Evgeny Teslov — product owner of TON Surf.
Interviewer — Polina Vishnevskaya.
• Tell us a few words about your previous experience.
The experience is quite classic — my own design and development studios. In the distant past, there were several personal startups, quite a long work in a startup incubator in Eastern Europe. And 10 years of work in IT.
• Impressive! How did you get into TON Labs and become responsible for TON Surf?
One fine spring day, closer to summer, Mitya Goroshevsky wrote to me. We talked about the project and the product: what exactly he wants to create, what his thoughts are. He sparked me with this idea and invited me to the company.
• What problems did you face while developing and maintaining the project?
None! Of course, there are no beaten paths in this area, so it is very difficult to say what is the problem and what is the challenge, what we are doing right and what is wrong. This is often groping, feedback, measurements, direction changes. But this is classic agile development, so no problem. When someone comes and says that they know exactly how to do this or that thing, I personally never believe in it. Because every time a new condition arises, challenges, a constantly changing situation. This is balancing.
• In your opinion, what unique product features can help bring TON Surf to the top?
In fact, we are inventing a new language for interacting with the blockchain and this is perhaps the main thing that distinguishes us from everything that is around now. The other day we started talking about the safety card inside Surf, which is coming soon. Plus DeBot. Any feature that we start talking about is unique in its own way.
• How many wallets per day or other period of time are created in TON Surf?
We are still within the community, so this is a floating number. Interaction with our partners is growing. They carry out various activities and conduct different games. If we talk about development, then within our main community there are at least 100 active Mainnet users. If we are talking about developers, then this figure, perhaps, can be safely multiplied by 2.
• Do people doubt that the server is open source?
I can say for sure that now Surf, if we talk about wallets, accounts, is perhaps one of the safest products in this system. Using such encryption, you can say for sure that no one except the user has access to the keys. Even we don’t.
• Will you create open source Surf so that people can check the source and know that nothing is embedded?
Naturally, this is in the plans. And I think that it will be next year.
• You are about to release a TON Labs card. What are its features?
The card has the highest certified security score of 6+ and has a chip inside. This is an absolutely unique flow for ordering this card. For example, when ordering any wallet, during the manufacturing process and going to the addressee, many people have access to it — from production to mail. As a result, it is not clear who will get everything for you. And our security card cannot be compromised after you click «Order».
In the near future we will talk in sufficient detail about each stage of the life of this card: what are its features, about many interesting things that are built inside. In my opinion, one of the main features of the map is essentially a whale, a physical medium for which you, as a developer, creator of any product, can come up with a Use Case, some kind of use with this map.
• Are there any plans to integrate TON Surf with other services and products?
It’s very simple: DeBot allows you to carry out absolutely any integrations you want.
• Share a spoiler for the upcoming TON Surf update.
We release updates almost every week, and then it turns out we need to get together and spoil once a week about updates. For now I will not talk about some technological things, but in the very near future we will be working on the «dark shadow» — I think several people will be very happy about this.
• What do you think are the prospects for the Free TON project? How do you feel about this project? What can the project and its participants achieve in 5 years, for example?
Not the easiest question. But I think that Free TON is a unique opportunity, and we are convinced of this every day. It can be used in order to give people the opportunity to realize absolutely any ideas, ideas inside Friton. And it is very important to make it the way people themselves see the project. And the prospects are the most wonderful! I would not like to talk about any numbers, but if we focus on Surf, then we see a goal — 9 billion users inside.
• What can you wish for our listeners and readers?
If guests or the community ask when a particular functionality or product will appear within the ecosystem, I always want to wish not to be just passive participants, but to take a proactive position in the development of the community. In fact, now is a very unique time and the opportunity to make Free TON the way everyone sees it.
The article is based on the results of an interview published on the freeton.org