TON: Historical Burdens and the Path of Reconstruction

In the past two years, TON has undergone an astounding transformation from silence to explosion. Leveraging Telegram's vast user base, it quickly established a strong presence in the crypto community. A series of narratives such as gamified ecosystems, robot economies, and the Stars payment system have made TON a focal point. However, with price fluctuations, market capitalization declines, and reduced activity, TON has also exposed deep-seated structural issues: concentration of chips, homogenization of the ecosystem, and weak infrastructure.

This article will systematically sort out the chip distribution, token economy, user and capital flow, development ecology, and TAC architecture of TON, and attempt to answer a core question: Does the short-term prosperity of TON have the structure to support its long-term value?

TON Chips Are Highly Concentrated: The Abyss Between Whales and Retail Investors

TON has been burdened with significant structural issues such as heavy concentration of chips and historical miner lockup from the very beginning, and is now attempting to reshape itself amidst these "sunk costs". We can glimpse the true picture of its ecological development from its chip structure, token trends, and capital flow.

Due to the takeover by the development team after the project's suspension, 98.55% of the total supply of TON was available for mining until the end of mining on June 28, 2022, meaning that most tokens are in the hands of early miners. The TON project team launched a preferential plan to repurchase tokens from early miners, and at the same time, if whales lock up the tokens ( for a long time, they can earn an APY of 6-7%.

According to the data, there are 12 whale addresses that hold more than 1% of the total supply, of which 6 are low activity addresses. The whale addresses marked as "frozen" refer to inactive early miner addresses, totaling 171, with 1081m of TON locked. The addresses marked as "TON Believers Fund" have assets frozen until October 12, 2025, with a total of 1317m TON), accounting for about 52%(, with an APY of up to 7.176%.

The distribution of TON chips is severely uneven. Users holding less than 100 TON account for nearly 99.9%, with a massive influx of retail investors starting in March 2024. The number of addresses holding over 100K TON was over 500 before March 2024, slowly climbing after March, peaking at 1.3K in August. However, the latest data shows a decrease in the number of large holders, currently around 600.

Unlike other public chains, TON needs to build a development path suitable for itself under the constraints of history.

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TON valuation has declined, but there is still room for upward movement.

The price of TON has several significant upward nodes:

1. Launched a centralized exchange in November 2021, receiving public support from the founder of Telegram.
2. At the end of February and the beginning of March 2024, the overall trading volume surged significantly with large capital inflows.
3. Late June to late July 2024
4. On August 25, 2024, CEO Durov's arrest caused a drop of about 20%.

According to CMC data, the ATL of TON coin price was $0.5194 in September 2021; the ATH was $8.25 on June 15, 2024.

In the past year, the TON token has dropped over 50% from its peak, and its market capitalization has also significantly shrunk. The total locked value of the TON ecosystem, ) TVL (, has plummeted from a high of over $770 million to the current $140 million, a decline of nearly 80%.

Despite the fact that the coin price has halved from its peak, TON still has room for recovery in terms of market capitalization. As of May 11, 2025, TON's market capitalization is $8.64B, down 65.65% from the mid-2024 peak of $25.17B, indicating significant potential for further increases.

The market value of TON has generally gone through several stages:

• From November 2022 to June 2023, the ecological framework brought market value stability at around $3B.
• From June to August 2023, the TG bot became extremely popular, TON integrated a built-in wallet and launched an application center, and its market value increased.
• From March 2024, financing and ecology will continue to be built, leading to a surge in market value.

In terms of liquidity, the significant selling time points are from April to June 2022, June 2023, July 2024, and April to May 2025. The end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 is the time for a large influx of funds into TON.

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TON inflation is controllable, and application scenarios are yet to be expanded.

The initial supply of the TON token is 5 billion, with no upper limit, growing at an annual rate of about 0.6%, which is approximately 30 million tokens ). Tokens are used to reward validators, and if a validator behaves improperly, their staked tokens will be slashed. Currently, by staking TON, an APY of about 4.7% can be obtained.

The main uses of TON tokens include: transaction processing fees for smart contracts, payment for platform application services, staking, cross-chain transactions, governance, and storage services, as well as payment for TON proxy services in the future. Currently, TON can be directly purchased with credit cards, and then used to buy virtual goods such as anonymous accounts.

Telegram launched the Stars transit solution to comply with regulations and enhance user engagement, linking the ecosystem core ( advertisements and fund transfers ) to the TON ecosystem:

• Users can obtain Stars through in-app purchases via Apple and Google or PremiumBot to purchase digital products offered by the bot.
• Easy to use for users, just purchase with a credit card, no involvement with crypto.
• Merchants must withdraw using TON
• Telegram uses Stars instead of real currency to comply with app store rules, while it can be converted to TON.

The official statement says that Stars is just the beginning, and more features will be introduced in the future. Importantly, Telegram links two key processes, user acquisition and withdrawals, with TON: advertising must be recharged with TON, and developers must withdraw their earnings through TON, ensuring that the product is surrounded by TON from "start" to "end."

