added to the attachments menu in chats. Now there’s no longer the need to enter long wallet addresses and wait for confirmations.

To start using the new function, open the @wallet bot and add it to the attachments menu in “Settings,” as shown in the pinned video.

To send Toncoin, all you need to do is complete these two steps:

1) Open a chat with another user, tap the “paperclip” icon to pull up the attachments menu, and tap “Wallet.”

2) Enter the amount of Toncoin and send it.

You’re all set. The Toncoin will be instantly transferred to the recipient’s wallet.

We’re excited that Telegram users can now easily transfer Toncoin by using this simple and convenient function.

We encourage our subscribers to test the new feature. Before using this function, you need to update Telegram to its newest version.