Original author: waynezhang.eth
In the third quarter of 2024, the TON blockchain, with the help of Telegrams traffic portal, quickly exploded with the Tap-to-Earn mini-game, attracting hundreds of millions of users and creating a miracle of on-chain growth. At the same time, the TGE (token generation event) of multiple TON ecological projects also led to a strong wealth effect, making TON/Telegram the hottest narrative center of Web3.
However, after the boom, TON is entering a cooling-off period that deserves vigilance. Similar to the past Web3 narrative, will the bubble settle or return to zero? Is it a temporary lull in traffic or a lack of value conversion? At this point, we hope to use detailed data, ecological evolution path and technology stack layout as entry points to re-evaluate whether TON has the long-term potential to become a super portal on the chain.
1. After the Tap-to-Earn boom: TON’s popularity has cooled and data has declined
According to the TON official website , TON (The Open Network) is a decentralized open Internet that aims to bring 500 million people on-chain, built by the community using technology developed by Telegram. Backed by Telegram, a Web2 social platform with nearly 1 billion users, TON does have the potential to achieve its goal of bringing 500 million people on-chain, and has also achieved great success in 2024:
Toncoin (TON Token) has a maximum market value of over $25 B, ranking in the top 10 of crypto assets by market value [1] ;
The official announcement of the tap to earn mini-game Hamster Kombat shows that it has attracted over 300 million users [2] ;
The maximum number of new addresses on TON Blockchain reached 700k+ per day, and the number of active addresses per day exceeded 1.657M [3] ;
The market value of multiple Telegram mini-game assets exceeds $500M, and the on-chain DeFi TVL surges to more than 5,500% in 2024...
The dual miracles of traffic and wealth make TON one of the absolute focuses of the Web3 narrative in 2024. However, similar to previous Web3 booms, the short-term outbreak is often followed by a decline in data. The TON ecosystem is currently experiencing a periodic narrative cooling period: as shown in Figure 1, whether it is the number of new wallets, active addresses, or the TVL and transaction volume of core DEX (Stone.fi and Dedust), they have all declined significantly from the peak. Although there have been some short-term peaks in the meantime, most of them are temporary rebounds driven by specific projects; from the perspective of the annual trend, many indicators have fallen back to the level before the narrative was launched.
However, it is not all pessimistic. The number of Jetton Wallets (non-zero balance wallets) is still rising steadily, indicating that the accumulation of basic users is still continuing, but the growth rate has slowed down significantly. At the same time, the number of NFT castings has also maintained growth, indicating that the on-chain application ecosystem is still being continuously promoted.
Figure 1: TON Ecological Data Chart, Source: Ton Stat, 2025.05.20
On the other hand, judging from the keyword trends of Google Trends, the overall search popularity of TON is gradually declining, especially the attention to the ecosystem itself has dropped more significantly. In comparison, the markets attention to Token prices is still stronger.
Figure 2: TON keyword browser search popularity, source: Google Trends, 2025.05.21
However, a decline in data does not necessarily mean the end of the narrative. Similar examples are not uncommon: Bitcoin once suffered an on-chain overload due to the inscription craze, but the activity eventually fell back to a relatively stable level; Solana and Base, after experiencing a halving of data, welcomed the return of users and set new records with the optimization of technology and the advancement of the ecosystem.
Figure 3: Data trends on Solana and Base chains, source: Artemis, 2025.05.22
Does TON have the ability to complete a deep transformation from traffic to value after the craze subsides? Will it be dormant for a short time, or will it become a narrative relic? The answer will ultimately be determined by actions. In the following content, we will dismantle the changes that are quietly taking place in TON after the tide recedes from aspects such as its organizational strategy, ecological construction, technological upgrades and narrative transformation.
2. Frequent big moves: team changes, compliance and new markets, and infrastructure development
Since its launch on Binance in August 2024, TONs narrative has entered a new stage. Although the heat seems to be cooling down, it is actually a period of accelerated layout: including team reorganization, regulatory compliance exploration, deep binding with Telegram, technology stack expansion, and developer incentives and capital injection for the global market.
