10+ Contributions by TON Core Team 'NEWTON' Changed Everything
awesome doge
While TON Foundation is a more familiar name, few know the story of its early contributors - the NEWTON team (TON Core Team).
As an early member of NEWTON, let me share this story. ✍🏻
— You can also read it on Twitter: Link
Introduction: Joining the NEWTON Team and Its Mission
When I joined the NEWTON team, our primary mission was clear: maintain the stability of the TON testnet2 code while enhancing developer tools.
Since we didn't have direct control over the ton-blockchain GitHub repository, but needed to keep evolving the code, we created a new organization called NEWTON. To ensure smooth network updates, we encouraged the community to use NEWTON-developed validators as the standard version.
Between our founding and June 2021, the NEWTON Team accomplished several groundbreaking developments and infrastructure projects. Let's dive into 10 critical contributions that shaped TON's early days.
1/ mytonctrl: Automated Node Management Tool
Our first major contribution was mytonctrl, a powerful automation tool for node installation and validator setup.
It offered essential features like wallet creation, contract deployment, transaction history retrieval, and even a DNS registration system—interestingly, the DNS back then was not the same as the modern NFT-packaged DNS we see today.
mytonctrl could also configure validators, liteservers, and liteclients, making node data access and parsing straightforward. In 2021, we added CPU-based mining scripts and automated power tests to simplify $TON mining.
2/ tonmon: Visualizing Blockchain Health
Having nodes and obtaining data was not enough; we needed more visualization tools to monitor blockchain health.
To better monitor blockchain health, we created tonmon. This tool tracked crucial metrics: block creation times, shard statuses, dPoS election schedules, validator counts and weights, and mining contract status. We could quickly respond to any network anomalies.
In those early days, the network was quite small, with only about 80 validators worldwide.
3/ tonmine: Monitoring Giver Contracts
We developed tonmine to track TON mining activity. While the TON blockchain initially had both large and small givers, by 2021 only ten small givers remained. tonmine displayed daily mining statistics for each contract, with individual contracts averaging 20,000 $TON daily—totaling 200,000 $TON across all contracts.
Mining difficulty varied significantly between givers, depending on the number of miners—some givers had low difficulty due to lack of miners, while others had extremely high difficulty.
4/ Cross-Chain Bridge
Before TON had jetton or NFT standards, we recognized the importance of cross-chain compatibility. NEWTON team developed a native $TON bridge for ERC-20 tokens on EVM-compatible chains, successfully testing it on bridge.ton.org. This enabled seamless transfers between TON, Ethereum, and BSC.
5/ @cryptobot: Telegram Bot Wallet
In 2021, before Telegram mini apps existed, a team member developed the @cryptobot Telegram wallet. It initially supported $BTC, $TON, $BNB, and $USDT. The wallet later received a complete overhaul when Telegram mini apps launched.
6/ toncenter: Simplifying Blockchain Data Access
With toncenter, developers no longer needed to set up full nodes, research liteclient or liteserver, or worry about serialized data formats. toncenter provided a public API that simplified access to on-chain data for various wallets and blockchain explorers.
While TON's infrastructure has evolved with more API provider options like tonxapi.com today, toncenter continues to serve developers, standing as a testament to its robust design.
7/ explorer.toncoin.org: TON's First Blockchain Explorer
The first TON blockchain explorer came built into the core codebase at explorer.toncoin.org. While incredibly fast, its data presentation was too technical for most users.
8/ ton.sh: A New Generation Explorer
To address the complexity of explorer.toncoin.org, we created ton.sh. After solving the challenge of deserializing blockchain data, we launched it with a public API.
ton.sh focused on essential features: wallet balances, transactions, and, notably, memos. Memos were crucial for early TON users, serving as command operations before TON Connect or complex DeFi contracts existed—particularly for deposit operations on exchanges.
Though newer explorers like TONScan and TONViewer have since emerged, ton.sh remains a historic milestone in TON's development.
9/ TonWeb: The Essential JavaScript SDK
Since TON smart contracts used Fift and Func—both challenging languages—the NEWTON team developed TonWeb, a JavaScript SDK that simplified wallet creation, deployment, and transactions.
10/ ton wallet: My First TON Wallet
This TON wallet, dating back to the Telegram era, was my first—and remarkably, it's still functional today.
📝 Historic Recognition: NEWTON's Open Letter to @Telegram Official Team
By June 2021, the NEWTON team had made substantial contributions, including running public liteservers, DHT servers, and archive nodes to maintain network stability. tolya-yanot then wrote an open letter (https://github.com/ton-blockchain/TIPs/issues/33) to the TON-blockchain team, documenting our year's work and requesting GitHub organizational permissions.
The letter listed NEWTON's two leaders and key team members.
And yes, I, Dr. Awesome Doge, was also on the list.
At that point, I thought it was merely an open letter—a good effort to demonstrate our contributions to the network, not expecting any response.
To our surprise, @Telegram's official team replied on June 30, 2021.
This marked the beginning of a new chapter in TON blockchain history. 💫
Looking Back, and Forward: A Builder's Note
Looking back at this incredible journey, NEWTON Team's early contributions went far beyond mere code. Each line of code, each tool we built, each sleepless night of maintenance - all these efforts laid the foundation for what TON has become today.
Seeing TON's explosive growth in 2024, with thousands of builders joining the ecosystem, validates what we believed in those challenging early days - that TON's potential was worth fighting for.
Where am I now?
NEWTON members are spread globally, each supporting TON in their own way. My focus remains on developer needs and Asia's development (as the only Mandarin-speaking member). Through my team, @TONX, we're building essential infrastructure for the TON ecosystem:
- @TONXAPI: Powerful RPC & APIs for all dApps (tonxapi.com)
- Tonkey : Multisig wallet managing 400M assets
- TonStake : Largest staking pool
- TON Research : Developer-focused community hub
- TON Hacker House events across Hongkong, Bangkok, Taipei
- And more to come
The spirit of NEWTON lives on. This is just the beginning.
Let's build TON together. 🚀
💎 Follow @drawesomedoge for more insights into TON's past, present, and future.