Miners’ wallets were suspended for four years if they have been inactive with no outgoing transactions.
Users and validators of The Open Network (TON), a layer-1 blockchain that was formerly developed by Telegram, voted on February 22 to suspend miners’ wallets for four years if they are inactive and have never carried out an outbound transaction.
1,081,389,416 Toncoin (TON) tokens, valued an estimated $2.58 billion at the time of publication and representing more than 20% of all TON tokens in circulation, were suspended as a result of the judgment.
The first two rounds of the validator vote, which got underway on February 21, 2023, were won without the need for a third tie-breaker round. On December 17, 2022, the TON Foundation asked miners to demonstrate their activity by making a transaction on the TON blockchain.
24 of the 195 inactive addresses have been activated after that notification. The remaining 171 addresses, or less than 0.009% of the total number of wallets on the network, which together held 1,081,389,416 TON, were therefore the subject of the vote.
Following today’s vote, the addresses will be revoked for a period of four years. According to developers, 98.55% of the entire supply became accessible for mining in July 2020, marking the start of the distribution of TON.
The strategy enables TON to retain its status as a proof-of-stake blockchain while gaining the decentralization provided by proof-of-work when implemented in special “Giver” smart contracts.
The creators claim that by suspending these wallets, it will be clearer how much TON is currently in circulation and “that the vibrant community engaging in the open-source project will continue to grow and thrive.”
Long-standing rumors in the TON community suggest that access to these dormant wallets may have been lost. Some contend that the presence of TON simply makes the situation for network users more unpredictable.
On the TON network, TON is utilized as the gas charge needed to access decentralized services. Three years ago, Telegram stopped working on TON after the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged the company with violating securities laws in connection with a $1.7 billion initial coin offering in 2018. Since then, community developers have been given control of the project.
