🫧 Tolk v1.3: moving toward a general-purpose language

After the previous post, this release may feel less surprising — but still a bit unusual.

The reason is simple: Tolk is no longer evolving only as a contract language. It is becoming a foundation for the toolchain I described earlier.

This release focuses on features beyond contracts — introducing general-purpose capabilities needed for libraries and frameworks.

✅ Notable changes in Tolk v1.3:

1. Type array<T> — dynamically sized arrays backed by TVM tuples.
2. Type unknown — a TVM primitive with unknown contents.
3. Type lisp_list<T> — nested two-element tuples (FunC-style).
4. Type string — text chunks backed by snaked cells, with StringBuilder for concatenation.
5. Compile-time string methods: "str".crc32(), "str".sha256(), etc.
6. Null coalescing operator — ?? like in TypeScript.
7. Import path mappings — import "@third_party/utils".
8. Compile-time reflection via @stdlib/reflection.
9. Custom serializers now support structures and generics.
10. The compiler now reports multiple errors at once.
11. Focused on stability — fixed dozens of minor issues found by LLM fuzzing.
12. Extensive internal refactoring towards being stateless and multi-threaded.

PR on GitHub with detailed info.

✔ Arrays: redesigned tuples

Working with TVM tuples has been fully redesigned. There is now array<T> — a dynamically sized container:

// array<int>
var numbers = [1, 2, 3];

// array<Point?>
var optPoints = [
    Point { x: 10, y: 20 },
    Point { x: 30, y: 40 },
    null,
];

- methods push, get(idx), etc.
- any T, including sub-arrays like array<array<int>>
- automatically serialized into snake cells
- max size: 255 (TVM limitation)

✔ The `unknown` type

Raw TVM tuple exists, but it's no longer built-in. It's just an array... of something unknown:

type tuple = array<unknown>

The unknown gives access to the untyped TVM stack, fully integrated into the type system.

✔ The `string` type

TVM has no strings — only binary slices. Strings were always just a convention over binary data.

Now Tolk has strings built-in.

// string
val str = "hello";

- strings are cells (not slices)
- long strings are snake cells under the hood
- methods calculateLength, equalTo, etc.
- on-chain/off-chain encoding for jettons and NFTs to comply with TEPs

StringBuilder encapsulates cell manipulation:

StringBuilder.create()  
    .append(content.commonContent)  
    .append(individualNftContent)  
    .build()

By the way, compile-time functions now look cleaner: "str".crc32() and so on.

✔ Import path mappings

The import statement now accepts @aliases:

import "@common/jettons"
import "@third_party/math-lib"

This is similar to widely used path mappings in TypeScript.

✔ Compile-time reflection

Many additions in v1.3 make sense not for contracts, but for frameworks. For example, take a look at one of reflect features:

fun log(msg: string, loc: SourceLocation = reflect.sourceLocation()) {
     debug.print(loc.lineNo);
}

fun demo() {
     log("a");    // prints K — current line no
     log("b");    // prints K+1
}

Why is this useful? It allows errors to point to the original call site — for example, expect(...) in tests — by carrying source location at compile time.

⚙️ A huge portion of internal refactoring

A lot of work has been done inside the compiler core, peephole optimizations, and memory management.

Final result: tolk compiler is now thread-safe and re-invokable within a single process. It will be embedded into an external toolchain written in Rust, communicating via FFI.

... And more

Dozens of independent improvements. Combined, they cover the requirements not only for contracts, but for abstract libraries and the upcoming toolchain.

Feel free to check the description on GitHub.

🌳 And one more thing! Wallet-v5, compiled with Tolk v1.3, reduces gas usage by 30% compared to FunC. As of Tolk v1.0, the savings were "only" 20%. Take a look at new benchmarks.

🚀 The AI Hackathon review period has been extended until April 3.

The results exceeded all expectations: over 160 submissions, 4x the previous contest.

The volume and variety of projects submitted have genuinely impressed us. A strong mix of thoughtful, creative, and technically impressive work from across the ecosystem.

We definitely didn’t expect that. So, we are extending the review period to April 3 to ensure we have enough time to review every submission thoroughly.

While you wait, two new features just dropped on the Identity platform:

🔹Makers. Add your teammates to submission. Everyone gets the participation badge.
🔹Comments. Talk about projects. Feedback, questions, discussion, all on submission pages.

Thank you for the energy, creativity, and effort you brought to this hackathon.

Keep building! ✨😎

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Sub-Second mainnet activation starts

The public bug bounty contest for the TON Sub-Second update has been completed.

