No, Free TON Hasn’t Just Forked Telegram’s TON Blockchain

Free TON Community, an independent group of developers and users, have just launched a free version of the Telegram Open Network, or TON. During the launch event on May 7, community members answered major questions about the Free TON Blockchain launch.

At the launch Zoom call, a number of users were wondering whether the Free TON Blockchain represents a fork of Telegram’s original TON. According to a key community member, the Free TON Blockchain should not be referred to as a fork.

“There is no network to fork”

Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO at TON Labs — TON’s core infrastructure developer — says that the Free TON Blockchain is not a fork of the TON because no preexisting chain exists.

The executive said:

“We didn’t really fork anything. We’ve built from the available repositories. I think people are using two different meanings of the “fork” — the fork of the repository and the fork of the network. The fork of the repository is a basic thing how GitHub works. […] If…