The Open Network Foundation (TON Foundation) has today announced that, during a successful live-streamed stress test, the TON blockchain has proven that it is the world’s fastest and most scalable public blockchain.
The TON testnet was launched on 256 validators. Under heavy load, the testnet split into 512 shards, enabling the network to achieve a speed of 104,715 TPS. The unprecedented success of this test has proven TON capable of being the infrastructure layer for the Web3 ecosystem in Telegram and large enterprises seeking to create blockchain-based products, as well as a global decentralized network ready to usurp traditional finance rails.
In test runs, the TON testnet outpaced the reported speed of Visa while exceeding a speed of approximately 100,000 TPS, far surpassing the speed of approximately 65,000 TPS recorded by the previous record holder.
The data generated by this test has been verified by The Open Network’s security partner, CertiK, which is a Web3 smart contract auditor providing a comprehensive suite of tools to secure the industry at scale. CertiK has performed formal verifications of the TON blockchain to confirm its stability and security and has also assisted TON Foundation in verifying network speeds.
TON Foundation used the infrastructure of Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing subsidiary of Alibaba Group, to deliver the live-streamed stress test.
The stress test involved multiple layers of verification and performance monitoring. CertiK authenticated the network’s architecture, ensuring the 256 validators were operational and configured according to the specified settings. The nodes’ software versions were also checked for uniformity. During the actual performance test, TON lite servers were employed to fetch transaction counts at one-minute intervals, which were then used to calculate the TPS.
TON’s unique architecture means that the blockchain is inherently scalable by design. TON takes the concept of sharding to its extreme, using an “infinite sharding paradigm” to form a blockchain of blockchains.