We thank all participants for their work and valuable feedback. The corresponding changes have already been applied to the codebase. No major consensus changes were required.

The final contest results and reward distribution will be announced later.

This contest was the final stage of testing before mainnet activation. Prior to that, the update had already passed internal testing by TON Core and extended testing in testnet.

We are now starting the activation of the Sub-Second update in TON mainnet.

For additional reliability, activation will be performed in 3 stages:

Update plan:

March 31 (today): Upgrade validator nodes to the version supporting the latest consensus changes.

April 2: Vote to activate the new consensus on the basechain and enable a moderate block rate increase.

April 7: Vote to fully activate fast consensus on both the basechain and masterchain and then upgrade validator nodes.

The Sub-Second update is a major protocol upgrade comprising a substantial number of changes.

Despite comprehensive testing, validators are advised to maintain heightened operational readiness during the next two weeks, from March 31 to April 12.

The TON Core team will remain available throughout the deployment and is prepared to respond promptly to any situations.

💎 Building financial products inside Telegram just got faster

Dynamic and Fireblocks launched native embedded wallet support for TON. Developers can now ship payment apps, trading platforms, and commerce experiences without building wallet infrastructure from scratch.

✅ Users get a fully functional TON wallet on sign-up automatically
✅ No wallet contract management
✅ Enterprise-grade custody backing 550M+ wallets across 2,400+ institutions

If you're building financial products inside Telegram, the infrastructure to match that scale is ready.

👉 Read more

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Identity is the trust layer for the TON ecosystem.💎

It turns public ecosystem activity into reputation by analyzing signals such as code, wallets, badges, and social presence, helping make contribution and credibility more visible across TON.

Now Identity has released Launches, a new discovery section for products building in the ecosystem.

✨ The first Launches cohort is now live with 16 projects
How it works:
• users clap for the projects they like
• clap budget is tied to Identity reputation
• top projects earn permanent badges on Identity at the end of the week

This makes discovery more transparent and gives more weight to real ecosystem contribution.

✨ Projects in the first cohort include:
• OmniMarket — prediction markets for Telegram communities
• EdChess — play chess and earn TON
• Toncenter SDK — AI-ready Python SDK for TON
• TON Agent Platform — no-code AI agents in Telegram
• TON Bridge — cross-chain liquidity for TON
• ENACT Protocol — on-chain escrow for AI agent payments
• Catallaxy — decentralized agents marketplace
• TeleGifts — AI-powered Telegram Gifts analytics and swaps
• Hash2Cash — Bitcoin mining based on RWA
• ODROB — financial layer for agents
• Rolls — PvP game with Telegram NFT gifts
• mena — P2P atomic asset exchange on TON
• Swift Gifts — Telegram Gifts aggregator
• TonGo — .ton DNS lookup service
• Watchi — AI focus coach with streaks and ambient sounds
• MOLVA — social game on TON

👉 Check out the cohort and vote for your favorites
⚡Rankings close on Sunday.
👉 Read more about how Launches work

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Catchain 2.0 activation is underway

TON validators are voting to fully activate Catchain 2.0, a consensus upgrade that brings sub-second finality to the network.

The first phase has been live since April 2. Today, at 14:00 UTC, the final vote started to cut block times to 400 ms across the entire network.

To activate the upgrade, validators vote on-chain. The proposal needs support from at least 75% of validators (by stake weight) across two validation rounds, roughly 36 hours.

👉 Track the voting here

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Blockchain Fee Reduction

The TON Core team has prepared a blockchain update to reduce fees by 6x, in line with Pavel Durov’s MTONGA plan.

This update includes:

1) Performance improvements

The previous Sub-Second update improved not only operation speed but also overall blockchain performance, making a fee reduction possible. Since then, additional optimizations and performance improvements have also been implemented, including a new mempool based on a persistent Cartesian tree.

2) Fixes

In addition to performance improvements, this update will include fixes for issues identified on mainnet after the Sub-Second release. In particular, it addresses loss of synchronization on some liteservers and rare block rate instability.

Planned Schedule:

April 28, 2026 12:00 UTC — Validator software update.
April 30, 2026 13:00 UTC — Vote to lower gas prices in the blockchain configuration.

Lower fees are important for the next stages of the MTONGA plan. Since fees do not constitute a significant portion of validator rewards, validator rewards are expected to decrease by less than 0.4%.

Mainnet validator operators are asked to be prepared to update their software on 28 April and to participate in the vote on 30 April.

Voting by validators on reducing network fees has begun

Validators, please participate in the vote.

Follow the voting progress here.