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TON Is Dead?
The Open Network closed out 2024 as one of the most talked-about blockchain ecosystems. Within months, its metrics surged across the board — from TVL to daily user activity. Telegram integration, a wave of viral mini-apps, and gamified mechanics drew massive attention from across the crypto industry. Now, six months later, the question being asked is very different.
Where does TON go from here?
The hype of 2024 gave way to an inevitable cooldown — both in usage and in media buzz. A political storm around Telegram and its founder Pavel Durov, including his arrest in France, added layers of uncertainty. Internal shake-ups at TON Foundation, emerging forks, and criticism from developers only deepened the questions.
Today, the industry is once again debating TON’s viability — not in terms of survival, but of long-term trajectory. Is this just a period of correction after exponential growth — or the early signs of a structural crisis?
This report offers a clear-eyed analysis of the ecosystem, grounded in data, technical progress, and the strategic choices made by TON’s core team.
Key Metrics from 2024
After more than three years of near silence, TON returned to the spotlight in 2024. Three forces converged to drive its resurgence: explosive user growth within Telegram, the rise of viral mini-apps, and a rapid influx of capital into the DeFi segment. Together, they pushed Toncoin into the ranks of the year’s top-performing L1 blockchains.
TON started the year with a total value locked (TVL) of around $76 million. By July, that number had surged eightfold, peaking at $740 million. The spike was fueled by aggressive incentive programs on STON.fi and DeDust, alongside a wave of yield farming across newly launched tokens.
By December, TVL had dropped back to around $248 million — a result of reward exhaustion and the cooling of the meme-token frenzy. As of mid-2025, the network has stabilized in the $600–650 million range, placing TON back in the top 10 L1s by locked value.
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At the beginning of 2024, the TON network saw around 26,000 active addresses per day. By December, fueled by the popularity of Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, that number had surged past 880,000 daily users. Peak days aligned with the launch of ad monetization and airdrop campaigns—on March 31 alone, over 156,000 new addresses were created.
By the end of 2024, network traffic began to stabilize. The average daily transaction count settled around 4.3 million, with occasional spikes reaching 10 million. In spring 2025, user activity declined, fluctuating between 100,000 and 170,000 unique daily addresses. Still, the total number of created accounts surpassed 151 million.
A major driver of TON’s expansion was the launch of TON Space — a non-custodial wallet integrated directly into Telegram. Introduced in the fall of 2023, it had been rolled out to the majority of the messenger’s ≈1 billion users by mid-2024. It became the main onboarding channel: over the course of a year, the number of TON users grew from 4 million to 41 million.
Despite the TON Wallet being blocked for U.S. users in November 2023 (due to potential regulatory concerns), the integration with Telegram remains one of the network’s defining advantages. According to strategic documents, the goal is to bring at least 30% of Telegram’s user base into Web3 via TON by 2028.
Legal Uncertainty: The Durov Case and Its Aftermath
In the second half of 2024, the TON ecosystem faced its first major geopolitical crisis — triggered by Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and a key strategic ally of the TON Foundation. His arrest in France created a wave of uncertainty, highlighting how tightly TON’s fortunes are tied to the political stability surrounding Telegram.
On August 24, 2024, French law enforcement detained Pavel Durov on charges of non-cooperation in investigations related to crimes allegedly facilitated via the Telegram platform. Authorities classified his actions as aiding in the distribution of narcotics, money laundering, and other serious offenses. Four days later, Durov was released on bail of €5 million, under conditions that included weekly police check-ins and a ban on leaving France until the investigation concluded.
Two weeks after the incident, Durov issued a statement on his Telegram channel, describing the arrest as a disproportionate response by the authorities, given the company’s open lines of communication. At the same time, he acknowledged shortcomings in Telegram’s content moderation and announced intentions to strengthen internal oversight. Telegram’s leadership confirmed their cooperation with European regulators, compliance with data-sharing requirements, and implementation of new measures to counter illicit activity.
The events sparked short-term volatility in the crypto market. Toncoin dropped by roughly 20% within 48 hours, liquidity exited major DEXs on the network, and user activity temporarily declined. The incident exposed a structural vulnerability in TON’s design: its deep reliance on Telegram as the main onboarding channel, application layer, and information interface.
Despite the formal separation between the TON Foundation and Telegram, the blockchain’s practical operations remain deeply embedded within the messenger. Market perception of the project is closely tied to the Telegram brand and the strategic decisions of its leadership. Durov’s arrest accelerated governance restructuring at the TON Foundation and sparked discussions about the need for institutional redesign of the ecosystem.
With mounting regulatory pressure on crypto functionalities within messaging platforms across Europe and the U.S., the question of TON’s strategic autonomy from Telegram remains unresolved.
