Getting started with contracts
The aim of this document is to provide step-by-step instructions for compiling and creating simple smart contract (a simple wallet) in the TON Blockchain Test Network using the TON Blockchain Lite Client and associated software.
Wallets and Contracts
Everything is a smart contract in TON. Wallets are also just smart contracts with a code of a wallet contract.
There are 4 generic versions of a wallet contract in the TON: simple wallet, v2, v3 and v4. Some of them are also have
minor revisions.
Right now everyone is slowly migrate to latest v4 wallets and we recommend to use them too instead of obsolete revisions.
Chains
TON have two chains: workchain and masterchain. The last one is very expensive and shouldn't be used by anyone except validators
and other system-level contracts. Workchain is where most contracts should be executing.
TON is scalable in a way that workchain could split into any needed number of shards and execute contracts in parallel.
Before starting to build contracts for TON you need to understand that this shards do not have any shared state and therefore there are no way to read other contract's data like you can in Ethereum-based blockchains.
Contract address
Contract address in TON is a hash of initial Data and Code of a contract. This hash is quite complicated to describe and you should just use libraries for your language for calculations.
Address consists of two values:
- Number of chain:
0for workchain,-1is for masterchain - 256-bit hash of initial code and data