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This section introduces the core concepts of the TON Blockchain. It explains the fundamental building blocks of the system, including data structures, transaction flow, consensus mechanisms, and network protocols.
The material here provides the foundation for developers, researchers, and anyone who wants to understand low-level TON’s architecture.

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Core Data Structures & Addressing

  • Cells – TON’s universal data structure, used to represent every piece of information on-chain, from account states to transactions.
  • Addresses – The scheme TON uses to uniquely identify accounts and smart contracts across workchains.
  • Account Statuses – The possible states of an account in TON and how these states control contract execution.

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Transaction Processing

  • Messages and Transactions – TON is message-driven: all interactions between accounts are handled through internal and external messages, which form transactions.
  • Execution Phases and Fees – How TON processes a transaction through the Storage, Credit, Compute, Action, and Bounce phases, while applying fees at each step.
  • Precompiled Contracts – A feature of TON that heavily optimizes gas usage for frequently invoked contracts.

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Network Architecture

  • Blockchain Sharding – TON’s horizontal scaling model, where every workchain is divided into multiple shardchains that can process transactions in parallel.
  • Blockchain Configuration – Dynamically updated configuration of the blockchain∆ that is a native TON account.
  • Network Protocols – TON’s communication stack, including ADNL for peer discovery, RLDP for reliable data transfer, and DHT for distributed lookups.
  • Blocks – The structure of TON blocks, which record the results of transactions and link shardchains together.

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Validation & Security

  • Proofs – Applicability of Merkle proofs, natively supported by TON Blockchain.
  • Consensus – TON’s Catchain consensus protocol, a Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm that ensures validators reach agreement on blocks in the presence of faulty or malicious participants.

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Technical Whitepapers

  • Cells – TON’s universal data structure, used to represent every piece of information on-chain, from account states to transactions, in a compact and hash-friendly format.
  • Addresses – The scheme TON uses to uniquely identify accounts and smart contracts across workchains and shardchains, with built-in error detection.
  • Blocks – The structure of TON blocks, which record the results of transactions and link shardchains together through cryptographic proofs.
  • TVM Whitepaper – The original specification of the TON Virtual Machine, the execution engine for all smart contracts.

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Reference Materials

  • Glossary – A reference guide to important TON-specific terms and definitions.
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