Anton Trunov Joins TON Foundation and Presents a New Tact Roadmap

Anton Trunov, a prominent blockchain developer recognized for his work on blockchain-oriented programming languages, is joining the TON Foundation to focus on TON's Tact language. Trunov is not just another hire; it's a strategic move signaling a new era for Tact, TON's innovative smart contract development language.

In the past, Anton worked on Zilliqa and Fuel ecosystems, where he played a key role in shaping the Scilla and Sway smart contract languages. His expertise and work reflect a deep understanding of blockchain technology and innovative programming languages. Anton also has a strong academic background and has co-authored several papers on language design and verification.

We welcome Anton to the team and believe that his contributions will shape the development of TON and provide developers building on Tact with unparalleled ease of use and robustness, making it a go-to language for blockchain developers. Anton's joining marks a milestone for the TON Foundation and the Tact language. His track record promises an exciting future for Tact, solidifying TON's position as a leader in the Web3 market.

As we welcome Anton, we also want to extend our deepest gratitude to the initial creators of Tact, Oleg Andreev, Steve Korshakov, Tal Kol, and Kirill Emelyanenko. Their vision and efforts have been fundamental in bringing Tact to where it is today, and their legacy continues with Anton's fresh perspective and expertise.

Tact: The Next Frontier

Tact, accessible at tact-lang.org, represents the next generation of smart contract languages. It's designed to be at the forefront of the blockchain revolution, and with Anton's addition to the team, Tact is poised to become the industry's most user-friendly smart contract language.

Under Anton's guidance, Tact comes with a new development roadmap. This roadmap is not just a plan but also an invitation for collaboration. We encourage the TON community, developers, and enthusiasts to follow Tact's development and contribute to further refining it. Your voice matters, and you can make it heard at Tact Language Roadmap, where we welcome all your feedback.

The Tact Roadmap

This is just a brief overview of the items on Anton’s new Tact Roadmap. Please see the link at the end of this article for a detailed view.

• Security Audit: Collaborating with experts to ensure Tact's security, particularly addressing FunC's security as Tact transpiles into it. This includes resolving code execution issues and thorough penetration testing.
• Language Enhancements:
  • Introduction of typed tuples and enums for more expressive smart contracts.
  • Arrays implementation, improving upon the current workaround using maps.
  • Enhanced handling of low-level constructs like Slice and Cell.
  • Local type inference and improved support for nullable types.
  • Advanced map functionalities, including traversals and better deletion syntax.
  • New stateful operators and syntactic sugar for smoother coding.
  • Improved error reporting for both syntactic and semantic errors.
• Contract Upgradeability: Implementing a standardized mechanism for contract and family upgrades.
• Gas Optimization: Aiming to reduce gas consumption for both user-written code and the Tact runtime.
• Development Tooling: Focusing primarily on the VS Code plugin and developing a standalone LSP server for broader editor compatibility.
• Documentation Enhancement: Expanding Tact documentation with chapters for beginners, best practices, and common issues. Community contributions are encouraged and facilitated by our Grants and Bounties program.
• Security Audit Tools: Developing automated tools for security audits, including static analyzers and tools for model checking and symbolic execution. Community input is sought for these tools, focusing on the unique challenges of the actor model in TON.

To dive deep into the details, please visit The Tact Roadmap on GitHub.