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Frequently Asked Questions

This section covers the most popular questions about TON Blockchain.

Overview​

Could you share a brief overview of TON?​

Similarities and differences versus EVM chains?​

Does TON have a test environment?​

Block​

What is the RPC method used to retrieve block information?​

Blocks produced by Validators. Existing blocks available via Liteservers. Liteservers accessible via Liteclients. On top of Liteclient built 3rd-party tools like wallets, explorers, dapps, etc.

3rd-party high-level block explorers:

Block time​

2-5s

info

Read more at ton.org/analysis.

Time-to-finality​

Under 6 sec.

info

Read more at ton.org/analysis.

Average block size​

max block size param 29
max_block_bytes:2097152
info

Find more actual params in Network Configs.

What is the schema of a block?​

Transactions​

RPC method to get transactions data​

Is it async or synchronous? If async, any documentation on how it works?​

TON Blockchain is async:

  • sender prepare tx body and broadcast it via liteclient (or higher-level tool)
  • liteclient return status of broadcast, not tx result
  • sender check desired result

Example for Wallet contract transfer (high-level):

Example for Wallet contract transfer (low-level):

How do we determine if a transaction is truly successful? Is querying the transaction level status enough?​

Short answer: check receiver's account state until it changed, see examples:

What is the schema of a transaction?​

Fundamentals:

Example from explorers (transfer tx):

Is batching transactions possible?​

Yes, this is possible in two ways:

  • utilization of async nature of TON, i.e. sending independed transactions to the network
  • using smartcontract which receive a task and then execute it as a batch

Example of using batch-featured contract (high-load wallet):

Standards​

What accuracy of currencies is available for TON?​

9 digits

info

Number of decimal places supported by mainnet : 9 digits.

Is there a standard for tokens and NFTs? i.e. a standard way to parse mint, burn, transfer fungible and non-fungible tokens from a transaction​

NFTs:

Jettons (tokens):

Other standards:

Are there examples of parsing these events​

Everything in TON is a boc-message, so using NFT isn't a special event, it's a regular message from/to contract as a regular let's say wallet.

However, some indexed API allows you see all messages from/to contract, so you can filter them by your needs:

Please also share how we can get the schema for these events.​

https://ton.org/docs/tblkch.pdf#page=53&zoom=100,148,172 p.53

Account Structure​

What is the address format?​

Is it possible to have a named account similar to ENS​

Yes, using TON DNS:

How to distinguish between a normal account and a smart contract?​

How to tell if the address is a token address?​

For a Jettons contract must implement standard's interface and return data on get_wallet_data() or get_jetton_data() methods.

Are there any special accounts (e.g. accounts owned by the network) that have different rules or methods from the rest?​

There is a special blockchain inside a TON called masterchain. It consists of network-wide contracts with network configuration, validator-related contracts, etc:

info

Read more about masterchain, workchains and shardchains in TON Blockchain overview article: Blockchain of Blockchains.

Good example is smart governance contract, which is a part of masterchain:

Smart Contracts​

How do we detect contract deployment events?​

Everything in TON is a smart contract.

Account address generated from private key, contract code, and it's initial state.

If any component changed - address changed accordingly. Smart contract code itself can be sent to the network later.

To protect sending messages to non-existing contracts TON use "bounce" feature. Read more in these articles:

Is it possible to re-deploy code to an existing address or do we have to deploy it as a new contract?​

Yes, this is possible. If smartcontract implements method ... it's code can be updated and address will remain same.

by the way

It's possible to deploy many contracts with different addresses with same private key.

Are smart contract addresses case sensitive?​

Yes, smart contract addresses are case sensitive because they are generated using the base64 algorithm. You can learn more about smart contract addresses here.

RPC​

API types:

  • Read more about different API Types (Indexed, HTTP, and ADNL)

Node providers partners:

TON directory with projects from TON Community:

Are there any public node endpoints we can get started with to explore the chain (mainnet and testnet)​