What makes TON smart contracts different from EVM-based chains?

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TON smart contracts are written in FunC or Tact, compiled to TON Virtual Machine (TVM) bytecode. Unlike the EVM, TON uses an asynchronous message-passing model, where contracts communicate via internal messages rather than synchronous calls.

This architecture enables parallel execution across shards but requires developers to think in terms of state transitions and message queues. The tradeoff is higher scalability and composability at scale, with fewer global bottlenecks compared to EVM chains.