TON and Mini Apps glossary
Plain-English definitions of the words you meet when you first open a TON wallet, an explorer or a Telegram Mini App. Definitions follow the official TON documentation and Telegram's own pages.
- ADNL
- The network protocol native TON libraries use to talk to liteservers directly. SDKs such as tonutils-go and pytoniq implement it, which avoids going through a hosted HTTP service.
- Cell
- The basic unit of data in TON. Contracts store and send information as trees of cells, and languages like Tolk have a type system that describes how a structure is laid out in cells.
- FunC
- The older smart contract language for TON. The docs say Tolk evolved from it and is now the recommended choice for new contracts, and they provide a migration guide.
- Gasless transaction
- A transfer whose network fee is paid by someone other than the sender. The docs mention it for Telegram Money, where Telegram covers fees for a daily allowance of transfers.
- Gram (GRAM)
- The native coin of TON, used to pay fees and to take part in validation and voting. The ton.org page notes it was also known as Toncoin, and you will still see the old name on older pages.
- Indexer
- A service that reads blocks, parses transactions and stores them in a database for fast queries. Explorers and TON Center API v3 rely on indexers.
- Jetton
- The standard for fungible tokens on TON, defined in TEP-74. Wallets show jettons next to the native coin, and DEXes swap them.
- Liteserver
- A node that answers requests from light clients without making them download the whole chain. Public liteservers exist, and companies such as dTON run private ones.
- Mainnet
- The live TON network where transactions are final and use real coins. Contrast with testnet, which is for experiments.
- Masterchain and workchains
- TON has a masterchain that coordinates the network and workchains split into shards. Low-level explorers ask for a workchain, shard and sequence number when you search for a block.
- NFT
- A non-fungible token, a unique on-chain item such as a collectible, a username or a gift. On TON, marketplaces like Getgems and Fragment list them for sale or auction.
- Recovery phrase
- The list of words that gives full control of a wallet. Anyone who has it controls the funds, so it should be stored offline and never typed into a website or shared in a chat.
- Self-custody
- A wallet setup where only you hold the keys, so no company can move or freeze your coins. It also means nobody can recover them for you if you lose the phrase.
- Smart contract
- A program stored on the chain that runs when it receives a message. Wallets, DEX pools and NFT items are all smart contracts on TON.
- Tact
- A language for writing efficient and safe smart contracts on TON, with its own compiler and documentation. It is still maintained alongside Tolk.
- Telegram Mini App
- A web application that runs inside Telegram. A bot launches it from a button or the attachment menu, and it can read theme and user data from Telegram through a JavaScript API.
- Telegram Stars
- Telegram's in-app currency for digital goods. The TON docs note that digital goods sold inside Mini Apps use Stars, while TON Connect stays available for permitted blockchain interactions.
- Testnet
- A separate copy of the network for development, where test coins are free and worthless. Guides in the docs create wallets on testnet so that mistakes cost nothing.
- Tolk
- A statically typed smart contract language that compiles to TVM. The TON docs call it the recommended language for new contracts.
- TON Connect
- The standard protocol for linking a dApp to a wallet over an encrypted session. The app can request signatures and transactions, but it never sees the keys.
- Trace
- The chain of transactions that one action produces. Because TON is asynchronous, something that is one transaction on Ethereum, like a liquidity withdrawal, can become more than ten linked transactions here.
- TVM
- The TON Virtual Machine, which executes smart contract code. Tolk, Tact and FunC all compile to instructions that run on it.
- Validator
- A node that takes part in producing and confirming blocks. Validators also vote on protocol changes, for example upgrades to the shared Telegram wallet contract, which need more than 75 percent of validator weight.