TON: The Historical Burden and Path to Reconstruction

In the past two years, TON( The Open Network) has transformed from silence to explosion. With Telegram's hundreds of millions of user base, TON quickly established a strong influence in the cryptocurrency community. Multiple narratives such as ecological gamification, robot economy, and Stars payment system have attracted much attention. However, with price fluctuations, market capitalization decline, and reduced activity, TON has also exposed deep structural problems: high concentration of chips, ecological homogeneity, and weak infrastructure.

This article will systematically analyze the chip distribution of TON, its token economics, user and capital flow, development ecology, and TAC architecture, exploring a core question: Can the short-term prosperity of TON support its long-term value?

TON Chips are Highly Concentrated: The Gap Between Whales and Retail Investors

TON has faced significant structural issues since its inception, such as a concentration of chips and historical miner lock-ups, and is now attempting to reshape itself amidst these "sunk costs". The true picture of its ecological development can be glimpsed from the chip structure, token trends, and capital flows.

Due to historical reasons of the project, most of the TON chips are held by a small number of early miners. The TON official repurchased tokens from early miners through OTC and provides 6-7% APY for whales who lock tokens for the long term.

According to on-chain data, there are 12 whale addresses holding more than 1% of the total supply on TON, 6 of which are low activity addresses. A total of 171 whale addresses marked as "frozen" by community voting are inactive early miners (, locking up 1.081 billion TON. The assets of the address marked as "TON Believers Fund" are frozen until October 2025, locking up about 1.317 billion TON, accounting for 52% ).

The distribution of TON chips is extremely uneven, with users holding less than 100 TON accounting for nearly 99.9%. Starting in March 2024, a large number of retail investors poured in, but the number of addresses holding large amounts of TON decreased after the enthusiasm waned.

TON valuation has dropped, but there is still upward potential

The price of TON has experienced several significant increases:

1. Launched a centralized exchange in November 2021 with public support from the founder of Telegram.
2. Large capital inflows in February-March 2024, Mirana Ventures invests $8 million, Telegram users exceed 900 million.
3. Price increases in June-July 2024, but a drop of about 20% due to the CEO's arrest on August 25.

According to CMC data, the ATL of TON is $0.5194 in September 2021, and the ATH is $8.25 on June 15, 2024.

In the past year, TON has fallen over 50% from its high point, and its market value has significantly shrunk. The ecosystem's TVL has dropped from a peak of $770 million to $140 million, a decline of nearly 80%.

Nevertheless, in terms of market capitalization, TON still has room for growth. As of May 11, 2025, the market capitalization of TON is $8.64 billion, down 65.65% from the mid-2024 peak of $25.17 billion, but it still has significant upside potential.

TON inflation controllable, application scenarios to be expanded

The initial supply of TON tokens is 5 billion, with no cap, growing at an annual rate of approximately 0.6%. The tokens are used to reward validators, and currently, staking TON can yield an APY of about 4.7%.

The uses of the token include: paying for smart contract transaction fees, platform application service fees, staking, cross-chain transactions, governance, and storage services, etc. It can be used in the future to pay for TON agency services.

Telegram launches the Stars transit program to comply with regulations and enhance user experience. Stars can be purchased with credit cards and are used to buy digital products offered by bots. This is TON's strategy to gradually guide Web2 users into the crypto world.

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

The TON ecosystem track is currently concentrated and crowded, and the officials are no longer focusing on the gaming ecosystem, but rather shifting their emphasis to the payment sector. Over 1,000 projects are only divided into 20 small categories, with only 5 main categories in reality: NFT, gaming, trading, social, and tools.

Apart from games and memes, other track projects generally have lower recognition. The shopping category has issues such as a single user ( only supporting the Russian region ), basic functionality ( mostly being auxiliary to TON payments ), and so on.

The activity on the TON chain continues to decline, reflecting a decrease in the internal economic vitality of the ecosystem. User participation and transaction frequency have both fallen, indicating a significant weakening of the growth momentum in the ecosystem.

This dilemma arises from multiple factors:

1. TON relied on Telegram's traffic bonus in its early stages but failed to establish an effective user retention mechanism.
2. The ecological narrative is singular and lacks layout for diversified tracks such as DeFi, AI, and DePIN.
3. The unique development architecture and programming language are not developer-friendly, which limits project innovation.

If TON cannot break free from its dependence on short-term popularity and expand into applicable scenarios starting from the token, it will be difficult to settle as a sustainable on-chain value.

Current Status of TON Users and Developers

The number of TON users has grown rapidly, increasing from 20 million in May 2024 to 150 million now. However, the number of active addresses has significantly decreased as the ecosystem's popularity declined, with currently 2 million monthly active addresses and 30,000 daily active addresses, far below the monthly active addresses of over 10 million at the end of 2024.

The trading volume of TON has significantly decreased compared to before, but remains stable overall. The current average daily trading volume is about 2.5 million transactions, lower than the 4 million transactions at the end of 2024, but still higher than the daily trading volume of BTC and ETH.

The number of TON validators is relatively low, currently at 400, distributed across 26 countries. The amount staked is close to 700 million TON, accounting for 12% of the total token supply and 28% of the circulating supply. The insufficient number of validators may lead to network centralization and delays in transaction processing.

The number of developers is stable but has decreased. As of May 2025, there are 30 full-time developers for TON, with over 150 active developers each month, a decrease of 100 from the end of 2024. Compared to other ecosystems, the number of developers is at a medium level.

The growth of TON exhibits a "user-first" characteristic, but it also exposes issues such as an unstable ecological foundation and insufficient developer support. If a sustainable development direction that fits the Telegram application cannot be found, TON will struggle to compete with other public chains.

The Future of TON: Towards Compatibility and Connectivity

Despite having a large potential user base, the development of the TON ecosystem faces barriers of incompatibility with mainstream EVM applications. The TAC( TON Access) project is dedicated to providing a channel for EVM dApps to access the TON and Telegram ecosystem.

TAC is an extension of the TON network that connects TON with EVM-compatible applications, creating a unified experience for users and developers. It is an independent EVM public chain built on Cosmos SDK + Ethermint, using dPoS consensus and achieving BTC staking security through Babylon.

TAC achieves cross-chain communication through the Proxy smart contract system, making the entire process transparent for users. It not only expands the boundaries of the TON ecosystem but also allows Web3 users to "one wallet, traverse all worlds."

The future of TON hinges on the compatibility road opened by the TAC architecture. Whether it can successfully connect to the mainstream EVM world, build a robust developer ecosystem, and break through the bottlenecks of payment and scenario implementation will determine whether TON can carve out its own development paradigm from the platform dividend.

After the traffic dividend fades, what can truly remain is the self-sustaining ability of the chain. TON is still at a critical crossroads.