Pavel Durov Just Released a Developer Tool That Makes TON Smart Contract Building 10x Faster
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Pavel Durov has unveiled Acton, a unified command-line development toolchain for The Open Network that consolidates what was previously a fragmented stack of separate tools into a single environment covering writing, testing, deployment, and on-chain verification. Built around Tolk, TON's newer smart contract language, Acton eliminates the need to juggle multiple tools across different stages of development and ships with test execution speeds approximately 50 times faster than the previous setup. The tool integrates with popular code editors, includes built-in debugging and testing features out of the box, and allows developers to simulate real blockchain conditions locally before going live. Durov's tagline for the release — "Built for humans. Perfect for AI" — signals the tool's dual design intent: accessible enough for individual developers while structured specifically to support AI coding agents, with dedicated guides for tools like Codex and Claude built directly into the toolchain.
That AI-native architecture is the detail worth paying attention to beyond the developer experience improvements. Acton is not just a better workflow for human developers — it is designed to function as a backend for fully autonomous AI-driven development on TON, meaning AI agents can build, test, and deploy smart contracts on the network without human intervention at each stage. As agentic AI development becomes an increasingly real workflow rather than a theoretical concept, a blockchain with purpose-built infrastructure for AI agents to build on it has a structural advantage in attracting the next wave of on-chain applications. Mainnet deployments over the coming weeks will provide the first real signal of whether the developer experience improvements translate into meaningful ecosystem growth.