Probably Something: The History of Mass Minting on TON

In 2024, the TON blockchain witnessed a dramatic surge in adoption, with tens of millions of users participating in massive airdrops. But what allowed TON to handle such colossal transaction volumes without buckling under pressure? The answer lies in the innovative tools and strategies developed for large-scale mass minting and distribution of tokens.

Tools like Mintless Jettons, Mass Sender, and TokenTable revolutionized how airdrops were conducted, enabling seamless token distribution to millions of users while minimizing disruptions. As we move into 2025, these tools have equipped TON with the infrastructure to support future groundbreaking projects on a global scale.

Let’s dive into the history of mass minting on TON and how the network evolved to meet the demands of one of the most ambitious phases in blockchain development.

The Dawn of Mass Minting

The year 2024 marked a pivotal moment for the TON blockchain, as several projects sought to distribute tokens to millions of users. The surge in user numbers was partly driven by the popularity of new Telegram-based games and decentralized applications (dApps) that introduced new, user-friendly mechanics, allowing even the most casual users to engage with crypto.

The biggest hurdle these projects faced was scaling the network to accommodate airdrops at this level. Traditional methods of on-chain token distribution, such as sending individual transactions to every wallet, would have overwhelmed the network and resulted in high transaction costs. TON needed a way to handle this influx of users efficiently, without compromising the user experience or the stability of the blockchain.

Enter Mintless Jettons, Mass Sender, and TokenTable

As the demand for mass airdrops grew, TON saw the emergence of three critical tools: Mintless Jettons, Mass Sender, and TokenTable. Each of these tools solved different aspects of the airdrop problem, from minimizing network congestion to making the process more user-friendly.

Mintless Jettons: A New Way to Mint Tokens

The Mintless Jetton approach was a game-changer in the world of token distribution. It allowed token projects to bypass traditional minting processes, instead focusing on the minting of tokens only when users claim them. This dramatically reduced the strain on the network, since tokens were not minted until they were needed for specific users, thus avoiding unnecessary blockchain congestion.

By introducing the concept of Mintless Jettons, TON ensured that large-scale projects could distribute rewards to millions of users efficiently while keeping transaction costs low and network loads manageable. The strategy was simple but effective: tokens were created only when required, reducing overhead and preventing the mass minting bottleneck that has plagued other blockchains.

Mass Sender: Streamlining Token Distribution

The Notcoin airdrop in early 2024 was one of the first major events to showcase the power of Mass Sender, a tool developed to facilitate large-scale token distributions. Mass Sender was designed with efficiency in mind, optimizing the number of transactions needed for airdrops.

Instead of sending tokens individually to millions of wallets, Mass Sender grouped users based on shared addresses and distributed rewards in bulk. By splitting recipients among multiple wallets (16, to be precise), Mass Sender reduced the number of cross-shard communications—significantly speeding up the distribution process and lowering the chances of overloading the network.

Another key feature of Mass Sender was its dynamic transaction management. It automatically adjusted the speed at which tokens were sent, based on real-time network activity. This allowed the system to distribute tokens without causing excessive congestion, ensuring a smoother user experience during peak times.

TokenTable: Empowering Users to Claim Rewards

While Mass Sender helped automate the distribution process, TokenTable took a different approach, empowering users to claim their rewards at their own convenience. Unlike Mass Sender, where tokens were sent to users directly, TokenTable allowed users to initiate the claim process themselves. This "claiming" approach shifted the burden of transaction fees to users, as they were responsible for paying their own gas fees in Toncoin.

TokenTable was well-suited for smaller airdrops but faced challenges during the larger ones, like the DOGS airdrop, which reached 50 million users. The sheer scale of the airdrop put enormous pressure on the system, resulting in network congestion and validator issues. However, TokenTable’s flexibility allowed the system to be adjusted on the fly, with solutions like spreading contract interactions across different shards and optimizing transaction speed, helping mitigate the bottlenecks.

Lessons Learned and the Path Forward

The challenges and successes of mass minting in 2024 provided valuable insights into how TON can scale for future projects. Some key lessons learned include:

• Scalability is Key: Tools like Mass Sender and Mintless Jettons proved that with the right infrastructure, TON could handle millions of users and massive transaction volumes without compromising performance.

• User Empowerment Matters: TokenTable’s “claiming” approach demonstrated the importance of letting users control their participation in airdrops. While it required users to have Toncoin for transaction fees, it also gave them more flexibility in when and how they interacted with the system.

• Optimizing for Speed: The need for real-time adjustments to transaction speeds and managing network congestion became clear. The TON team has since implemented optimizations to ensure smoother operations during peak traffic times, such as during major airdrop events.

• Adapting to Demand: The lessons learned from the DOGS airdrop helped improve tools like TokenTable, making them more robust and capable of handling future large-scale events.

Ready for the Future

As we head into 2025, TON is better equipped than ever to support large-scale airdrops, token distributions, and decentralized applications. Thanks to the development of Mintless Jettons, Mass Sender, and TokenTable, the TON blockchain can handle unprecedented transaction volumes, while keeping costs low and user experience smooth.

These tools have set the stage for a new era in blockchain mass minting, enabling projects to launch at scale without compromising on performance or user engagement. With these innovations, TON is not only prepared to meet the demands of the next wave of blockchain projects but is poised to lead the way in shaping the future of decentralized finance and digital assets.

Read more about TON’s journey and the evolution of mass minting in our full blog post here: History of Mass Minting on TON.