Validators process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

The Open Network (TON) is a smart contract platform for decentralized applications (a blockchain). The Open Network was founded by Telegram and launched in 2019.

GRAM holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take (burn) a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). The Open Network's investors include KuCoin Ventures, MEXC Ventures, DWF Labs, etc.

governance

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Blockchains (L1)

# TON Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

Expenses measures the total cost incurred by the TON blockchain network to operate its business. This metric captures the daily USD value of block rewards distributed as token incentives to validators and block producers. Both masterchain and workchain (shard) block rewards are aggregated, normalized by decimal precision, and converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: Block data from the TON blockchain, covering TON
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for the native asset

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Masterchain block data

- **Purpose**: Masterchain blocks, which are the primary coordination blocks in TON's architecture, are extracted.
- **Logic**: TON blockchain blocks data is filtered to include only blocks from workchain -1 (the masterchain). Block timestamps, sequence numbers (`seqno`), workchain ID, and shard information are extracted.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `block_number` (from `seqno`), `workchain`, `shard`

### Component B: Workchain block data
- **Purpose**: Workchain blocks, which represent the shard blocks in TON's multi-chain architecture, are extracted.
- **Logic**: TON blockchain blocks data is filtered to include only blocks from workchain 0 (the base workchain). Each workchain block is linked to its corresponding masterchain block through `masterchain_block_seqno`.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `masterchain_block_number` (from `masterchain_block_seqno`), `workchain`, `shard`, `block_number`

### Component C: Shard block reward calculation

- **Purpose**: The reward amount for each workchain (shard) block is determined based on the number of active shards.
- **Logic**: Workchain blocks are grouped by `masterchain_block_number` to count distinct shards. A fixed basechain reward of 1 billion nanoTON is divided by the number of distinct shards to calculate the per-shard reward amount.
- **Key fields**: `masterchain_block_number`, `block_reward_shard` (calculated as 1,000,000,000 / distinct shard count)

### Component D: Block rewards assignment

- **Purpose**: Specific reward amounts are assigned to both masterchain and workchain blocks.
- **Logic**: For workchain blocks, a join is performed with the calculated shard rewards to assign the appropriate `block_reward_shard` amount. For masterchain blocks, a fixed reward of 1.7 billion nanoTON per block is assigned. Both reward types are combined into a unified dataset.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `masterchain_block_number`, `workchain`, `shard`, `block_number`, `amount`

### Component E: Asset normalization and USD pricing

- **Purpose**: Raw nanoTON amounts are normalized and USD pricing is applied.
- **Logic**: Reward amounts are normalized by decimal precision to convert from nanoTON to native assets. End-of-day price feeds for the native asset are applied to calculate the USD value.
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` (converted asset amounts in USD), chain and business classification fields

### Component F: Daily aggregation and finalization

- **Purpose**: Daily totals are aggregated and finalized as the expenses metric.
- **Logic**: All block rewards (both masterchain and workchain) are combined and aggregated by day. Block timestamps are truncated to the day level, and all rewards within each day are summed. The daily total of all block rewards converted to USD is represented as the expenses metric.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

TONGRAM

Expenses

Expenses

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