✈️ Telegram introduces browser support for TON Sites: What does it mean?

⚫️ Yesterday, Pavel Durov presented a Telegram update featuring support for TON Sites, but didn't provide much detail on what this entails. So, let us clarify.

⚫️ The technology for TON Sites has been around since 2022, and technically, these sites could be created long ago (The Daily TON even had its own). However, to access them in a regular browser, users needed to connect through a proxy, adding an extra layer of complexity and reducing demand for TON Sites. With Telegram, the proxy is built-in, so after the update, users can access these sites directly within the messenger without extra hassle.

⚫️ From the user's perspective, these sites look like any other. The difference lies in the decentralized nature of their access:

1. For regular websites, creators need to purchase a domain from a registrar company. For TON Sites, domains ending in .ton are acquired through dns.ton.org, an automated service operating via smart contracts on TON. These domains are implemented as NFTs, allowing them to be resold on marketplaces.

2. Traditional websites require obtaining a security certificate from companies like Let's Encrypt to use the HTTPS protocol. With TON Sites, security is built-in by default, so no separate certificate is needed.

3. While creators of traditional sites rely on various companies for hosting services, TON Sites offer an alternative: decentralized storage through TON Storage. Though currently underutilized, this could change with the development of Payment Channels technology, which enables flexible payment for hosting services from anyone willing to provide space on their server.

⚫️ Currently, we are seeing that existing TON Sites are not always accessible via Telegram — for example, tonsite://paperplanes.ton, which we created for testing, does not consistently load, even though it works fine in a regular browser with Tonutils-Proxy. We are looking into whether these issues are temporary technical difficulties or due to specific restrictions.

@thedailyton