Key Takeaways
Explore Toncoin, Telegram’s reborn crypto project. See how its deep integration with 1B users & unique tech are driving its explosive on-chain growth.
U.S. regulators killed Telegram’s crypto dream. They forced the messaging giant to abandon its “Telegram Open Network” and “Gram” tokens, leaving a billion-dollar vision in ruins.
But the code, open-sourced and free, fell into the hands of a determined community.
That community has since revived the project, now called The Open Network, and its comeback is no longer a quiet affair.
With Telegram now officially backing TON as its blockchain of choice, the network is pulling in millions of users, forcing everyone to pay attention.
It all started in 2018. Pavel and Nikolai Durov, Telegram’s founders, pulled in a massive $1.7 billion to build a blockchain fast enough for everyone on Earth.
The record-breaking fundraiser, however, caught the eye of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A 2020 lawsuit ended the party, with regulators labeling “Grams” as illegal securities and forcing Telegram to return the money.
When Telegram walked away, a group of developers, now operating as the TON Foundation, refused to let the technology die.
They took the discarded blueprints and started building, eventually earning Telegram’s blessing to carry the torch.
The engine room: Hardwired into a billion users
So what’s the secret sauce? Simple: Toncoin [TON] is wired directly into Telegram’s nearly one billion users. This isn’t just a partnership; it’s a deep-seated integration that aims to make crypto invisible.
The built-in “@wallet” and its self-hosted sibling, TON Space, let you send crypto as easily as an emoji.
Telegram is also splitting ad revenue with public channel owners, paying them 50% of the earnings, but only in Toncoin. With channels racking up over a trillion views a month, that’s a powerful incentive to get on board.
They even added “Telegram Stars,” an in-app currency for tipping creators that can be swapped for Toncoin, tightening the loop and creating a real digital economy inside a chat app.
Toncoin is a different kind of blockchain
The app is slick, but what about the tech underneath? Instead of processing transactions in a single line like Ethereum [ETH], TON’s smart contracts pass messages to each other and can work in parallel.
This is possible because of a wild design called “infinite sharding,” where the network can split into a mind-boggling number of sub-chains (up to 2^60) to handle the load.
It’s not just theory; they clocked 104,715 transactions per second in a public test, crushing most rivals.
While Solana [SOL] is fast but has a history of outages on its single chain, and Ethereum relies on external Layer-2s for speed, TON’s scaling is built right into its DNA.
The network runs on Proof-of-Stake, rewarding validators with a small annual inflation of about 0.6%.
To keep the supply in check, a community vote decided to burn half of all transaction fees, making the token scarcer as more people use it.
Toncoin: The on-chain explosion
This fusion of app and blockchain lit a fire under the network in 2024. Daily active wallets have gone vertical — people holding TON on-chain exploded from 2.9 million to 32 million in just one year.
A lot of this frenzy comes from viral “tap-to-earn” games like Notcoin [NOT] and Hamster Kombat [HMSTR].
They’re simple, maybe even silly, but they’ve been incredibly effective at getting millions of people to create their first crypto wallet.
The cash followed the crowds. Total Value Locked (TVL) on the network climbed from around $76 million to a peak of over $740 million this year, mostly from decentralized exchanges like STON.fi and DeDust.io.
The recent launch of Tether [USDT] on the network only adds more fuel for financial activity.
The $10 question and ghosts of the past
Can TON hit $10? From its current price of around $3.06-$3.18, that would mean a market cap jump from roughly $7.85 billion to over $25 billion, putting it in the big leagues with crypto’s top assets.
Getting there depends on a few big “ifs”: a healthy crypto market, the Telegram user pipeline continuing to gush, and the dev team delivering on promises like better bridges to other chains.
But TON’s past still casts a long shadow. Regulators haven’t forgotten the original fight with the SEC, which is likely why it’s still hard to buy TON on major U.S. exchanges.
The market still gets spooked by anything involving Telegram’s leadership, as seen when Pavel Durov was briefly arrested in August 2024. Then there’s the whale problem.
An estimated 68% of the supply sits in a few massive wallets, raising fears of price manipulation. Becoming a validator also requires a huge stake, which doesn’t help decentralization.
The TON Foundation knows this is a problem. They’ve started “Society DAO,” a governance project meant to hand over more control and money to the community.
But whether this is enough to build trust remains to be seen.
While big players like Verb Technology are buying in, Toncoin’s future hangs on proving it can be more than just Telegram’s crypto-pet-project and become a truly open, resilient network.