Governance Restructuring and Capitalization
The events of August 2024 triggered structural shifts within the TON Foundation’s governance. In October, the foundation appointed a new executive director, reorganized its core working groups, and brought in external consultants specializing in fintech and crypto regulation to shape its 2025–2026 strategic roadmap.
The first initiative under this renewed direction was the launch of a $30 million grant pool in November, aimed at funding open-source projects across the ecosystem. Simultaneously, the team announced plans to expand the network of validators and incentivize the development of independent infrastructure nodes to reduce centralization in network management.
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In the fall of 2024, TON also secured backing from several new investors. While most names were not disclosed, it’s known that the round included Asian venture capital firms—some affiliated with Alibaba and SoftBank—as well as family offices from the UAE and Hong Kong. Analysts at Messari estimated the total capital raised in Q4 2024 at over $80 million. The funds were allocated to L2 infrastructure development, the launch of the Payment Network, and support for TON Storage.
The symbolic start of a new phase came in January 2025 with the emergence of Ice Open Network (ICEN)—a TON fork launched by a group of independent developers. The team publicly accused the TON Foundation of violating open-source principles, lacking transparency in decision-making, and failing to commit to meaningful decentralization. Despite its limited technical scope and weak liquidity, the fork sparked significant media attention and community discussion, forcing TON to address fundamental questions about openness and governance.
In response, the Foundation organized a series of public-facing actions: AMA sessions with developers, publication of verified roadmaps, and the launch of TON.Dev—a centralized portal for developer tools and documentation. It also announced plans to legally structure Toncoin in line with the EU’s MiCA regulations and secured preliminary agreements for listings on regulated Asian exchanges.
Together, these efforts signal TON’s broader transformation—from a Telegram-integrated product to a self-standing blockchain infrastructure with institutional financing, an independent developer base, and a regulatory-compliant token economy.
Technological Progress and Architectural Overhaul
TON's technological evolution continued steadily throughout 2024 and into 2025, paralleling its internal governance shifts. Key upgrades focused on scalability, developer experience, and cross-chain interoperability—signaling TON’s ambition to become a universal infrastructure layer beyond the Telegram ecosystem.
The flagship update was the launch of Accelerator, a sweeping network upgrade that implemented infinite sharding as originally outlined in the TON whitepaper. This included improvements to shardchain tracking—allowing nodes to follow only relevant chains instead of the entire network—separation of collator and validator roles, and preparation for a sharp increase in parallel transaction throughput. As a result, TON now maintains stable transaction finality even under high load, while reducing hardware demands and improving node resilience.
Validator tooling also saw major upgrades: rapid node migration features, Telegram bots for uptime monitoring, enhanced web dashboards, and an updated slashing mechanism. Work is also underway on a new version of TON Proxy with stronger DDoS protections, scheduled for release by the end of 2025.
A new version of the Toncenter API was introduced with major usability improvements—more human-readable transaction traces, TON DNS integration, and transaction emulation before signing. The changes aim to streamline dApp development and debugging.
In terms of smart contract languages, TOLK 1.0 was added alongside FunC and Tact, bringing support for pattern matching, interfaces, and modern contract structures. Extensions for VS Code and IntelliJ are also in progress to ease onboarding for developers.
A major leap toward interoperability came with the integration of LayerZero and the launch of decentralized bridges: TON Teleport for Bitcoin, Stargate for USDT and other stablecoins, and Toncoin Bridge with support for Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Tron. These bridges eliminate TON’s historical isolation and bring it into the multichain ecosystem.
The roadmap also includes the upcoming Payment Network, a Layer 2 solution for micropayments with near-zero fees. It’s already in testnet, supporting instant transfers and lightweight swaps. TVM-based sidechains are also being explored for high-frequency trading and gaming applications.
TON’s technical transformation reflects a level of architectural ambition that rivals and even surpasses many L1 networks. Its priority is clear: deepen developer experience and maximize interoperability as foundations for long-term growth.
User Scenarios: Gaming Mechanics and Microeconomies
Alongside its infrastructure upgrades, TON showcased impressive user-facing adaptability. In 2024, it evolved from a backend blockchain into a transaction layer powering Telegram-native experiences—most notably, viral mini-app games and tap-to-earn models.
The breakout hit was Notcoin, launched in spring 2024. Tens of millions of users earned tokens by tapping on-screen elements in a Telegram interface. These tokens later achieved market value and became tradable crypto assets. Following its success, Hamster Kombat, a quirky management-style game, pulled in up to 100 million users, with around 40 million daily actives.
While much of the game logic ran off-chain, TON handled core tokenomics, wallet integration, and the infrastructure for asset issuance. These experiments reframed TON not as a technical playground for developers—but as a mainstream economic engine within one of the world’s largest messaging platforms.
