The TON craze has faded but major actions continue: Is it the end of the bubble, or is the super entry settling down?

Introduction

In the third quarter of 2024, the TON blockchain rapidly exploded due to the traffic entry of Telegram, with Tap-to-Earn mini-games attracting hundreds of millions of users and creating a miracle of on-chain growth. At the same time, the token generation events of several TON ecosystem projects also triggered a strong wealth effect, making "TON/Telegram" a hot narrative center in Web3.

However, after the frenzy, TON is entering a cooling period that deserves caution. Similar to past Web3 narratives, what follows the bubble is either sedimentation or a return to zero? Is it a temporary pause in traffic, or has the value transformation not yet arrived? At this juncture, we hope to reassess whether TON has the long-term potential to become a 'super gateway on the chain' by using detailed data, ecological evolution paths, and technical stack layout as entry points.

1. After the Tap-to-Earn Boom: The Cooling of TON's Popularity and Decline in Data

According to the official TON website, TON( The Open Network ) is a decentralized open internet aimed at bringing 500 million people on-chain, built using technology developed by the community of Telegram. Backed by the Web2 social platform Telegram, which has nearly 1 billion users, TON indeed has the potential to achieve its goal of bringing 500 million people into the on-chain world, and has achieved tremendous success in 2024:

1. Toncoin(TON Token) has a maximum market value exceeding $25B, ranking in the Top 10 of cryptocurrency market capitalization.
2. Tap to earn mini-game Hamster Kombat officially disclosed to attract over 300 million users;
3. The TON Blockchain reached a maximum of over 700k new addresses in a single day, with daily active addresses exceeding 1.657M;
4. The market value of multiple Telegram mini-game assets exceeds $500M, and the on-chain DeFi TVL is expected to surge by over 5,500% in 2024......

The dual miracle of traffic and wealth has made TON one of the absolute focal points of the Web3 narrative in 2024. However, similar to previous Web3 booms, short-term surges are often followed by data retraction. The TON ecosystem is currently experiencing a phase of "narrative cooling": as shown in Chart 1, both the number of new wallets added daily and active addresses, as well as the TVL and trading volume of core DEX (Stone.fi and Dedust ), have significantly declined from their peak. Although there have been some short-term peaks, most have been temporary rebounds driven by specific projects; from an annual trend perspective, multiple indicators have fallen back to levels seen before the narrative was initiated.

However, it is not all pessimistic signals. The number of non-zero balance Jetton Wallet( wallets is still steadily increasing, indicating that the accumulation of fundamental users is ongoing, albeit at a noticeably slower growth rate. Meanwhile, the number of NFT minting is also maintaining growth, suggesting that the on-chain application ecosystem is still being continuously promoted.

On the other hand, from the keyword trends on Google Trends, the overall search popularity of TON is gradually declining, especially the attention to the ecosystem itself has decreased significantly. In contrast, the market's focus on Token prices remains stronger.

![The TON craze has subsided but big moves continue: Is it the bubble bursting, or is the super entrance settling down?])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-5f8c91440942ba9e41238c3e1c34f615.webp(

However, a decline in data does not necessarily mean the end of the narrative. Similar examples are not uncommon: Bitcoin once experienced on-chain congestion due to the inscription craze, but ultimately the activity fell back to a relatively stable level; Solana and Base, after experiencing a data halving, welcomed a return of users and set new highs again with technical optimizations and ecological advancements.

Does TON also have the ability to achieve a deep transformation from traffic to value after the hype subsides? Is it a brief dormancy, or will it ultimately become a "narrative relic"? The answer will ultimately be determined by actions. In the following content, we will analyze the changes that are quietly occurring in TON "after the tide recedes" from aspects such as organizational strategy, ecological construction, technological upgrades, and narrative transformation.

2. Major Actions Frequent: Team Reshuffle, Compliance and New Markets, Infrastructure Development

Since the launch of a certain trading platform in August 2024, the narrative of TON has entered a new stage. On the surface, the heat has cooled, but in reality, it is a period of accelerated layout: including team restructuring, exploration of regulatory compliance, deep binding with Telegram, expansion of the tech stack, and incentives for developers and capital injection aimed at the global market.

) 2.1 High-level Replacement and Compliance Efforts: TON Accelerating Mainstream Path

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 for the next few years.

On January 15, former board member and founder of Kingsway Capital, Manuel Stotz, was appointed as the new president of the TON Foundation. Kingsway is a well-established investment institution managing billions of dollars in assets for American investors, and Stotz's background brings a strong "traditional capital markets" signal to TON. According to the official announcement, he will work alongside the former president and current board member Steve Yun to promote the international expansion of TON, with a focus on the U.S. market—an active yet highly regulated region seen as a key battleground in TON's strategy.

On April 24, the TON Foundation further appointed MoonPay co-founder Maximilian Crown as CEO. MoonPay is a leading global cryptocurrency payment infrastructure company, having obtained compliance licenses in multiple jurisdictions including the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands. Crown has extensive experience in global operations and compliance handling, and his appointment is widely viewed as a symbolic step for TON to officially embrace regulation and move towards global mainstream adoption.

It is noteworthy that Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and an early promoter of the TON blockchain, was briefly detained in August 2024 due to allegations of Telegram violating regulatory requirements, only returning to the public eye in March 2025. Although there is no conclusion to this incident, the timing coincides closely with the strategic adjustments of the TON Foundation, which may have indirectly prompted the team to pay more attention to regulatory issues, clearing obstacles in advance for subsequent global deployment.

