{"document_id":"BLC-STUDY-0022","slug":"ton","title":"The Open Network","authors":"Nikolai Durov","year":2021,"date_label":"2021","publisher":"Nikolai Durov","paper_type":"Design paper","category":"Consensus","topics":["Consensus"],"source_url":"https://ton.org/whitepaper.pdf","source_label":"ton.org white paper","legacy_pdf_path":null,"sha256":null,"sha256_note":"No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.","version":"Source cited by the 2021 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.","doi":null,"rights_status":"Official external source only","source_status":"Official source","use_status":"Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.","licence":null,"licence_label":"No licence recorded. Rights status under review.","full_text":null,"full_text_reason":"Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.","editorial_line":"Durov's design for a multi-chain system of account-chains gathered into shardchains, with a masterchain that records the others. It began as Telegram's network design and continued as The Open Network after Telegram stepped away from the original launch.","canonical_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/whitepaper/ton","record_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/ton","study_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/whitepaper/ton","last_reviewed":"2026-10-01","last_checked":"2026-10-01","relationships":[{"rel":"Canonical reading","label":"TON study","href":"/whitepaper/ton"},{"rel":"Related paper","label":"NEAR","href":"/whitepaper/near"},{"rel":"Related paper","label":"Polkadot","href":"/whitepaper/polkadot"},{"rel":"Related paper","label":"MultiversX","href":"/whitepaper/elrond"}]}