- Trending
- Comments
- Latest
I’ve tracked TON since its 2021 launch, monitoring price action, developer activity, and user adoption through 2024 into 2025. My conclusion: the project has fundamentally failed to deliver on its core promise of bringing cryptocurrency to the mainstream.
Despite impressive on-paper statistics and an unparalleled distribution advantage through Telegram’s 950 million users, TON represents a cautionary tale about why infrastructure alone cannot overcome crypto’s deeper adoption challenges. Here’s why, and why it matters for the broader crypto industry.
When TON launched in 2021 after its contentious separation from Pavel Durov’s original 2018 vision, the blockchain carried extraordinary advantages that other Layer-1 networks could only dream of. The project promised to leverage Telegram’s massive user base to achieve what $100 billion in venture capital had failed to accomplish: genuine mass adoption of cryptocurrency.
With theoretical transaction speeds of 55,000 TPS through dynamic sharding, integration into one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, and a mission to “put crypto in every pocket,” TON seemed positioned to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 in ways Ethereum, Solana, and other competitors couldn’t match.
The technical architecture appeared sound, featuring multi-chain design with parallel workchains, fast block times of just 5 seconds, and finalization under 6 seconds. More importantly, TON solved crypto’s thorniest problem: distribution. Unlike projects spending millions on user acquisition, TON had direct access to nearly a billion potential users already comfortable with Telegram’s interface.
The numbers tell a story of spectacular growth that masks fundamental failure. TON saw 36.2 million new wallets created in 2024, 55 times the previous year and daily active addresses exploded by 3,435% from 26,274 in January to 902,737 by September. Total Value Locked surged from $13.5 million to a peak of $776 million, while the network processed over 2.8 million daily transactions by mid-2024.
Yet Toncoin’s price performance reveals the disconnect between activity metrics and genuine value creation. After hitting an all-time high of $8.24 in June 2024, TON has crashed 68% to current levels around $5.50 as of October 2025.
This isn’t a temporary correction, it’s a market verdict on the project’s inability to translate user numbers into sustainable economic value. The token has consistently failed to reclaim critical support levels, with technical analysts warning of potential further declines if key thresholds aren’t maintained.
The adoption metrics that initially seemed impressive reveal themselves as hollow upon scrutiny. Those millions of “active” wallets were driven primarily by tap-to-earn games like Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and DOGS speculative airdrop farming rather than genuine blockchain utility.
When the DOGS token launched in August 2024, it didn’t showcase TON’s scalability; instead, the network suffered a catastrophic 7-hour outage, exposing that TON could only handle 280 TPS in practice, far below the claimed 55,000 TPS and even below established networks.
The core reason for TON’s underperformance isn’t technical, it’s psychological. We’ve reached peak crypto fatigue, and TON walked directly into this reality without acknowledging it. After more than a decade of blockchain promises, the general public has heard it all before: faster transactions, lower fees, revolutionary applications, mass adoption just around the corner. TON offered nothing fundamentally new except easier onboarding, which proved insufficient.
The mini-apps strategy, which positioned Telegram as crypto’s “adoption machine,” revealed critical execution gaps. Developers discovered that building on TON’s WebView environment introduces significant limitations: performance degradation on low-power devices, platform-specific bugs (particularly on iOS), restrictions on full-screen functionality, and WebSocket configuration challenges.
The client-side nature of mini-apps eliminates server-side rendering benefits, while dependency on Telegram’s API means developers are at the mercy of platform bugs beyond their control.
Regulatory headwinds compounded technical challenges. Pavel Durov’s arrest in France in August 2024 on charges related to Telegram’s alleged facilitation of criminal activity sent shockwaves through the ecosystem.
While Durov was released on €5 million bail, he remains unable to leave France and must check in with authorities twice weekly. This existential threat to Telegram creates uncertainty for any project dependent on the messaging platform, and TON’s entire value proposition rests on Telegram integration.
The competition factor cannot be ignored. While TON was executing its Telegram-first strategy, Solana demonstrated real-world high-frequency transaction capability (2,000-3,000 TPS in practice), Ethereum continued its Layer-2 scaling roadmap, and both maintained stronger developer ecosystems and institutional support. TON’s technical specifications look impressive on paper, but infrastructure means nothing without applications that people actually want to use.