Additional user-facing mechanisms have emerged alongside the gaming trend. Fragment became the leading marketplace for Telegram usernames and virtual numbers, with all transactions settled in Toncoin. At its peak, monthly trading volume exceeded $20 million. In May 2025, TON MRKT was launched — an NFT store for digital gifts and stickers directly integrated into Telegram. Unlike Telegram Stars, TON MRKT operates with actual tokens, supports rarity tiers, and enables a secondary market, aligning it more closely with traditional NFT platforms.
These use cases showcase TON’s ability to build an ecosystem of daily microtransactions woven into existing user habits. Telegram acts as the interface layer, while TON powers the settlement and reputation infrastructure. Web3 functionality emerges without the user even perceiving it as blockchain tech — the interactions remain within gaming, social, and consumer behaviors.
TON becomes the invisible layer beneath social, entertainment, and commerce activity. And while critics may dismiss this trend as fleeting "gamification," it’s precisely this dynamic that gave TON a scale of user engagement unmatched by any other blockchain to date.
Structural Challenges and Limitations
TON’s rapid growth and institutional initiatives are accompanied by structural challenges that may constrain its long-term development.
Infrastructure Centralization
As of mid-2025, a significant portion of network nodes remains controlled by a small number of operators. Core services — including APIs and blockchain indexing — are largely concentrated around Toncenter. Plans to expand the validator pool require advanced technical capabilities and a more mature developer community, which has yet to reach the necessary scale.
Dependence on Telegram
TON is positioned as an independent ecosystem, yet in practice, it remains deeply entwined with Telegram. The messenger serves as the primary distribution channel, onboarding mechanism, and user interface. Regulatory pressure on Telegram — including bans, fines, and crypto-related restrictions — directly impacts the TON blockchain.
Short-Term User Growth
Projects like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat triggered a sharp increase in on-chain activity, but many users never became part of the ecosystem long-term. A large portion of addresses remains inactive, and engagement with Web3 applications is often shallow. There are still few convincing cases of converting “gamified” users into long-term participants.
Limited DeFi Infrastructure
Despite impressive TVL growth in 2024, the market structure remains skewed. Most activity is concentrated on STON.fi and DeDust, while lending, derivatives, and asset management protocols are largely absent. Moreover, the ecosystem lacks a sustainable yield model: most liquidity was attracted by farming incentives and has yet to be institutionalized.
Lack of Independent Developers
Grants and TON.Dev initiatives have yet to foster a critical mass of mature third-party teams. Most projects originate from affiliated groups rather than independent Web3 developers. Without enough external contributions, the ecosystem risks becoming insular and overly dependent on internal initiatives.
Community Tensions
The emergence of the ICEN fork and public criticism from former contributors point to underlying communication issues. Concerns include closed decision-making processes, lack of transparency around tokenomics, and centralized control. TON’s responses to criticism have yet to fully rebuild trust within the community.
The NFT Economy: Telegram Gifts as a New Onboarding Tool
In the summer of 2025, Telegram Gifts became a leading driver of user activity across the TON ecosystem, filling the gap left by the end of airdrop campaigns. These visual NFT gifts — integrated directly into Telegram and sold via the Getgems marketplace — ignited a new wave of onboarding.
According to Getgems, over 413,000 gifts were minted by the end of June, with more than 190,000 sales and 260,000 marketplace listings. The peak day, June 9, saw 14,779 gifts sold, with an average price above 33 TON. The most expensive gift sold for 11,800 TON.
The integration of Gifts into Telegram and their conversion into NFTs via MRKT created a viral distribution mechanism with built-in Web3 monetization. These gifts function as a form of social interaction within Telegram, gaining cultural significance through digital ownership. Unlike airdrop-based games, this feature attracted users interested in digital collecting rather than pure financial returns.
The surge in activity within the Gifts segment was clearly reflected in TON’s broader NFT statistics. According to Dune Analytics, by June 2025, TON consistently ranked among the top three blockchains by on-chain NFT trading volume—behind only Ethereum, and at times surpassing Solana and Polygon. On certain days, such as the peak on June 9, TON even led the global market with over $8–9 million in daily volume. On a monthly average, the network held a 20–30% share of total market activity.
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Gifts as the Next Wave of Onboarding After Tap-to-Earn
Telegram Gifts represent the second major wave of user onboarding into TON, following the exhaustion of tap-to-earn mechanics. While projects like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat attracted users through game-like actions that eventually led to token issuance, Gifts use social interactions inside Telegram as a seamless entry point into Web3.
The key distinction is behavioral: tap-to-earn relied on repeated user engagement to accumulate tokens, whereas Gifts are embedded in natural messaging habits through gifting mechanics. Each gift is instantly minted as an NFT — without requiring the recipient to understand blockchain technologies.
This model enables a smooth transition from casual social behavior to Web3 participation through Telegram’s familiar interface. It creates a sustainable user acquisition channel that doesn’t rely on gamified engagement or financial incentives typical of earlier ecosystem growth stages.
