TON: From the gaming craze on Telegram to the ambition of shaping digital finance

In 2024, the TON blockchain becomes the focal point of the crypto market – not due to a groundbreaking DeFi protocol, but because of the explosion of a series of "tap-to-earn" games on Telegram. Names like Hamster Kombat and Notcoin have attracted millions of players in just a short time, bringing the number of daily active wallets on TON to nearly 2 million by September 2024.

Telegram Active Daily Wallet (source: Tonstat).This growth demonstrates the exceptional user attraction capability of TON, but at the same time also exposes the fragility of the model based on the network effect: the majority of players only participate for the quick rewards, then leave when the incentives end. Speculative capital – which is flexible and opportunity-driven – also quickly withdraws thereafter.

The remaining impact after the frenzy

The "cooling down" after the gaming frenzy is not a collapse, but a reconstruction. In January 2024, before the gaming explosion, TON only recorded an average of 26,000 active wallets per day. After the peak, this number stabilized at 100,000–200,000, many times higher than the initial level.

More importantly, the flow of developers and users has laid the foundation for the ecosystem's development. The number of DeFi protocols on TON increased from 35 to 67 in 2024, a rise of 91%, indicating a trend shift from short-term promotions to sustainable financial infrastructure.

The DeFi picture of TON

The DeFi ecosystem on TON currently includes token swaps, staking, and lending. At the beginning of 2024, EVAA launched as the first lending protocol. By the end of summer, AMM STON.fi had raised nearly $400 million in liquidity. Currently, Tonstakers (staking lỏng) and STON.fi (swap) lead in terms of locked value (TVL), reflecting the demand focused on high liquidity core services.

At its peak, the total TVL of the TON network reached 1.1 billion USD in July 2024, before dropping to 600 million USD at the beginning of 2025 and currently hovering around 400 million USD. These figures indicate that the liquidity of TON is still strongly affected by short-term market factors.

TVL DeFi (source: DefiLlama)By the end of 2024, TON will have nearly 38 million wallet addresses, but the number of new wallets has plummeted from 724,000 wallets/day in the fall to only 33,000 at the beginning of 2025. In this context, staking has emerged as a safe haven, with about 790 million TON being staked, concentrating liquidity into less risky underlying infrastructure.

Why has the revolution not taken place?

Compared to Ethereum or Solana, the liquidity depth and product diversity on TON are still in the development stage. One part of the reason stems from the design: TON was built to scale massively, leading to a more complex technical structure for programmers.

The smart contract of TON uses a low-level language, requiring many components to be developed from scratch, which slows down the initial DeFi progress. However, this approach may provide more effective and sustainable solutions in the long term. The core team is currently working to reduce barriers for developers, paving the way for faster growth.

Another factor is the dependency on Telegram. This integration provides a significant advantage – access to over 1 billion users – and practical utility as from 2024, Telegram channel owners can receive advertising revenue in TON. However, at the same time, it also creates a concentration risk: any disruption from Telegram could directly impact TON.

Currently, for many regular users, the mini app on Telegram is still just a recreational game and not yet a financial tool. If it does not break out of this framework, TON will struggle to attract institutional capital.

Unlock DeFi potential

The path ahead for TON is clear: to break away from the short-term "hype" cycle and provide mainstream financial services, seamlessly integrating into the Telegram experience.

Potential scenarios include:

• Seamless payments: send cryptocurrency directly in the Telegram chat, as simple as sending a message.
• Everyday utility: paying for goods, services, or restaurant bills with TON token.
• Accessible credit: provides small loans and credit solutions in areas not served by banks.

If successfully implemented, TON could break out of the "game phenomenon" image to become the main interface for global cryptocurrency adoption.

Signs of trust from the organization

Major financial institutions have begun to recognize the potential of TON. In March 2024, Sequoia Capital, Draper Associates, Kingsway, CoinFund, Ribbit, and Skybridge all invested in Toncoin.

By January 2025, Zodia Custody (, a subsidiary of Standard Chartered), announced support for the Jetton token standard of TON, paving the way for banks and institutional investors to custody TON assets. In July 2025, The Open Platform – the entity developing protocols and applications based on Telegram – successfully raised 28.5 million USD at a valuation of 1 billion USD from Ribbit Capital and Pantera Capital.

Conclusion: From potential to reality

The breakout of 2024 proves that combining the viral power of Telegram with blockchain technology can shake up the market. However, to truly change, TON needs to evolve from a "hype launching pad" into a solid financial ecosystem.

The necessary platforms are in place: the developer community is growing, the infrastructure is increasingly完善, and there is a huge distribution channel through Telegram. If DeFi on TON can simplify the user experience and provide essential services right within the environment they are familiar with, TON will not only participate in the future of digital finance – but it can also help shape it.

This is a review by Slavik Baranov, CEO of STON.fi, a project built on the TON blockchain, so there will be some subjective elements; readers should only use it as a reference.

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