Payments on TON Blockchain: Speed, Low Fees, and Payment Channels

The TON blockchain is designed for speed and efficiency. With a block time of just 5 seconds, it can process millions of transactions within that short period. Even as network load increases, the block time remains constant, ensuring high scalability. Furthermore, TON has exceptionally low transaction fees, making it highly cost-effective for a wide range of applications.

In traditional banking apps, transferring money also takes only a few seconds, but most users don't notice due to the animated transitions. While some blockchains aim to reduce block times to milliseconds, we believe that reducing block time on the TON network beyond 5 seconds would not provide any significant benefits. Although technically possible, decreasing block times would require nodes to process and store large amounts of data on their drives, which isn’t efficient in the long run. Competing over nominal metrics at the expense of efficiency doesn’t align with the TON network's philosophy.

However, there are cases where near-instant transactions with zero network fees are necessary. For example, payments for internet data via TON Proxy or TON Storage could require a fee as low as 0.000000001 TON per kilobyte (for illustrative purposes). A 1GB file download could result in millions of microtransactions, totaling around 0.01 TON. To address this challenge, Payment Channels were introduced.

Payment Channels: Lightning-Fast Transactions Off-Chain

The concept behind Payment Channels, also known as the Lightning Network, is simple but highly effective:

• Two parties (e.g., Alice and Bob) agree to transact frequently between each other.

• They create a special smart contract on the TON blockchain, where they deposit their initial balances (e.g., Alice deposits 5 TON, and Bob deposits 1 TON).

• Once the channel is created, Alice and Bob can send as many transactions as they wish off the blockchain, without incurring additional transaction fees or waiting for block confirmations. Every transaction is signed cryptographically by both parties.

• When they finish transacting, they both sign the final balances, which are sent back to the smart contract, allowing the contract to return each party’s funds based on their final balance. For example, Alice would receive 4 TON, and Bob would get 2 TON.

• Network fees are only incurred when the channel is opened and closed, significantly reducing costs.

The key advantage of this system is that all transactions happen off-chain, meaning they are free and occur without any speed limitations. However, the smart contract ensures the proper operation of the channel. If one of the parties attempts to cheat or disappears, the other party can close the channel and retrieve their funds by presenting mathematical proof.

Tools for Payment Channels

To help developers integrate Payment Channels, the TON blockchain provides tools and ready-made smart contracts. You can find a technical description of Payment Channels in the TON white paper, chapter 5, and access the .

For ease of use, the TON blockchain also provides SDKs that simplify the implementation of Payment Channels:

• JavaScript SDK: TON Web SDK

• Example of using Payment Channels: Payment Channels Example

Networks of Payment Channels

As the technology evolves, the capability of Payment Channels is growing. Soon, multiple parties can participate in a single off-chain network. Current smart contracts already support the functionality of connecting several payment channels into a unified off-chain network, providing more flexibility and scalability.

Conclusion

The TON blockchain offers lightning-fast speeds and ultra-low transaction fees. For use cases that require millions of transactions with zero fees—such as payments for internet data, streaming, games, and decentralized finance (DeFi)—Payment Channels are the perfect solution. This technology enables fast, secure, and highly cost-effective transactions off-chain, all while maintaining the decentralization and security of the TON network.

With TON Payments, you now have a powerful tool to support billions of microtransactions at a fraction of the cost of traditional payment systems. Explore the potential of TON Payments and join the decentralized future!