Final Toncoin Mined Ahead of Transition to Proof-of-Stake

The final TON was mined in the early hours of June 28, signaling toncoin's transition from a largely proof-of-work (PoW) model to proof-of-stake (PoS).

From now on, new toncoins will only enter circulation by PoS validation, resulting in a roughly 75% decrease of new TON entering the network to 200,000 daily.

The TON blockchain already runs on PoS technology, but its initial token distribution was enabled by mining as opposed to a coin offering that PoS tokens usually use. The mining element prevented just a few participants from accumulating a significant number of coins.

“In PoW consensus mechanisms, anyone with the appropriate equipment can become a miner, creating an honest and even distribution of tokens amongst participants in a network,” the TON Foundation said Tuesday.

The TON Foundation, stewards of toncoin and its surrounding ecosystem, referred to this combination as an “initial proof-of-work” (IPoW) mechanism and claim that it created a best of both worlds approach between PoW and PoS.

PoW, the mechanism used by the Bitcoin network, has the drawbacks of being energy intensive and slow, making it expensive and needing a lot of time for transactions to be validated. Ethereum, whose ETH is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is migrating to a PoS model.

The transition marks the continuation of the TON Foundation’s development of the blockchain project, which messaging app Telegram abandoned in 2020 following a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Members of the TON community, however, formed the Ton Foundation and continued to develop the blockchain, rebranding the project Toncoin from the original TON.

While the reincarnated TON is not affiliated with Telegram, it does have the messaging app’s endorsement.

In April, crypto payments in TON were added to Telegram using the app’s “@wallet” bot.

Read more: Proof-of-Work vs. Proof-of-Stake: What Is the Difference?