2.1 Senior management changes and compliance efforts: TON accelerates the path to mainstreaming
At the beginning of 2025, the personnel adjustments of the TON Foundation sent a clear signal: globalization and compliance will become the core strategic directions in the next few years.
On January 15, Manuel Stotz, former board member and founder of Kingsway Capital, was appointed as the new president of the TON Foundation. Kingsway is a long-established investment institution that manages billions of dollars in assets for American investors. Stotzs resume brings a strong traditional capital market signal to TON. According to the official announcement, he will work with former president and current board member Steve Yun to promote TONs international expansion, focusing on the US market - this vibrant but highly compliant region is seen as a must-fight in TONs strategy.
On April 24, the TON Foundation further appointed MoonPay co-founder Maximilian Crown as CEO. MoonPay is a leading global crypto payment infrastructure company that has obtained compliance licenses in multiple jurisdictions including the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands. Crown has extensive global operating experience and compliance processing capabilities, and his appointment is widely seen as a landmark step for TON to officially embrace regulation and move towards global mainstreaming [4] .
Figure 4: TON’s current core team members, source: RootData
It is worth noting that Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and an early promoter of the TON blockchain, was detained in August 2024 for allegedly violating regulatory requirements, and did not return to the public eye until March 2025. Although the incident has not yet been concluded, the timing of the incident is highly consistent with the strategic adjustment of the TON Foundation, which may indirectly prompt the team to pay more attention to regulatory issues and clear obstacles for subsequent globalization.
Recently, the TON Foundation has been actively communicating with US regulators. According to the TON Ecosystem Report, the TON self-hosted wallet is scheduled to be launched in the United States in the second quarter of 2025 [5] . In March 2025, the TON Foundation disclosed that US venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, and Benchmark hold more than $400 million in Toncoin [6] . This can also be seen as an important proof of TONs transformation towards compliance and globalization.
Judging from the global distribution of Telegram users (Figure 5), if TON hopes to convert them into Web3 users, it must meet the regulatory requirements of crypto assets in various countries. Otherwise, it will not only be difficult to implement in key markets, but may also cause potential legal and business risks to Telegram itself.
In fact, TONs global expansion has already started. Since November 2023, TON has started phased promotion in some African countries, and then expanded to multiple markets in the Middle East, Europe and Asia-Pacific, paving the way for subsequent global compliance.
Figure 5: Telegram downloads by country in 2024, source: CPA.RIP
2.2 TON × Telegram: Deep integration and binding of ecological entrance
In January 2025, Telegram officially designated TON as the sole blockchain infrastructure for Telegrams growing mini-app ecosystem, with the core being the use of the TON Connect protocol to seamlessly connect Telegram mini-apps to blockchain wallets, thereby simplifying user interactions with decentralized applications within the messaging app. This exclusive agreement establishes TON as the de facto blockchain layer for Telegrams nearly 1 billion users. This makes TON a potential carrier for the Web3 version of WeChat Pay, taking full advantage of Telegrams massive network effect.
In terms of the payment system, Telegram promises to exclusively accept Toncoin as a non-legal payment currency within its ecosystem, which is applicable to scenarios including Telegram Stars, Premium membership, advertising system (Telegram Ads) and payment entry service (Telegram Gateway). Developers and channel operators can directly receive income through Toncoin and initially establish an internal payment and revenue distribution system based on Toncoin.
At the same time, payment service provider RedotPay already supports Toncoin and USDt (the USDT version on the TON chain), and is connected to mainstream payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Alipay. It can be used in more than 130 million offline merchants worldwide, further expanding TONs payment capabilities in the real world.
TON Space wallet has also recently launched the use of Telegram Stars to pay transaction fees. This is actually also a cryptographic abstract solution that allows users to complete transactions without having to understand complex on-chain operations. This method is different from the traditional chain abstraction solution. It not only relies on huge inbound traffic, but also simultaneously promotes the transformation of on-chain applications to life and normalization. According to the official plan, starting from the second quarter of 2025, US users will be able to experience TON wallet services directly in Telegram, further opening up the channel between Web2 consumption scenarios and on-chain asset management [7] .