The Reality After the TON Traffic Decline: Growing Pains of Ecological Transformation

The TON ecosystem is currently crowded and competitive, and the officials are no longer focusing on the gaming ecosystem but rather on the payment side. Among 1000+ projects, there are only 20 small categories, with only 5 main categories: NFT-related (120+), gaming-related over 700, trading, social, and tools. The gaming category ranks lower on the official classification page.

Apart from games and memes, other tracks have relatively low recognition. The shopping category has a single user ( that only supports the Russian region ), and the basic functions ( mostly address issues such as helping with TON payments ).

The activity on the TON blockchain continues to decline, reflecting a recession in the internal economic vitality of the ecosystem. User participation and transaction frequency have both decreased, indicating a significant weakening of the ecosystem's growth momentum.

This dilemma stems from multiple factors:

1. TON quickly attracted users in the early stages relying on the traffic dividend from Telegram, but failed to establish an effective user retention and value accumulation mechanism.
2. The ecological narrative is singular, mainly focusing on social and gaming, lacking in-depth layout in diversified tracks such as DeFi, AI, and DePIN.
3. The unique development architecture and programming language are not friendly enough to developers, limiting project incubation and innovation efficiency.

According to DeFiLlama, there are currently only a dozen projects on TON with a TVL exceeding ten million dollars, among which Tonstakers stands out, indicating a high concentration of ecological projects and a prominent issue of development imbalance.

Although Mini Apps have seamless authorization and payment integration capabilities and can theoretically reach 950 million Telegram users, the ecosystem is actually highly concentrated in games and NFTs, while general applications such as tools, payments, and infrastructure remain scarce.

If TON cannot break free from the path dependence on short-term hype and expand practical application scenarios starting from the token, it will be difficult to solidify into sustainable on-chain value. Once the traffic dividend fades, what can truly support the ecosystem must be the project's structural health and diverse capabilities. From the current composition of the TON ecosystem, the pressure for transformation is gradually becoming apparent.

Where are the users and developers of TON?

( The number of TON users has surged, but the activity level is declining.

TON user growth is rapid. According to tonscan data, from mid-May to early September 2024, the number of TON addresses increased from 20m to 70m, with a doubling in August alone from 45m to 70m. From September 2024 to now, the number of TON addresses has doubled again, currently at 150m users.

According to Dune data, new users are increasing at an average rate of 200-300 per day at the beginning of 2024, while returning users can cover the lost users. TON is expected to cover 30% of Telegram users by 2028, with a target of reaching 500M users.

TON users have high stickiness, but the number of active addresses has significantly decreased due to the coldness of the ecosystem. According to Binance's 2024 report, TON has the highest retention rate among all well-known public chains, as it focuses more on building a strong consumer ecosystem and has a solid product-market fit. Currently, the monthly active address count for TON is 2 million ), with daily active addresses at 30,000 ###, a significant drop compared to over 10 million monthly active addresses by the end of 2024.

The trading volume of TON has significantly decreased compared to before, but overall it remains stable. According to tonscan data, the average daily trading volume of TON by the end of 2024 is 4 million transactions, which has now dropped to 2.5 million transactions. In contrast, the daily transaction count on the BTC chain is between 300,000 and 400,000, while ETH is between 1.1 million and 1.3 million, remaining consistently stable.

( TON developer ecosystem under pressure, infrastructure needs to be strengthened

The number of TON validators is relatively small, leading to a certain degree of centralization. Currently, there are 400 validators in TON, an increase from 361 at the end of 2024, distributed across 26 countries, with a staking amount close to 700 million TON, accounting for 12% of the total token supply and 28% of the circulating token supply.

Issues faced by the TON network:

1. The hardware and network requirements for validators are high; to become a validator, you must stake at least 300,000 TON.
2. The number of validators is insufficient. Compared to other PoS public chains, the number of TON validators is noticeably low.

The difference in the number of validators leads to each validator needing to handle more transaction requests ) centralized (. When the transaction volume suddenly increases, validators may not be able to process all transactions in time, resulting in block delays or even interruptions. For example, on August 28, 2024, the TON blockchain experienced two interruptions in one day, totaling 10 hours.

The number of developers is stable but has declined somewhat. Most developers come from Telegram, with core developers primarily from South Korea and Russia, possessing strong technical skills but average product experience. According to the develop report data, as of May 2025, there are 30 full-time developers on TON with a code increase or decrease of 10+) per day, and the number of monthly active developers is over 150, a decrease of 100 from the end of 2024. Compared to other ecosystems, the numbers are generally lower, with ### ETH having a maximum of over 2000+, and Polygon, Arbitrum, and Solana ranging between 500-600.

TON Connect SDK is an essential SDK for developers to connect to the TON ecosystem. Its download volume increased from an average of 10,000 per week at the beginning of 2024 to over 25,000 per week during the peak period in August 2024, and has now decreased to an average of 12,000 per week.

The growth of TON exhibits a typical "user-first" characteristic, but this also conceals issues such as an unstable ecological foundation and insufficient developer support. If TON does not continue to find a sustainable development direction that is compatible with Telegram applications, it will be difficult to compete with other public chains.