TON’s history and roadmap

Learn about the history of The Open Network and our roadmap for upcoming products.

2018

The Telegram Messenger team, led by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, begin exploring blockchain solutions for Telegram Messenger. Finding no current Layer 1 blockchain able to support Telegram's 9-figure userbase, they decide to design their own layer-1 chain, then called Telegram Open Network.

2018

Telegram raised $1.7b in a private sale of TON tokens (then called Grams) in one of the largest cryptocurrency offerings ever.

2019

The Telegram team releases a series of documents detailing the design of the TON blockchain. Telegram spins up two TON testnets - one in Spring 2019, and the second in November 2019.

The Telegram team launches the first TON testnet in the spring of 2019, after which the code becomes open-source, and testnet2 goes live on Nov. 15, 2019.

Oct 2019

The US Securities and Exchange Commission sues Telegram, accusing it of conducting an unregistered securities offering. Telegram argues that the SEC's claims were baseless, but agrees to postpone the launch of TON until legal matters are resolved.

Mar 2020

Amid its ongoing battle of attrition with the U.S. regulator, Telegram finally decides to call it quits.

May 2020

The Telegram team cease development of TON and support of testnet2, pay a $18.5m settlement, and agree to return funds to investors.

2020-2021

A small team of open-source developers - NewTON - dive deep into TON's codebase, architecture, and documentation. They resume active development of TON in keeping with the design detailed in TON's original documentation.

May 2021

Testnet2 remains stable for a long time and the community votes for renaming it as Mainnet. NewTON team, in turn, is renamed as TON Foundation — a not-for-profit community focused on further support and development of the network.

May 2021

Stable and secure blockchain

2021 Q3

TON-ETH and TON-BSC Bridges

2021 Q4

Listing on the top exchanges

TON Subscriptions

2022 Q1

TON Nominators

TON DeFi

TON Developers Program

2022 Q2

TON DNS

TON Payments

2022 Q3

TON Proxy

TON Sites

We are here

2022 Q4

TON Storage

2023

Bitcoin & EVM Crosschain