2.3 Ecosystem: From the craze for small games to the expansion of multiple tracks
The first wave of TON’s ecological boom was mainly driven by mini games. Stimulated by the combination of “airdrop incentives + easy to get started”, users flocked in quickly. For example, Hamster Kombat, which was airdropped in September 2024, had a peak of 300 million monthly active users in July, but by November, there were only 52 million active users left, and user loss exceeded 86% in just a few months [8] . Although simple and replicable game mechanisms can create a “growth illusion” in the short term, it is difficult to form long-term user retention, which also exposes the homogeneity problem in the early stages of the ecosystem.
Faced with this situation, TON focused on expanding the builder ecosystem on the one hand, and accelerating the layout of infrastructure on the other. In April 2025, TON announced a strategic partnership with Chinese gaming giant KingNet (with over 100 million users), and held its first large-scale game developer conference in Asia, which attracted dozens of studios from the WeChat ecosystem to explore how to build Web3 applications based on Telegram and TON.
With the launch of the Telegram App Center function, users can directly explore integrated third-party applications within the platform. More and more TON ecosystem applications are on the recommendation list, and are no longer limited to the game category, but also include social, payment, DeFi, NFT and other dimensions, marking the initial expansion of its application ecosystem.
Figure 6: Screenshot of the Telegram App Center application interface, source: Screenshot of Telegram product page
According to RootData statistics, among the 187 TON projects that have been included, about 14% focus on infrastructure. In addition to underlying services such as oracles and wallets, there are also development auxiliary platforms such as TONXAPI and Play Deck, which lower the technical threshold for new builders and accelerate the sustainable development of the ecosystem.
Figure 7: Basic projects of TON ecosystem (part), source: RootData
In addition to games, the TON ecosystem is expanding into multiple new narrative tracks: including PayFi, RWA (which will be described in detail below), as well as AI, contract trading (Perp DEX), DePIN and other application directions. For example:
Jointly launched the TON perpetual contract DEX incentive activity with GMX;
Launched a bounty program with AI Agent operating system ElizaOS;
Cooperate with the aggregator protocol Jupiter to promote the development of TON ecological aggregator...
The potential of the ecosystem has also attracted a positive response from institutional funds. In September 2024, Foresight Ventures and Bitget invested US$30 million in TON. The following month, Gate.io announced an additional investment of US$10 million to promote the development of Telegram applications [9] . In early 2025, Steve Yun, former president of the TON Foundation, launched the venture capital fund TVM Ventures with an initial scale of US$100 million, focusing on supporting DeFi, PayFi and underlying infrastructure projects, further strengthening TONs developer appeal and ecological moat.
2.4 Technology Upgrade: Advancement of High Performance and Scalability
According to TONs roadmap for the first half of 2025, the core goal of its technological iteration is to ease congestion and improve scalability and stability. This round of updates covers four major directions, reflecting TONs evolutionary logic towards a high-load, high-frequency application blockchain:
1. Accelerator Mainnet Upgrade
This is the most significant architecture upgrade of TON since its inception, with the goal of implementing the Infinite Sharding mechanism and significantly improving the stability and scalability of the network. The core improvements include:
Shard chain tracking optimization: Nodes will only need to track the main chain and its associated specific shard chains, instead of all shard chains, which will significantly reduce resource consumption and improve node processing performance.
Separation of validator functions: TON subdivides the originally unified validator role into Collator and Validator, and improves the overall verification efficiency through parallel task processing.
These improvements will help the TON network maintain a stable block generation speed and transaction processing capacity under high load, while reducing its dependence on hardware.
2. Layer 2 Payment Network
TON plans to launch a Layer 2 payment network similar to Bitcoins Lightning Network, focusing on instant transactions and extremely low-cost asset exchange experience. Currently, the network is in the testing phase and will support a variety of token assets including Jetton in the future, suitable for high-frequency transactions, small game payments and other scenarios. The implementation of this plan is expected to further increase the actual usage rate of TON in daily user payments and game ecology.
3. BTC Teleport cross-chain bridge (already implemented)
BTC Teleport is a mechanism designed to achieve cross-chain asset transfer between TON and the Bitcoin network. This mechanism simplifies the cross-chain interaction process through point-to-point bridging, significantly reducing the users usage threshold and cost. This will enhance the interoperability between TON and mainstream public chains, paving the way for its expansion in DeFi, asset management and other scenarios.
