Users and validators of Telegram's previously created layer 1 blockchain, The Open Network (TON), voted to decide if a miner's wallet is inactive and has never made an outgoing transaction, according to a February 22 community vote. The decision resulted in the suspension of 1,081,389,416 Toncoins (TON), worth an estimated $2.58 billion at the time of publication, or more than 20% of TON tokens in circulation.
Validator voting begins on February 21, 2023, after the first two rounds, with no need for a third tiebreaker. The TON Foundation requires miners to demonstrate their activity by making transactions on the TON blockchain on December 17, 2022. Since the announcement, 24 of the 195 inactive addresses have been activated. As a result, the vote involved the remaining 171 addresses, representing less than 0.009% of the total number of wallets on the web, holding a total of 1,081,389,416 TON. Following today's vote, these addresses will be suspended for four years.
As stated by the developers, the distribution of TON began in July 2020, when 98.55% of the total supply was available for mining by anyone. Placed in a special "Giver" smart contract, this method allows TON to benefit from the decentralization provided by proof-of-work while maintaining a proof-of-stake blockchain. The developers say that by suspending these wallets, it will bring more clarity to the amount of TON currently in circulation, and "the active community involved in the open-source project will continue to grow and grow."
The TON community has long speculated that access to these inactive wallets may have been lost. It has been said that the existence of unspent TON only increases uncertainty for network participants. TON is used as the gas fee required to access decentralized services on the TON network. Telegram abandoned TON development about three years ago after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused the company of violating security laws in its $1.7 billion initial coin offering in 2018. The project has since turned to community developers.
