TON Part 1 — Architecture and Mental Model

Key differences from Ethereum

1. TON is asynchronous, not synchronous.
2. TON is natively sharded.
3. Everything is a contract, including wallets.

Hierarchy

• Masterchain: validator set, workchain configs, shard roots.
• Workchains: independent execution environments.
• Shardchains: parallel execution shards that split and merge under load.

Cells

A TON cell contains:

• up to 1023 bits;
• up to 4 references to other cells.

Contract code, contract state, messages, and block data are serialized as cells / Bag of Cells.

Actor model

A TON contract has state, balance, mailbox, and handlers. Contracts communicate only by messages. One user action can trigger a cascade of internal messages.

Wallets

A TON wallet is itself a smart contract. The wallet verifies signatures, checks seqno, and emits internal messages.

Jettons

Jettons are TON's fungible token standard. A Jetton Master stores metadata and wallet code; each holder has an individual Jetton Wallet contract.