4. Optimization and upgrading of technical tools
In order to improve the operating efficiency and system security of validators, TON has launched functions including MyTonCtrl backup and recovery function, validator Telegram notification robot, web dashboard, etc., and plans to strengthen the incentive and punishment mechanism for validators. For example, nodes that fail to successfully generate blocks within a specified round will face more severe penalties. At the same time, a new version of TON Proxy is also under development, with the goal of enhancing DDoS attack protection capabilities and further ensuring the stability and security of the network. In addition, TONs official API interface will also add functions such as operation simulation, query of pending transactions, and domain name management functions [10] .
The DOGS airdrop in August 2024 was a stress test for the TON technology stack. The network was interrupted for 3 hours due to overload and loss of validator consensus, exposing the architectural bottleneck under extreme concurrency. The 2025 roadmap that is currently being promoted is a direct technical response to this incident. A series of measures such as the mainnet architecture reconstruction (Accelerator), Layer 2 network testing, and cross-chain bridge deployment mean that TON is transforming from a high TPS display chain to a truly universal Layer 1 with long-term scalability and high elasticity.
The technical direction of TON is not to pursue the lowest handling fee or single transaction speed limit, but to support diversified scenarios through modular structure - especially high-frequency interactions around payment, games, social and financial light applications. In the future, in addition to the Layer 2 network focusing on payment, TON may also have multiple functional exclusive Layer 2s to build exclusive operation channels for different applications, thereby achieving highly adaptable on-chain architecture expansion.
3. Reconstructing the financial narrative: from DeFi to PayFi and RWA
3.1 From trading fever to asset depth: TON DeFis ecological remediation
Although TON ranks among the top public chains in terms of the number of active addresses and transaction frequency on the chain, the depth of its DeFi ecosystem is still far from matching this traffic level. According to DeFiLlama data, as of now, TONs TVL is only about 115 million US dollars, ranking 36th among mainstream public chains. This high activity-low lock-up contrast has also aroused some market doubts: Is TON just another gathering place for a group of money-grabbing party?
This situation has its objective background: the TON ecosystem has grown rapidly, and DeFi, as a slow and fine infrastructure type, is difficult to quickly complete the product chain and operation closed loop in a short period of time. On the one hand, developers need time to build high-quality contracts and agreements. On the other hand, most of the early DeFi applications of TON continued the traditional web interaction logic and failed to achieve efficient collaboration with the Telegram applet ecosystem. As a result, in the early stage of the craze, it was the centralized exchanges (CEX) that benefited the most, attracting a large number of new users to register and trade.
To address this shortcoming, the TON team has begun to promote the systematic improvement of the DeFi ecosystem, and fully demonstrated its DeFi module layout at the Hong Kong Web3 event in April 2025.
Figure 8: Current status of TON DeFi ecosystem, source: Youtube
The T1 layer mainly contains core DeFi functions, including cross-chain bridges, collateralized stablecoins CDP, AMM protocols, lending, and liquidity pledge LSD. These are the basis for building more complex financial products. On this basis, TON is promoting the development of more advanced applications, including yield mining, derivatives, options, yield tokenization, funding libraries, launch platforms, etc.:
STON.fi launched Omniston, a decentralized liquidity aggregation protocol designed to simplify liquidity management within the ecosystem;
The decentralized perpetual contract trading platform Storm Trade continued to grow in 2025, reaching its peak TVL in February;
Yield tokenization protocol FIVA hits $1 million TVL within days of launch and achieves $28 million in trading volume…
In addition to the above core DeFi applications, TON is also continuing to connect with more important DeFi partners, the most representative of which are the two major stablecoin issuers Tether and Ethena.
USDT issued by Tether was officially deployed on the TON chain in April 2024 and has achieved rapid growth. In just five months after its launch, the circulating supply of USDT exceeded $1 billion. The stablecoin has been integrated into the Telegram app and can be used for direct transfers. It is also widely used in payment scenarios for Telegram mini-apps and Web3 services, including creator rewards, digital service fee settlement, content monetization, and other purposes, further enriching TONs payment ecosystem.
