Free TON: Everscale Rebrand and Mining Explained

Is Free TON still active, and can you mine it for free?

Free TON is the former name of Everscale. The community approved the rebrand in 2021 and renamed the TON Crystal asset to EVER, according to the official Everscale history. It is separate from Telegram’s later TON ecosystem and is not a website that gives users free Toncoin through browser or cloud mining.

Everscale uses validators and staking rather than proof-of-work mining on a home computer. Search phrases such as “Free TON miner” often mix together Everscale, The Open Network and unrelated reward sites. Verify the network, ticker and official domain before connecting a wallet or paying for mining software.

Free TON (The Open Network) is a new blockchain platform created by the developers of the Telegram Open Network (also abbreviated TON). FREE TON positions itself as a community project which uses the telegram developed open source “TON OS” as virtual Operating System to run smart contracts and decentralized applications. Despite the name, Free TON is not officially affiliated with Telegram Inc nor are there any claims that it will be incorporated in the Telegram App. The project also doesn’t include Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, which is very likely an intentional move to distance themselves from the Telegram Open Network.

Free TON is based on TON OS

TON OS is designed as a decentralized operating system to handle decentralized applications. One way to imagine it is that it’s a more full-featured than the Ethereum Virtual Machine which only strictly run code. TON OS has a stack of components which can be used by developers to create powerful applications without the need to

Built on Open Sourced Components

Free TON is built on components that were open sourced this week. These components were originally part of the Telegram Open Network project developed by TON labs and other parties. By making these components Open Source, everyone around the can view and copy fragments of the code.

Distribution of TONs

Free TON will be distributed via “Giver Contracts” who are responsible for distributing TONs to 3 major groups:

• Users
• Validators
• Developers

Referral Giver be responsible for airdropping coins to initial users via a referral program. This will be the largest group, and Referral Givers will give away 85% of all TONs.

Free TON Roadmap

• Stage I ”Raging Bull” — Incentivized Beta Network with a Decentralized Time Bomb (DTB)
• Stage II ”Rumble Fish” — Incentivized Beta Network with validator voting for Network Configuration
• Stage III “Fight Club” — Decentralized Main Network, at the point where decentralization is sufficiently achieved

TON Crystal exchange listing

The TON crystal is the official currency of Free TON. This currency will be used to power transactions on the network (similar to Ethereum Gas) and also used native currency on the network. Currently it’s unknown if there will be any regulatory issues with listing Free TON. Whilst we know developed by a similar developer pool as the TON project, it’s unknown if it will carry over any of the legal issues.

Community is not accepting US members

The Free TON community has a strong “No US resident” policy, where US residents cannot participate in the community nor receive any free tokens. This is likely related to the on-going legal issues between Telegram Open Network and the US SEC – where a pending lawsuit and investigation is preventing the coin from being launched. Very likely the developers behind Free TON has learnt from the previous mistakes and decided not to include US residents in any form.

Conclusion

Free TON is everything Telegram Open Network would be – but without Telegram. The community project aims at creating a decentralized network using all the research and development which went into the original TON (a project that was canceled due to regulatory issues).