TON: Historical Burden and Reconstruction Path

The Open Network (TON) has undergone an astonishing transformation from silence to explosion over the past two years. Relying on Telegram's vast user base, TON quickly established a strong influence in the crypto community. The narrative around gamified ecosystems, bot economies, and payment systems once drew significant attention to TON. However, in the face of price fluctuations, market capitalization decline, and decreased activity, TON has also exposed deep-seated structural issues, such as concentrated chips, ecological homogeneity, and weak infrastructure.

This article will systematically sort out the chip distribution, token economy, user and fund flow, development ecology, etc. of TON, attempting to answer a core question: Does the short-term prosperity of TON have the foundation to support its long-term value?

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

TON has faced structural issues from the very beginning, such as high concentration of chips and early miners locking up their holdings. Its chip distribution, token trends, and capital flow reveal the true picture of ecological development:

• Most of the chips are held by a small number of early miners, and the TON official seeks to alleviate this issue through over-the-counter trading ( OTC ).
• There are 12 whale addresses that hold more than 1% of the total supply, of which 6 are low activity addresses.
• Users holding less than 100 TON account for nearly 99.9%, with a large influx of retail investors starting from March 2024.
• Although there are many addresses holding less than 1000 TON, they only account for a little over 1% of the total tokens.

The situation faced by TON is different from other public chains, needing to find a suitable development path within its historical burdens.

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

The price and market value of TON have experienced several significant fluctuations:

• Launched a centralized exchange in November 2021 with public support from the founder of Telegram, resulting in a significant price increase.
• The overall trading volume in February-March 2024 has surged significantly, with large capital inflows.
• Another rise in June-July 2024, but a drop of about 20% due to the CEO's arrest on August 25.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the historical lowest price of TON was $0.5194 in September 2021, and the historical highest price was $8.25 on June 15, 2024.

In the past year, the TON token has fallen over 50% from its peak, with a significant decrease in market value. At the same time, the total locked value of the TON ecosystem ( TVL ) has plummeted from a high of $770 million to $140 million, a decline of nearly 80%.

Nevertheless, from the perspective of market capitalization, TON still has room for growth. The key lies in whether it can convert the ecological enthusiasm into long-term value. As of May 2025, the market capitalization of TON is $8.64B, a decrease of 65.65% from the mid-2024 peak of $25.17B, but it still has significant growth potential.

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

The initial supply of TON tokens is 5 billion pieces, with no upper limit, growing at a rate of approximately 0.6% per year. The tokens are mainly used to reward validators, and currently, staking TON can yield an annualized return of about 4.7%.

The main uses of TON tokens include:

• Pay smart contract transaction fees
• Payment platform application service fee
• Staking
• Cross-chain trading
• TON Ecosystem Governance
• Storage service fee

The Stars transfer solution launched by Telegram aims to connect the TON ecosystem with traditional payment systems, providing users with a convenient channel for purchasing digital goods. This solution complies with app store regulations while directing funds towards the TON ecosystem.

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

The TON ecosystem projects are currently concentrated and have serious homogenization, and the official focus has shifted from gaming to the payment field. Aside from games and memes, other track projects have lower visibility and more basic functions.

The activity level on the TON blockchain continues to decline, reflecting a significant weakening of the ecological growth momentum. This predicament stems from multiple factors:

• Early reliance on Telegram traffic dividends, failed to establish an effective user retention mechanism.
• The ecological narrative is singular and lacks layout for diversified tracks such as DeFi and AI.
• The unique development architecture is not friendly enough to developers, limiting project innovation.

If it cannot break free from reliance on short-term hype, TON will struggle to solidify as a sustainable on-chain value. From the current ecological composition, the pressure for transformation is gradually becoming apparent.

The Current Status of TON Users and Developers

The number of TON users has grown rapidly, increasing from 20 million in May 2024 to the current 150 million. However, the number of active addresses has significantly decreased as the enthusiasm for the ecosystem has waned, with the current monthly active addresses at 2 million, and daily active addresses at 30,000, a substantial drop from the tens of millions of monthly active addresses at the end of 2024.

The trading volume has also decreased from an average of 4 million transactions per day at the end of 2024 to the current 2.5 million transactions. In contrast, Bitcoin's daily trading volume is between 300,000 to 400,000 transactions, while Ethereum's is between 1.1 million to 1.3 million transactions.

The number of TON validators is relatively small ( 400, distributed across 26 countries, with a staking amount close to 700 million TON. The insufficient number of validators may lead to network centralization and performance bottlenecks.

The number of developers is relatively stable but has decreased. As of May 2025, there are 30 full-time developers for TON, with over 150 monthly active developers, which is a decrease of 100 people compared to the end of 2024. The weekly download count for the TON Connect SDK has dropped from a peak of over 25,000 to around 12,000 currently.

TON presents a "user-first" characteristic, but it also exposes issues such as an unstable ecological foundation and insufficient developer support. If a sustainable development direction cannot be found, TON will struggle to compete with other public chains.

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The Future of TON: Towards Compatibility and Connectivity

Facing the challenges of EVM incompatibility, the TAC)TON Access Layer( project is dedicated to providing a channel for EVM applications to access the TON and Telegram ecosystem. TAC is an independent EVM public chain built with Cosmos SDK + Ethermint, supporting full EVM smart contract execution.

TAC achieves cross-chain communication through a sorter network, supported by a Proxy smart contract system for cross-chain interaction. This architecture opens the door for TON to the EVM world, with the potential to expand its ecological boundaries.

The future development of TON will depend on whether it can:

• Successfully integrated into the EVM mainstream ecosystem
• Build a robust developer ecosystem
• Break through the bottleneck of payment and application scenarios implementation.

After the flow bonus fades, what can truly remain is the self-sustaining ability of the chain. TON is still at a critical crossroads, and its future direction deserves continuous attention.

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