TON is a fully decentralized layer-1 blockchain designed by Telegram to onboard billions of users. It boasts ultra-fast transactions, tiny fees, easy-to-use apps, and is environmentally friendly. TON is scalable and shardable. Its flexible architecture lets it grow and grow, with no loss of performance. Since 2020, the technology has been developing thanks to a non-commercial group of supporters and an independent community of enthusiasts who called themselves the TON Foundation. Toncoin, formerly known as Gram, is the native cryptocurrency of the TON network.

The original idea was to integrate TON into an easy-to-use application that allows users to buy/send/store funds. Clients pay transaction fees and use TON to settle payments or validate transactions. Toncoin utilizes the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model for network scalability and reliability. According to the project website, the platform provides its customers with fast, transparent and secure payment services, facilitating transactions with minimal fees and third-party applications.

TON has a multi-level structure built on the principle of sharding or segmentation ("blockchain within a blockchain"). A sharding feature involves the use of multiple subnets (shards) on the same blockchain, where each shard has a specific purpose. It allows the net to avoid the accumulation of unverified blocks and speeds up tasks. The TON network consists of the master, work and shard chains.