The TON token has surged by more than 100% over the past week. This sharp rise coincided with a series of statements by Pavel Durov about his plans to personally develop the blockchain ecosystem and further integrate it with Telegram.
BeInCrypto asked market participants to explain what’s behind TON’s growth and what to expect next.
Why is The TON Price Rising?
All the experts interviewed agreed on one thing: the main trigger was the MTONGA (Make TON Great Again) initiative and the personal involvement of Pavel Durov.
Kirill Pistsov, Head of Product Development at FINAM , believes the market perceived Durov’s announcement of more direct network management and the role of the largest validator as a signal that Telegram will further integrate and develop the TON ecosystem.
He added that the announcement of fee reductions was an additional positive development for the market, signaling a potential increase in user and developer activity within the network.
Alexander “RocketMan” Shepelev, founder of xRocket , offers a similar assessment . He recalls that in the first days, the community reacted ambivalently to the announcement. It had been waiting for some interesting and useful news for a long time, but nothing happened.
Rather, some activities turned out to be either misguided or were curtailed before they even began.
“Apparently, without Durov’s personal involvement, ‘no crocodile could be caught, no coconut could grow.’ And now, things are going as smoothly as they did in TON’s heyday, back in the now relatively distant year of 2024,” Shepelev notes.
Thus, while Pistsov and Shepelev emphasize Durov’s role as a catalyst, Fedorov draws attention to the objective infrastructural improvements that made embedded payments, exchanges, and microtransactions possible directly within Telegram apps.
The Infrastructure Can Handle the Load
Andrey Fedorov backs up his assessment with concrete figures. Following the news surrounding MTONGA, the daily swap volume on STON.fi has grown to over $40 million in recent days, up from approximately $1.5 million a week earlier. This represents an increase of more than 26 times.
“This is an important signal: the infrastructure is starting to not only attract attention but also withstand real loads,” he emphasizes.
The expert specifically highlights the development of what he calls the execution layer, or transaction infrastructure. More and more activity in TON will occur not on DEX websites, but within wallets, bots, mini-apps, and games.
In this model, the role of solutions that provide liquidity and transaction execution “under the hood,” while the user interacts with the familiar interface, is growing.
Meanwhile, TON is already undergoing stress tests, including on meme coin waves, our source adds. Such situations clearly demonstrate whether a blockchain can handle sudden surges in activity and ensure stable execution.
And here, TON is already showing significant progress, especially given its near-instantaneous transactions.
Alexander Shepelev commented on the validator topic. Telegram launched several dozen validators, which have staked over 100 million TON.
He believes the hype surrounding Telegram gifts significantly increased Durov’s TON portfolio. This inclination leans on the assumption that collectors and speculators were buying stars using gift mints not only through the Fast Payment System but also using TON.
“Selling the asset at the current price would be short-sighted, but deploying validators and staking these tokens is an excellent idea. Does this make the network centralized? Perhaps. Will it worsen the ecosystem? I don’t think so. The validation reward goes into clear hands, and no one will use them to disrupt the exchange rate or the accumulated tokens,” the expert believes.
Risks and Prospects
Our interlocutors disagree on their assessment of short-term prospects.
Pistsov warns that the rise has been too sharp, so there’s already a lot of speculative momentum and FOMO amid the capital flow into altcoins. The likelihood of a local correction after this move remains high.
Shepelev is taking a wait-and-see approach. He notes that the community has always viewed the TON Foundation with some skepticism. Now, Durov wants to assume the role of the ecosystem’s main driver.
“We’ll soon find out what comes out of this,” he concludes.
Fedorov takes a far-reaching view and formulates specific expectations. Looking to the future, the key vector is TON’s transformation into the infrastructure for mass-market products within Telegram.
He expects transactions to become an invisible part of the user experience, liquidity and exchanges to be built directly into products, and the ecosystem’s growth to come from native Telegram apps, not just classic DeFi.
Conclusions
TON’s 100% weekly growth was the result of several factors: Durov’s personal involvement, reduced fees, and infrastructure upgrades. However, experts place different emphasis on these factors.
Pistsov points to a speculative component and warns of the risk of a correction. Shepelev notes a real increase in user activity but is taking a wait-and-see approach.
Fedorov sees this as not just a price rally, but the beginning of TON’s transformation into a transactional infrastructure for the Telegram ecosystem.
The market is reacting less to promises than to concrete steps, including the launch of validators, reduced fees, and increased trading volumes.
However, only time will tell whether this growth is sustainable.
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