Recently, the TON Foundation has been actively communicating with U.S. regulatory agencies. According to the TON ecosystem report, the TON self-custody wallet is scheduled to launch in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2025. In March 2025, the TON Foundation disclosed that certain U.S. venture capital firms hold over $400 million in Toncoin. This can also be seen as an important testament to TON's transformation towards compliance and globalization.

From the global distribution of Telegram users, if TON hopes to convert them into Web3 users, it must meet the regulatory requirements for cryptocurrency assets in various countries. Otherwise, it will not only be difficult to implement applications in key markets but may also pose potential legal and business risks to Telegram itself.

In fact, the global expansion of TON has already begun. Starting from November 2023, TON has initiated a phased promotion in certain African countries, and then expanded to multiple markets in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, paving the way for subsequent global compliance.

2.2 TON × Telegram: Deep integration, binding ecological entrance

In January 2025, Telegram officially designated TON as the sole blockchain infrastructure for Telegram's evolving mini-app ecosystem, with the core being the TON Connect protocol that seamlessly connects Telegram mini-apps with blockchain wallets, thus simplifying user interactions with decentralized applications within the messaging app. This exclusive protocol establishes TON as the actual blockchain layer for Telegram's nearly 1 billion users. This positions TON to potentially become the "WeChat Pay of Web3," fully leveraging Telegram's massive network effects.

In the payment system, Telegram promises to exclusively accept Toncoin as a non-fiat payment currency within its ecosystem, applicable to scenarios including Telegram Stars, Premium membership, advertising system ### Telegram Ads (, and payment gateway services ) Telegram Gateway (. Developers and channel operators can directly receive income through Toncoin, initially establishing an internal payment and revenue distribution system based on Toncoin.

At the same time, the payment service provider RedotPay has supported the USDT version ) of Toncoin and USDt( on the TON chain, and has integrated mainstream payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Alipay, which can be used in over 130 million offline merchants worldwide, further expanding TON's payment landing capability in the real world.

The TON Space wallet has recently introduced the ability to pay transaction fees using Telegram Stars. This is essentially a form of crypto "abstraction" solution that allows users to complete transactions without needing to understand complex on-chain operations. This method differs from traditional chain abstraction solutions, relying not only on a massive entry flow but also promoting the transformation of on-chain applications towards "lifestyle" and "normalization". According to the official plan, starting in the second quarter of 2025, U.S. users will be able to directly experience the TON wallet services within Telegram, further bridging the gap between Web2 consumption scenarios and on-chain asset management.

) 2.3 Ecology: From Mini-Game Craze to Diversified Track Expansion

The first wave of ecological hype for TON is mainly driven by mini-games. Under the combination of "airdrop incentives + easy to get started," users quickly flocked in. For example, the airdropped "Hamster Kombat" in September 2024 had peaked at 300 million monthly active users in July, but by November, only 52 million active users remained, with over 86% user churn in just a few months. While simple and replicable game mechanics can create a "growth illusion" in the short term, they struggle to form long-term user retention and expose the homogenization issues in the early stages of the ecosystem.

In the face of this situation, TON is focusing on expanding the builder ecosystem on one hand, and accelerating the infrastructure layout on the other hand. In April 2025, TON announced a strategic partnership with Chinese gaming giant KingNet###, which has over 100 million users(, and held the first large-scale game developer conference in Asia, attracting dozens of studios from the WeChat ecosystem, beginning to explore how to build Web3 applications based on Telegram and TON.

With the launch of the Telegram App Center feature, users can directly explore integrated third-party applications within the platform. An increasing number of TON ecosystem applications are appearing on the recommendation list, and they are no longer limited to gaming categories, but also include social, payment, DeFi, NFT, and other dimensions, marking the preliminary expansion of its application ecosystem.

According to statistics from a certain data platform, among the 187 TON projects recorded, approximately 14% focus on infrastructure. In addition to underlying services such as oracles and wallets, there are also development assistance platforms like TONXAPI and Play Deck, which lower the technical barriers for new builders and accelerate the sustainable development of the ecosystem.

In addition to gaming, the TON ecosystem is expanding into multiple new narrative tracks: including PayFi, RWA) which will be detailed below(, as well as AI, contract trading) Perp DEX(, DePIN, and other application directions. For example:

• Jointly launch the TON perpetual contract DEX incentive event with a certain perpetual contract DEX;
• Launching bounty program with AI Agent operating system ElizaOS;
• Collaborate with a certain aggregator protocol to promote the development of the TON ecosystem aggregator......

The ecological potential has also attracted a positive response from institutional funds. In September 2024, a certain investment institution invested $30 million in TON, and the next month, a trading platform announced an additional investment of $10 million to promote the development of the Telegram application. In early 2025, Steve Yun, the former president of the TON Foundation, initiated the venture capital fund TVM Ventures with an initial scale of $100 million, focusing on supporting DeFi, PayFi, and underlying infrastructure projects, further strengthening TON's attractiveness to developers and its ecological moat.

) 2.4 Technical Upgrade: Advancements in High Performance and Scalability

According to the roadmap released by TON for the first half of 2025, the core objective of its technological iteration is to alleviate congestion and enhance scalability and stability. This round of updates covers four major directions, reflecting TON's evolutionary logic towards a "high-load, high-frequency application blockchain:"

1. Accelerator Mainnet Upgrade

This is the most significant architectural upgrade since the establishment of TON, aiming to achieve the "Infinite Sharding ###" mechanism and significantly enhance the stability and scalability of the network. Key improvements include:

• Shard Chain Tracking Optimization: Nodes will only need to track the main chain and its associated specific shard chains, rather than tracking all shard chains, which will significantly reduce resource consumption and improve node processing performance.
• Validator function separation: TON will separate the original