To be fair, TON advocates point to legitimate reasons for optimism. The mini-app ecosystem continues growing, with developers distributed over $26 million through the Open League rewards program across eight seasons in 2024. Games like Notcoin attracted 35 million users and doubled TON’s activated wallets to 8.5 million in just one month, demonstrating that Telegram can indeed drive user acquisition at unprecedented scale.
Tether’s USDT integration on TON processed $39.6 billion in transaction volume across 26 million transactions in its first eight months, with 3.5 million wallets participating. This suggests genuine utility for stablecoin transfers within Telegram’s ecosystem, offering user experience that proponents argue surpasses traditional neobanks like Venmo or Revolut. In June 2024, TON surpassed Base, BNB Chain, and even Ethereum in daily active addresses, averaging 1.8 million wallets.
The technical fundamentals remain solid, with TON recording 104,715 TPS during live testing — genuinely impressive throughput that validates the sharding architecture’s potential. Telegram rolled out integrated TON wallets to 87 million users in the United States in July 2025, dramatically expanding potential reach. Bulls argue that TON is still early in its adoption curve and that the infrastructure being built today will support tomorrow’s killer applications.
These bull arguments, while acknowledging real achievements, fundamentally miss the point. High transaction counts driven by airdrop farming and tap-to-earn gaming don’t represent sustainable adoption, they represent speculation masquerading as utility. The moment rewards dry up, users disappear, as evidenced by Notcoin and DOGS tokens becoming among the worst performers in the top 100 cryptocurrencies shortly after their launches.
The USDT volume, while substantial, reflects Telegram’s existing user base finding a convenient way to transfer value within a platform they already use, not blockchain converting skeptics into believers. This is important functionality, but it’s table stakes, not revolutionary. Any messaging platform could integrate stablecoin transfers; Telegram’s advantage here is social graph lock-in, not blockchain innovation.
Most critically, TON’s trajectory demonstrates that distribution alone cannot solve crypto’s fundamental problem: lack of compelling use cases for ordinary people.
Telegram provided TON with the holy grail, direct access to nearly a billion users, yet the project still couldn’t convert that advantage into sustained value creation. If TON can’t succeed with Telegram’s distribution engine, what does that say about crypto’s mass adoption prospects generally?
For me to revise this thesis, TON would need to demonstrate three specific conditions:
None of these conditions currently exist. The regulatory uncertainty around Durov and Telegram adds significant forward-looking risk that bulls consistently underestimate.
To be clear: TON isn’t “dead” — the network operates, transactions process, development continues. But measured against its stated mission of bringing crypto to the mainstream through Telegram, the project has not delivered on its transformative promise.
TON’s trajectory offers uncomfortable lessons for the broader cryptocurrency industry. The project had every advantage: sophisticated technology, experienced founders, massive built-in distribution, and significant capital. Yet it still couldn’t escape crypto’s gravity well.
This suggests that adoption barriers are deeper than infrastructure limitations — they’re rooted in fundamental questions about whether blockchain solves real problems for ordinary people.
The infrastructure-first approach that dominated crypto thinking for the past decade has reached diminishing returns. We don’t need faster blockchains, cheaper transactions, or better user onboarding flows, we need compelling reasons for people to use blockchain in the first place. TON’s failure to capitalize on Telegram’s distribution proves that crypto’s challenge isn’t reaching users, it’s giving them reasons to stay.
For other projects, the lesson is clear: viral growth through incentivized participation creates vanity metrics, not sustainable ecosystems. The 3,435% increase in TON’s daily active addresses looks impressive until those users disappear when rewards stop flowing. Building genuine utility requires solving real problems, not just making speculation more accessible.
Going forward, watch whether TON can transition from speculation-driven growth to utility-driven retention, whether Telegram’s regulatory challenges materially impact the ecosystem, and whether any mini-app emerges that retains users without continuous token incentives.
Until these questions are answered positively, TON remains a cautionary tale about crypto’s deeper adoption crisis, one that no amount of technological sophistication or distribution advantage can solve alone.