At the same time, TON is also promoting cooperation with Ethena to integrate its synthetic dollar asset USDe with a TVL of more than $6 billion. Through this integration, TON plans to introduce a stable channel for US dollar savings and income acquisition for Telegrams broad user base, which is particularly helpful for those market users who find it difficult to easily obtain US dollar assets locally. This move not only strengthens TONs strategic position in the stablecoin ecosystem, but also injects more long-term valuable financial infrastructure into its DeFi system.
3.2 PayFi and RWA: A bridge from on-chain revenue to real value
During the TON Day event, the official first systematically proposed a two-wheel drive financial application architecture, demonstrating its on-chain financial design built around the Telegram applet ecosystem. The overall structure is divided into three layers:
Core DeFi Layer: includes various DeFi infrastructures and protocols that have been continuously improved, emphasizing technical performance and compliance framework;
Real Yield Layer: Provides sustainable income support for upper-layer applications through stablecoins, RWA income, pledged asset pools, etc.
Retail TMA Layer (Terminal Interaction Layer): With the help of the Telegram applet ecosystem, building user-side products including PayFi wallet, on-chain savings, income games, Swap aggregators, etc. is the key path to activate large-scale Web2 users.
Figure 9: Telegram applet application layer, source: Youtube
In this framework, PayFi and RWA have become the two new narrative lines with the greatest strategic value for TON. Around them, TON is gradually building a multi-layer revenue network covering both on-chain and off-chain:
Bottom layer: Through access to real financial assets off-chain, such as the Telegram bond fund (US$500 million RWA asset pool), the entire system is provided with a verifiable and quantifiable source of real income. This layer is the key fulcrum for TON to attempt to chain-transform the logic of traditional financial products.
Middle layer: Through protocols such as Ethenas USDe synthetic dollar and Yield Tokenization, these underlying returns are split, combined and redistributed to form a programmable interest rate anchoring tool. This mechanism not only enhances asset liquidity, but also makes the return itself composable and usable across protocols, becoming the interest rate cornerstone of the TON financial ecosystem.
Top layer: Build front-end products based on high-frequency interactive scenarios of Telegram, and present on-chain financial capabilities to end users in a familiar way. Through interfaces such as Wallet Earn and Banking applets, users can directly receive USDT rewards, participate in savings, or make financial management configurations without having to understand complex concepts such as synthetic stablecoins, staking pools, and RWA assets, thus completing a natural transition from Web2 users to on-chain financial users.
Take PayFi as an example. It is not only a functional extension of the Telegram wallet, but also an interactive hub connecting daily payment + on-chain financial management. Users can use the Tap Pay function provided by Oobit to use USDt for real-time payment at more than 100 million retailers around the world; at the same time, they can also receive USDT rewards and participate in revenue management in Wallet Earn. Throughout the process, users can complete the on-chain financial management experience without understanding the terms such as smart contracts, asset anchoring or off-chain mapping. This light experience + high financiality design is naturally transforming Telegram users into Web3 financial users.
In the direction of RWA, TON is trying to build the underlying infrastructure for on-chain brokerages and on-chain savings banks. For example, the Telegram Bond Fund launched by Libre and the TON Foundation allows users to participate in fixed-income products such as US dollar bonds in an on-chain manner, and plans to support on-chain access to low-value, fragmented assets in the future. At the same time, the synthetic stablecoin USDe launched by Ethena will be connected to offline consumption through debit cards in the future, bringing new consumer finance scenarios to RWA applications.
In essence, what TON is building is not an isolated financial protocol, but an on-chain revenue network built around Telegram: Telegram carries the user entrance and traffic distribution, PayFi is located at the front-end interaction layer, connecting on-chain financial management and daily payment scenarios; RWA assets, as the underlying value anchor, inject real revenue into the financial system; and stablecoins and revenue tokenization protocols including USDe, take on the on-chain acceptance and distribution of revenue. Through this closed-loop path, TON is expected to naturally guide Web2 users to the on-chain financial ecosystem, and complete the whole process experience from asset access to revenue realization without increasing the cognitive threshold.
