One of TON’s global ideas is to merge the existing blockchains and the Internet into a single network, becoming a “blockchain of blockchains”. In its architecture, the platform already corresponds to this definition, but the current strategy of the project is not only to support the operation of its own blockchain network, but also to establish such interaction with other existing blockchains that it would be easier, cheaper and safer for them to work using TON, bypassing any third-party bridges. To this end, bridges are being developed, both classic bridges with oracle networks and bridges without intermediaries.
Right now RSquad is working on two projects from the roadmap of the TON network, which should significantly expand the cross-chain capabilities of the platform.
Let’s talk about the development progress in more detail.
Finalization of the TON Bridge system
The RSquad development team is working on a bridge through which any tokens from Ethereum or BNB Chain networks can be transferred to the TON network and brought back. The new functionality will be added to the existing TON Bridge.
Anatoly Makosov (@tolya-yanot), one of the main developers of TON Foundation, opined on the relevance of this task:
The first DEX will be launched in TON in the near future. Altcoins will be widely used in the network, so the possibility to transfer altcoins from other blockchains such as Ethereum or BNB Chain is very relevant. We are happy to be working together on this task with the RSquad blockchain development team. At the moment the development is on track and we expect the bridge to be launched together with DEX.
This is how Roman Nguyen, the CTO of RSquad, commented on the development progress:
Currently, the bridge in the TON network allows to transfer only Toncoins between TON and EVM blockchains. We were tasked with extending the functionality so that this bridge can work with any tokens of Ethereum and BNB Chain networks in TON.
The existing TON Bridge system allows to create a synthetic TON in EVM blockchains. The system, in addition to the existing functionality, will provide the following capabilities:
● blocking ERC-20 tokens in the EVM network;
● issuing a synthetic counterpart in the TON network (the so-called jetton);
● burning the issued jettons and unfreezing the ERC-20 tokens in the EVM network.
As part of this task, the RSquad team is developing additional EVM and TON smart contracts supporting oracles (relay networks) which enable the transmission of inter-network transactions.
Working on an equivalent of Rainbow-bridge with EVM blockchains (Ethereum, BNB Chain and others).
Typically, communication between blockchains is carried out with the help of a third party — usually relayers with their oracles, which brings an additional participant to the transaction verification procedure.
Here is how TON representatives commented on the problem and the search for a solution to it:
Current transfers between networks are managed by decentralized oracles. This is quite a stable and secure solution, but in the future we plan to refine it to perfection — all transactions will take place exclusively on smart contracts without intermediaries.
This requires the creation of additional tools so that smart contracts from other blockchains can be verified using the TON network and vice versa. Together with blockchain developers from the RSquad team, we have started working on this task: we are currently developing code in Solidity that can verify TON blocks and transactions.
The task is ambitious, with a full TON Trustless Bridge (“rainbow”) solution being launched in 2023, but intermediate results, code and tools will be published during the development process.
Thus, the solution of RSquad is designed to grant the opportunity of dispensing with third-party involvement thanks to the fact that the virtual computing distributed machine of the TON blockchain will learn to receive and read messages from another blockchain without using a relayers (or an oracle network) — and, on the contrary, will enable the virtual machines of other blockchains to understand messages from TON.
The first and global implementation stage was the development of EVM smart contracts, which will be part of the TON Trustless Bridge system, designed to solve the problem of trust in transactions between blockchains. The development phase of the smart contract for parsing TON transactions on the Ethereum network has now been completed.
Roman Nguyen, the CTO of RSquad, provided some details concerning the progress of this development:
In simple terms, we have learned how to read the messages of one blockchain on smart contracts of another blockchain and understand what is written in them. Since the protocols are completely different and the data is stored differently, the task was actually to create a thin client of one blockchain on the virtual machine of another blockchain. It would only be the interaction of two blockchains — no relayers or anything like that would be needed. This bridge will be able to verify the transactions of the other blockchain without involving third-party validation.
“TON Trustless Bridge is seen as a logical part of the “TON — the blockchain of blockchains” metaphor from the original TON Whitepaper, as it provides a zero-trust service that will be as fully decentralized as possible. At the same time, the above-mentioned service will be faster and cheaper than similar solutions on the market, and TON will be the central blockchain”, — Roman Nguyen said.
TON (The Open Network) is a high-performance first-class blockchain, which is an implementation of the Durov brothers’ planned Telegram Open Network. After the Telegram team stopped developing TON, an active open-source development community continued to support the network and create new TON features, bringing the design of Telegram to life. As of 2019, the core network of TON is live, with ultra-cheap, fast, and environmentally friendly transactions.
As of 2022, the TON blockchain remains one of the few truly scalable blockchain projects capable of performing millions of true turing-full smart contract transactions per second. Currently, the network already supports 234 validators and more than a million accounts.
RSquad Blockchain Lab — is an experienced international team with more than 7 years of experience in blockchain project development, advising and promotion services. RSquad has implemented and acted as a consultant in 75 blockchain projects for partners from 14 countries. The team consists of 30 development engineers who work on the full cycle of creating decentralized applications from interface design to smart contract development in various blockchains from Ethereum to Solana. RSquad acts as an advisor and partner to world-class blockchain projects.