Technical Constraints and Maturity Challenges
Despite ongoing technological progress and a rapidly expanding user base, TON is beginning to show growing pains—limitations that are common in fast-scaling networks.
Telegram mini-apps have exposed a core tension between TON’s Web3 identity and its centralized implementation. Most game mechanics, including point tracking and anti-bot protection, are processed off-chain on developer servers. Notcoin only recorded final balance snapshots on-chain, while Hamster Kombat distributed rewards via closed algorithms. This structure undermines the transparency and verifiability that are foundational to decentralized systems.
The issue of MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) also remains unresolved. TON’s current consensus mechanism allows validators to reorder transactions to extract arbitrage profits. In September 2024, DeFi protocols like DeDust and Ston.fi experienced front-running attacks, where large swaps were preceded by identical low-volume transactions. So far, TON Foundation has not announced a mitigation strategy for such behavior.
TON’s developer tooling still lacks maturity and standardization. Although new languages like Tact and TOLK have been introduced, several teams report that onboarding remains difficult due to fragmented documentation and limited smart contract auditing tools. This hinders the growth of independent infrastructure teams and increases deployment risk.
User experience issues also persist across the stack. Different TON wallets handle pending states inconsistently, transaction explorers sometimes show incomplete data, and the lack of standardized visuals creates friction for newcomers.
The TON team has acknowledged these issues and made them a priority for 2025. The roadmap includes plans to simplify APIs, unify contract interactions, and significantly improve the ecosystem’s UX layer.
What Makes TON Unique?
Despite its technical achievements, TON’s uniqueness as a blockchain infrastructure remains a subject of debate. Core architectural features — including sharding, fast finality, Layer 2 support, and cross-chain compatibility — are not exclusive to TON. Similar implementations exist across ecosystems like Ethereum L2s, Solana, and Aptos.
What truly differentiates TON is not the mechanism, but the distribution channel. Deep integration with Telegram enables it to reach hundreds of millions of users directly, bypassing traditional crypto-native onboarding funnels. TON is the only blockchain where user acquisition doesn’t require downloads, external wallets, or third-party interfaces.
This advantage is amplified by Telegram’s native economy — from TON Space and mini-apps to NFT gifts, auctions, and in-app payment features. In effect, TON serves as Telegram’s Web3 backend, offering a unified and seamless user experience.
That said, TON is still in the process of establishing a distinctive architectural identity. Most contracts within the ecosystem follow paradigms already proven elsewhere. To evolve beyond the label of “Telegram’s blockchain,” TON must demonstrate that it is competitive as a standalone infrastructure — independent of its messenger origins.
Outlook: Scenarios and Trajectory
TON’s ecosystem has reached an inflection point where its future hinges on the resilience of its architecture, the maturity of its institutions, and its ability to evolve beyond Telegram.
An optimistic scenario envisions TON establishing itself as the go-to onboarding platform for Web3 via Telegram. The synergy of a built-in wallet, mini-app interfaces, and continued support from Telegram’s development team could enable the network to scale to tens of millions of active users. With institutional partnerships and regulatory alignment, TON has the potential to enter the top 10 crypto assets by market capitalization — a view echoed by investors like Tim Draper.
In a pessimistic scenario, interest wanes after the end of incentive programs and the cooling of the memecoin-driven gaming hype. Competing ecosystems — from Ethereum L2s to Solana and LayerZero — continue building their own onboarding pathways. Telegram, facing political and legal scrutiny, might pivot strategically and step back from its crypto integration. In this case, TON risks becoming an isolated infrastructure layer without meaningful user flow.
The most plausible outcome is a scenario of adaptation: TON evolves as a hybrid ecosystem where Telegram remains a catalyst but not the sole driver of value. In this model, the blockchain gradually builds institutional robustness, diversifies its product stack, and integrates more fully into the broader multichain landscape across L1s and L2s.
Conclusion
TON is currently navigating a phase of strategic adaptation. The network remains technically active, maintains a substantial user base, and continues to evolve its architecture. While Telegram integration remains a powerful advantage, it is no longer sufficient on its own to guarantee the ecosystem’s resilience.
Development efforts span both institutional and technological fronts: governance has been restructured, core infrastructure is expanding, and engagement with developers is deepening through new tools and network layers.
The key challenges remain: diversifying use cases beyond Telegram, building independent product logic, and ensuring predictability in growth. TON’s mid-term success will depend on its ability to generate value from within the ecosystem — not solely through external leverage.
As of mid-2025, TON shows signs of stabilization following periods of volatility. The project has shifted from a phase of rapid expansion to one focused on quality execution and systemic resilience. Whether this strategy will deliver sustainable outcomes will become clearer over the coming quarters.
In short: TON is alive — and learning what it means to be mature.