4. The future of TON: a sedimentation period for a super portal or a castle in the air?
TONs traffic miracle comes from Telegrams ecological nesting and Tap-to-Earns viral transmission mechanism. However, as the craze fades, user stickiness decreases, and on-chain data falls, a key question is facing us: Can the TON ecosystem establish a sustainable traffic to value model?
The answer may be written by TON’s own strategy.
From the perspective of development rhythm, TON is not eager to repeat the high-frequency stimulus operation of Tap to Earn, but has entered a deeper period of infrastructure precipitation. This is similar to Solanas engineering repair period after the meme coin craze, or the deep cultivation of the Base ecosystem after the Friend.tech ebb. TONs current development strategy also reveals a similar idea: switching from explosive narrative to the value path of high-frequency rigid demand + long-term precipitation.
At the core of all this is still Telegram, one of the Web2 platforms that is closest to the super portal standard in the world:
Entry advantages: social entry with nearly 1 billion users + one-stop wallet (TON Space) + Telegram App Center;
Payment and financial management dual drive: PayFi connects offline payments, and RWA builds a new paradigm of on-chain financial management;
Protocol-level nesting: TON Connect and Stars fee mechanism actually build chain abstraction infrastructure;
Technology stack implementation: Accelerator mainnet upgrade + Layer 2 payment network + BTC cross-chain bridge are all strengthening the infrastructure carrying capacity of TON.
From this perspective, TONs future does not look like a castle in the air, but rather like building a new digital economic hub. However, this hub is not built for DeFi fanatics, but for the next batch of Web2 users.
However, TON still faces three major challenges in its future:
1. The gap between user quality and financial depth: Despite the monthly active users exceeding 100 million and the frequent release of mini-games, it is still a question whether users truly understand DeFi, participate in on-chain activities, and use Toncoin instead of airdropping.
2. It is difficult to close the loop of application value on the chain: Although lightweight, embedded applications (such as mini-games, transfers, advertising, and payments) have natural traffic advantages, this use it and go model also brings problems: user behavior is difficult to precipitate into on-chain assets, identities, data, or long-term retention. Unlike the Ethereum ecosystem, which forms an on-chain portrait through wallet binding, DeFi participation, and NFT assets, most of the current TON users are just lightweight on-chain copies of Telegram users, and the on-chain asset activity and interaction depth are low.
3. Uncertainty of compliance route: Although TON is actively embracing regulation, such as appointing MoonPay co-founder as CEO, it remains to be seen whether the combination of Telegram + TON will be sustainable in the future in the face of high-pressure regulatory markets such as the United States and the European Union.
In other words, TON is at the critical point of from attention to value precipitation. Whether it will gradually precipitate high-frequency interactions into financial and service portals like WeChat applet, or become another popular traffic illusion, depends largely on the teams execution, ecological self-evolution ability, and wisdom in dealing with the regulatory environment. However, TON and Telegram have an advantage over WeChat in that they can cross the river by feeling WeChat. I believe that the next 6-12 months will be a critical window for the TON ecosystem to shift from narrative-driven to basic value support.
V. Conclusion
The story of TON is an attempt to go from platform traffic to on-chain value. It is neither like Ethereum, which builds a financial universe from the developer community, nor is it like Solana, which is technology-driven and meme-catalyzed. It is a Web3 popularization experiment field that is user-centric, with the entry as the hub and light experience as the weapon.
From Tap-to-Earn to PayFi, from the explosion of popularity to the accumulation of infrastructure, TONs evolution path actually presents an important signal: the next wave of Web3 popularization revolution may not take place in the crypto community, but will quietly unfold in the daily lives of hundreds of millions of Web2 users.
Whether TON can really seize this opportunity and evolve from a super portal on the chain to a super application platform on the chain still needs time to verify. But regardless of success or failure, it provides a sample worth observing - a sample that does not use DeFi yield to guide users, but uses familiar interfaces, lightweight payments, mini games and social experiences to guide them to gradually touch and use the chain.
This is an experiment and a gamble. However, in the current bear market, TON does not provide a get-rich-quick myth, but a Web3 imagination that is closer to real usage scenarios. It may not be achieved overnight, but in a series of small incisions and real needs, the possibility of the next round of real Web3 large-scale transformation may be nurtured.
