TVM Challenge 2023

The TVM Challenge 2023 was a competition hosted by the TON Foundation to explore the updated capabilities of the TON Virtual Machine (TVM). Participants developed innovative smart contracts and tools, competing for a 30,000 $TON prize pool.

Overview#

The event ran from June 2 to June 25, 2023 and concluded with a jury‑selected set of winners. The challenge encouraged developers to experiment with new opcodes, improve efficiency and security, and create novel decentralized applications on TON.

Goals

Test and demonstrate new TVM operation codes.
Boost the performance and safety of the TON ecosystem.
Motivate developers to build cutting‑edge smart contracts.

TVM Enhancements Highlighted in the Challenge#

Hash functions added: SHA‑256, SHA‑512, BLAKE2B, KECCAK‑256, KECCAK‑512.
Cryptographic curves supported: secp256k1, secp256r1, BLS12‑381, Ristretto.
New instruction set included arbitrary‑precision arithmetic, improved message dispatch, stack operations, and the ability to run TVM inside TVM via the RUNVM instruction.

Organization and Participation#

Applicants submitted a project name, a brief description (max 3 sentences), a link to the code repository or website, and a TON address. The jury evaluated entries based on relevance to new opcodes, gas efficiency, originality, and technical complexity (with a 1.5× multiplier for difficulty).

Jury (selected members)

Andrey Tvorozhkov — Disintar / dton
Steve Korshakov — Independent TON evangelist, Tact Lead
Tim — TON Diamonds (bold)
Dan Volkov — TON Whales (bold)
Nikita Kuznetsov — OpenMask (bold)
Shahar — Orbs (bold)
Amin Rezaei — Skyring Foundation / Rift framework (bold)
Andrey Pfau — TON Foundation (bold)
Nick Nekilov — DeDust (/wiki/dedust)
Vladimir Lebedev — Independent researcher (bold)
Dario — STON.fi (/wiki/ston-fi)
Dr. Awesome Doge — TonX Studio (bold)

Prize Distribution and Scoring#

The total prize pool of 30,000 $TON was allocated according to jury scores, with each project able to earn up to 40.5 points. The top three projects each received 4,268 $TON, while the first‑place winner earned 5,691 $TON.

Rank	Project	Score	Prize ($TON)
1	snarkjs-func	34.5	5,691
2	Snarkjs TVM Integration	28.5	5,053
3	Wallet v5	28	4,268
3	Clean.ton	28	4,268
4	Tonnel Network	27	3,359
5	Circom Integration	24.5	2,391
5	FrosTON	24.5	2,391
6	Merkle Proof for Bridging	17.5	1,476
7	zero-gas-vote-ton	12.5	744
8	TBDt & TDA Concept	12	281
9	evm-over-ton-vote	4.5	71

Impact and Outcomes#

The challenge accelerated the adoption of advanced cryptographic primitives (zk‑SNARKs, PLONK) and introduced new wallet standards (Wallet v5). Several winning projects have been integrated into the mainnet TVM upgrade, expanding the toolkit available to TON developers.