TON Dev News

💎 Blockchain Contest, Round 1

Telegram and TON Core announce a new coding contest!

Prize Fund: $100,000 to $200,000
Deadline: 23:59, February 4th (Dubai time)
Tasks: Blockchain Validation (C++ code optimization) and/or Trustless Bridge (participants can choose one or both).

Prize Fund Distribution
The total prize fund, up to $200,000, will be allocated based on each participant’s overall contribution. Winners will also have the opportunity to compete in Stage 2, which will feature a separate, similar prize fund.

Additional Opportunities
Winners have the chance to join the Telegram or TON Core teams, or receive support to launch a real TVM sidechain for TON. The best optimization solutions may also be implemented to enhance the TON main network.

⛏️ TON Space adds support for the TON test network

We’re excited to announce that developers can now test and build applications more quickly, all within Telegram. This was made possible by integrating the TON Testnet into TON Space 💎

⛏ The test network (or testnet) is a separate blockchain where developers can safely implement updates without affecting the main network. This prevents potential instability on the main blockchain (also known as the mainnet or “core network”). Testnet allows updates to be thoroughly tested before deploying them to mainnet 🪙

Each application can have its own testnet, utilizing test tokens for transactions. You can get test TON here: @testgiver_ton_bot

Please note: Test tokens cost nothing and cannot be exchanged for real crypto. Testnet is only intended to be used by developers and beta testers 🫴

Developers and testers can switch between testnet and mainnet in their TON Space settings. Additionally, we've prepared a special link for developers to include in their applications, making it easier for QA teams and beta testers to switch between networks 🗺

Introducing Unit-Testing in Tolk with Jest

Tolk developers rejoice! Unit-testing for smart contracts just got easier. While sandbox offers E2E testing, it’s far from ideal for unit-testing.

Now, with the Jest-Tolk runner, unit-testing in Tolk is a reality. Seamlessly integrate with Jest and streamline your testing workflow today.

Explore the tool!

GitHub: tonkite/jest-tolk
NPM: @tonkite/jest-tolk

Upgrade your smart contract testing game now!

TonTech team is developing infrastructure projects like Liteserver and is eager to improve them.
To better understand the current needs, they launched a survey.
Please share the needs you feel are and will be helpful for your product with the Infrastructure Developer Survey.

👉https://forms.gle/D9ZWAo1qMnNrio3dA

MaraTON Challenge 1: A Major Programming Competition will start tomorrow

MaraTON Challenge 1, a competition for TON programmers co-hosted by Codeforces and TON Core, will start tomorrow. MaraTON I focuses on practical challenges inspired by the TON blockchain. Don’t worry — no prior knowledge of TON is needed! The contest is designed to help you learn as you go.

📅 Starts: Monday, December 23
📅 Ends: Monday, January 13

Total Prize Pool: Over 50,000 USDT
Rewards for top performers during the contest and for final rankings!

Registration is open to everyone — sign up now!

FunC 0.4.6

In this release of FunC two compiler bugs were fixed. Both manifest in unusual conditions and scanning onchain history for last months didn't revealed any manifestation in the wild. So apparently existing contracts are safe thanks to culture of thorough integrational testing in developer community!
Great job 👍

Still, if you are deploying a new contracts we recommend you to switch to new compiler version.

1) First bug is related to try/catch construction, where inside try branch a function that modifies c1/с3 is called. That may happen in case of non-trivial branching in this child function or using set_c3. How to check.

2) Second bug is related to storing function into variable. In this case, in FunC <=0.4.5 impure modifier of this functions was dropped.

📖 Secure Smart Contract Programming in Tact: Avoiding Pitfalls in the TON Ecosystem

As The Open Network evolves, its innovative features and the Tact programming language unlock new possibilities for developers. However, common mistakes can lead to vulnerabilities.

CertiK’s latest blog post highlights critical issues like data serialization, concurrency, and gas management, offering actionable insights to optimize security in Tact smart contracts. Whether you’re new to TON or a seasoned developer, these best practices are essential for building robust and secure applications.

🔗 https://www.certik.com/resources/blog/secure-smart-contract-programming-in-tact-popular-mistakes-in-the-ton

🧑‍🎓 TON Studio is conducting a survey among developers to better understand the challenges TMA developers face today.

🫡 We kindly ask you to share your experience and feedback by filling out the survey form, it takes only 2-3 minutes!

