Pavel Durov unveiled Acton, a unified development toolchain for The Open Network (TON). The Telegram founder says it makes smart contract building 10x faster than the previous fragmented stack. According to reports from CoinDesk, Acton is built around Tolk, TON's newer smart contract language, and serves as an all-in-one command-line tool that guides developers through every stage of building on TON. The tool covers writing, testing, deployment, and on-chain verification in a single environment, launching with the tagline 'Built for humans. Perfect for AI.' As reported by BeInCrypto, Durov emphasized that developing for TON just became 10x faster with this comprehensive solution that replaces TON's fragmented tooling stack with one unified developer flow.
Acton delivers significant performance improvements, with tests running approximately 50 times faster than before. As reported by CoinDesk, the tool works with the most popular code editors and comes with built-in debugging and testing features out of the box. Developers can also simulate real blockchain conditions locally before going live. The tool is built with AI in mind from the ground up, including dedicated guides for AI coding agents and directly supporting tools like Codex and Claude. This AI-ready infrastructure makes Acton more than just a developer tool, potentially serving as a backend for fully autonomous AI-driven development on TON. According to BeInCrypto, this comprehensive approach ensures that most importantly, fully AI-ready workflows are built into the toolchain from the ground up.
The Acton release coincides with Telegram taking direct control of TON's validator set, staking 2.2 million tokens on May 4 to claim the largest validator slot from the TON Foundation. According to reports from CoinDesk, this move is part of Durov's 'Make TON Great Again' roadmap, which has already cut transaction fees sixfold and rolled out a faster consensus mechanism. Catchain 2.0, a separate consensus upgrade, pushed network finality below one second in April. As reported by BeInCrypto, this performance improvement positions TON as the fastest L1 out there, with finalization times of just 0.6 seconds - making it 6,000x faster than Bitcoin.
Toncoin (TON) rallied by more than 100% after the validator news, only to retrace. As reported by CoinDesk, analysts have flagged centralization risks even as protocol metrics improve. Acton's reception among developers will determine whether TON can challenge Solana and Ethereum in the mini-app commerce space. Mainnet deployments in the coming weeks should provide the first measurable signal of the tool's impact on network adoption and developer engagement. According to BeInCrypto, Telegram's nearly one-billion-user base remains the biggest distribution wedge no rival chain can match, providing TON with a significant competitive advantage in the blockchain ecosystem.
