The TON craze has subsided, but major movements continue: Is the bubble dissipating or is the super entrance settling?

Introduction

In the third quarter of 2024, the TON blockchain, relying on the traffic entrance of Telegram, saw a rapid explosion of Tap-to-Earn mini-games, attracting hundreds of millions of users and creating a miracle of on-chain growth. Meanwhile, the token generation events of several TON ecosystem projects also brought a strong wealth effect, making "TON/Telegram" one of the hottest narrative centers in Web3.

However, after the hype, TON is entering a cooling period that deserves caution. Similar to previous Web3 narratives, will the aftermath of the bubble be accumulation or a complete zero? Is it a temporary pause in traffic, or is the value conversion yet to arrive? At this juncture, we hope to reassess whether TON has the long-term potential to become a "super on-chain gateway" by using detailed data, ecological evolution paths, and technological stack layouts as entry points.

I. 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 designed to bring 500 million people on-chain, built using technology developed by the community of Telegram. Backed by the Web2 social platform Telegram with nearly 1 billion users, TON indeed has the potential to achieve the goal of bringing 500 million people into the on-chain world, and has seen great success in 2024:

1. Toncoin(TON Token) has a maximum market value exceeding 25B USD, ranking among the top 10 in cryptocurrency market capitalization.
2. Tap to earn mini game Hamster Kombat officially disclosed attracting over 300 million users;
3. The number of new addresses on the TON Blockchain reached over 700,000 in a single day, with daily active addresses exceeding 1.657 million;
4. Multiple Telegram mini-game assets have a market value exceeding $500 million, and the on-chain DeFi TVL is expected to surge by over 5500% 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 past Web3 booms, short-term surges are often accompanied by data retreats. The TON ecosystem is currently experiencing a phase of "narrative cooling": as shown in Chart 1, both the daily new wallet numbers and active addresses, as well as the TVL and trading volume of core DEX (Stone.fi and Dedust ), have significantly declined from their peaks. Although there have been some short-term peaks in between, most were temporary rebounds driven by specific projects; from the annual trend perspective, multiple indicators have fallen back to levels seen before the narrative launch.

However, it is not entirely a pessimistic signal. The number of non-zero balance Jetton Wallet ( wallets is still steadily increasing, indicating that the accumulation of basic users is ongoing, although the growth rate has noticeably slowed down. Meanwhile, the number of NFT mintings also continues to grow, suggesting that the on-chain application ecosystem is still being actively promoted.

On the other hand, from the keyword trends of Google Trends, the overall search popularity of TON is also 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 fades but major moves continue: is the bubble bursting, or is a super entry consolidating?])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 rare: Bitcoin once experienced on-chain overload due to the inscription craze, but eventually, activity returned to a relatively stable level; Solana and Base, after experiencing a halving in data, welcomed user inflow again and reached new highs with technical optimizations and ecosystem advancements.

Does TON have the ability to achieve a deep transformation from traffic to value after the tide recedes? Is it a temporary dormancy, or will it eventually 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 its organizational strategy, ecological construction, technological upgrades, and narrative transformation.

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

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

) 2.1 Leadership Transition and Compliance Efforts: TON Accelerating Mainstream Path

At the beginning of 2025, the personnel adjustment of the TON Foundation sent a clear signal: globalization and compliance will become the core strategic directions for the coming 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 firm managing billions of dollars in assets for U.S. investors, and Stotz's background brings a strong "traditional capital market" 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— a vibrant yet highly regulated region seen as a key battleground in TON's strategy.

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

It is worth noting that Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and an early promoter of the TON blockchain, was briefly detained in August 2024 due to Telegram's alleged regulatory violations, and only returned to the public eye in March 2025. Although this incident has not yet reached a conclusion, its timing coincides closely with the strategic adjustments of the TON Foundation, which may have indirectly prompted the team to place greater emphasis on regulatory issues, clearing obstacles for subsequent global implementation.

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 important evidence of 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 crypto 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, TON's global expansion has already begun. Starting from November 2023, TON will launch phased promotions in some African countries, and then expand 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 entry

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

In the payment system, Telegram promises to exclusively accept Toncoin as a non-statutory payment currency within its ecosystem, applicable to scenarios including Telegram Stars, Premium membership, advertising system ### Telegram Ads (, and payment gateway service ) 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 at over 130 million offline merchants worldwide, further expanding TON's payment implementation capabilities in the real world.

The TON Space wallet has recently introduced the ability to pay transaction fees using Telegram Stars, which 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, as it not only relies on a large influx of traffic but also promotes the transformation of on-chain applications towards "lifestyle" and "normalization". According to the official plan, starting from the second quarter of 2025, users in the US will be able to directly experience 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 the TON ecosystem is mainly driven by mini-games. Under the combination of "airdrop incentives + easy to get started," users flocked in quickly. For example, the airdrop of "Hamster Kombat" in September 2024 peaked at 300 million monthly active users in July, but by November, only 52 million active users remained, resulting in a user loss of over 86% in just a few months. While the simple and replicable game mechanics can create a "growth illusion" in the short term, it is difficult to form long-term user retention, revealing 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 layout of infrastructure on the other. In April 2025, TON announced a strategic cooperation with Chinese gaming company KingNet), which has over 100 million users###, while also hosting the first large-scale game developer conference in Asia, attracting dozens of studios from the WeChat ecosystem 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 making their way onto the recommended list, and they are no longer limited to gaming categories, but also include social, payment, DeFi, NFT, and other dimensions, marking the initial 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 like oracles and wallets, there are also development assistance platforms such as 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 a TON perpetual contract DEX incentive activity with a certain perpetual contract DEX;
• Launching bounty program with AI Agent operating system ElizaOS;
• Collaborate with the aggregator protocol Jupiter to promote the development of TON ecosystem aggregators...

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

( 2.4 Technology Upgrade: Advancements in 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, enhance scalability, and improve 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, aimed at achieving the "Infinite Sharding )" mechanism, and significantly enhancing the stability and scalability of the network. Core improvements include:

• Point