👉https://forms.gle/G7KDQkoXrFnqov519

📣 Hey, folks! The Tact dev team kindly asks you to share some feedback regarding your experience with smart-contract programming in Tact.

Our mission is to develop a high quality programming language that can be used for every single project on TON and make code easy to write, understand and audit.

The survey covers 4 topics and will only take about 5-8 minutes of your time.

Thank you for your contribution!

👉https://paperform.co/edit/h02jnxtq

⚡️ GitHub supports Tact!

Now that you've clicked, let me clarify — thanks to our efforts, your support and all of you writing lots of smart contracts, Tact now has syntax highlighting all across GitHub!

— Files with a .tact extension? Boom, colored.
— Blocks of code in markdown that specify tact as their language? Got you covered.

❤️ Thanks everyone for your support and love! Without you, there would be nothing. Literally.

✈️ We're continuing to ship awesome stuff for you — expect many shiny things this December.

🍲 growth is inevitable
♨️ @tact_kitchen

Affiliate Programs and Bot API 8.1

Starting today, Bot and Mini App developers can launch their own Affiliate Programs, and specify how much of their future ⭐️ Star revenue from referred users they are willing to share with those who invited them.

It only takes a few taps to set up an Affiliate Program — you can find out more in our dedicated guide.

With Bot API 8.1, all bots can also detect commissions and affiliate transactions out of the box, see the full changelog for details.

⚠️ Warning: As of December 1 2024, messages with video posted in big communities can be delayed by the server until the respective video is reencoded. Read more here.

Attention TON Developers

The TON Dev Community calls on your expertise to contribute to advancing the TON ecosystem. Your insights and experiences in development are invaluable in making TON more robust and user-friendly.

We encourage every community member to share their experiences with TON development by participating in our survey.

The survey encompasses four key topics and will take approximately 5-10 minutes of your time.

👉https://eoolk3ab.paperform.co/

Introducing Our New CDN for Mini Apps!

We’re excited to announce that TON Studio has launched a free CDN! Here’s why you’ll love it:

▪️Accelerated Performance: Average global response time ~1.5 seconds.
▪️Advanced Caching: On-edge caching ensures efficient data distribution in active regions.
▪️Technology Independence: Deploy data from any storage (private repos, IPFS, etc.) using the mate CLI tool.
▪️Version Control: Seamless project management with versioning support.
▪️Robust Security: Protection against DDoS (L3, L4, L7), WAF, and bots.
▪️Multi-Support Compatibility: Web, Gzip, and WebSocket support.
▪️Generous Limits: Up to 50MB per project for all your mini-app needs.

Enhance your Mini App experience with our cutting-edge CDN!

Available now — try it out and see the difference.

Good news, everyone!

We are excited to announce the launch of our webhook service.
(Actually, there might still be some issues like delivery delays, but the API is stabilized.)

What is it and why do you need it?
TON is renowned for its scalability, meaning more transactions and blocks are added to the blockchain every second. In last year's stress tests, a record of 100,000 transactions per second was set. This means the blockchain generated over 100 megabytes of blocks per second or about a gigabit of incoming traffic if you want to view the entire blockchain. Of course, not every service needs to view all transactions in all blocks to find valuable insights.
To solve this problem, we are launching a webhook service that allows you to subscribe only to the data you need. Our service will attempt to deliver messages at increasing intervals until your server returns a 200 response.

Current subscription options:

1. Subscription to specific accounts - You can subscribe to a million accounts, and if a transaction occurs on any of them, we will notify you. Charges are based on the number of monitored account-days and each event.

2. Subscription to specific opcodes of incoming messages - If any account receives an incoming message with such an opcode, we will notify you. Up to 100 opcodes per account. Charges are based on the number of events.

3. Subscription to new accounts in the network - Don't require description. Charges only for the number of messages.

4. Subscription to the mempool - We send all externals we see before they are included in the blockchain. Charges for each sent message, and no retries. If your server was unavailable, we will not attempt to resend.

Try it! Or read the docs first!

We welcome any feedback in comments to this post.

Bot API 8.0

Announcing the largest update in the history of Mini Apps 🎉

Full-Screen Mode
• Mini Apps can now use the entire screen – allowing them to host immersive games 🚀 with expanded interfaces.

Geolocation and Motion Tracking
• Mini Apps can now prompt users for Geolocation Access, allowing them to build virtually any location-based 🗺 service.
• Likewise, Mini Apps can request acceleration, orientation and rotation data from devices in real time.

Paid Subscriptions
• Subscriptions Plans powered by ⭐️ Telegram Stars are now available to all Bots and Mini Apps.
• Apps can accept recurring payments – or cancel them at any time.

Gifts for Stars
• Bots and Mini Apps can now use star proceeds to send Paid Gifts 🎁 to users with a custom caption.

Home Screen Shortcuts
• Mini apps can now be accessed via direct shortcuts added to the home screen of 📱 mobile devices.

Emoji Statuses
• Mini Apps can now let users pick a new emoji status 🚕 with a native dialog – or request access to later sync it with in-game badges, third-party APIs and more.

Sharing and Downloading Media
• Mini Apps can now let users share media directly to any chat – with granular selection parameters.
• Introduced a native popup to ⬇️download files from an App.

Customizable Loading Screen
• The loading screen of mini apps can now be customized 🖥 in @Botfather – adding your own logo and brand colors.

Hardware-specific Optimizations
• Mini Apps on Android now receive basic hardware info – enabling smoother usage and gaming 🏎 experiences for users.

• And so much more, see our blog for high-quality demos and the full changelog for details:

https://core.telegram.org/bots/api-changelog#november-17-2024

⚠️ Warning: Starting December 1, 2024 messages with video posted in big communities can be delayed by the server until the respective video is reencoded. Read more here.

TOLK about the Future: How Aleksandr Kirsanov Makes TON Blockchain More Accessible for Developers

Aleksandr Kirsanov is a developer with an impressive background and the successor to the development of the KPHP compiler. Now, he joins the TON Core Team, where he is working on TOLK — a next-generation language for writing smart contracts on the TON blockchain. TOLK is designed as an evolution of FunC, introducing familiar syntax similar to TypeScript, but leaving all low-level optimizations untouched.

Full intreview: https://ton.app/journal/interview/3

🚀 Introducing Our Blog Platform: Real-World API Use Cases! 🛠️

We’re excited to launch our blog platform, where you’ll find in-depth, production-ready examples of how other companies are leveraging our API. 📖

Our first article is now live: “Jettons Lock – A Production Case Study”. This post dives into practical examples that can help developers interact with our API more efficiently. If you’re looking to build robust solutions and want to learn from real-world use cases, this is the place to start! 🧑‍💻✨

🔗 blog.dton.io / @dtontech

More info on Mintless Jettons for developers

We are happy to announce that many ecosystem products such as Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet, Tonhub, Tonviewer, Tonscan, DeDust, Stonfi, Toncenter API, TON API and others have already supported Mintless.

Tomorrow there are planning the first use of the mintless jetton during the minting of the Hamster Kombat game project.

A few details for developers to be aware of:

1) When initially sending and simultaneously claiming a jetton, you must attach at least 0.1 TON to the transfer.

2) Airdrop for each user has two dates: date when it start to be claimable and deadline untill it should be claimed. Both can set individually for each user, but also can be the same for all users. For example for "Mintless Points" test jettons the deadline will expire tomorrow. HamsterCoins will start tomorrow and claiming deadline will expire in three years.

✋ Hackers, devs, founders.... TON is hosting a $2M hackathon for you!

Hackers League is a large online hackathon with
◾️ $2M in prizes
◾️ 19 offline bootcamps around the world
◾️online workshops, mentors, and post-hackathon support

🏃‍♂️ Join the voice chat on September 30th at 12.00 UTC with Helena, the Hackers League Organizer at TON Society and Anton, the Tact Compiler Lead at TON Foundation to learn how to win the hackathon and build your project on TON.

Set the bell 👉 Click

The competition runs from September 13 until December 20—so there’s still time to get in the game!

Register for the hackathon 👉 Click
Find your city and join an offline bootcamp 👉 Click

TON Center API v2 & Index API v3: Now Supported by Chainstack

Exciting news for developers! You can now seamlessly integrate with the TON network using powerful tools from Chainstack:

1. TON Center API v2: Real-time access to accounts, transactions, smart contracts, and more for up-to-date blockchain interaction.
2. TON Center Index API v3: Ideal for advanced analytics, NFTs, and Jettons, with indexed data stored for complex queries and historical analysis.
3. Chainstack Global Elastic Nodes: Scalable, flexible, and efficient TON infrastructure.

Whether you need real-time access or powerful data-driven analytics, these APIs have you covered. Chainstack’s infrastructure now supports these tools, enabling developers to build and scale projects faster on TON.

👉Get started now: https://chainstack.com/chainstack-introduces-ton-support/