Buckle up for the TON blockchain’s meteoric rise! Integrated with Telegram’s billion-user platform, The Open Network is turbocharging DeFi, NFTs, and mini apps with lightning-fast transactions and cross-chain magic. From StonFi’s $62.3M TVL to red-hot NFT trading, TON’s ecosystem is buzzing with potential, aiming to onboard 300 million wallets by 2028.
In the past six months, The Open Network (TON) blockchain has seen significant developments, particularly in its integration with Telegram and expansion of its ecosystem. TON has the ambition to onboard 30% of Telegram users by 2028, meaning they want to have 300 million active wallets per month by that time.
- TON has become the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for Telegram’s mini apps, making TON Connect the standard protocol for seamless app integrations.
- TON integrated with LayerZero, enabling seamless USDT transfers across 100 blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron and BNB Chain.
- Ston.Fi and DeDust have become leading DeFi platforms, supporting an ecosystem with $150.33 million TVL.
- June NFT trading volume hit an all-time high of $9.7 million, combining both onchain and offchain sales for the TON ecosystem.
- TON has now seen over 44.6 million wallets engaging with the network. While the network has 1.7 million active wallets per month.
Refreshner, what’s TON?
The Open Network (TON) is a decentralized, layer-1 blockchain designed for high scalability and fast transactions. The platform was initially developed by Telegram’s founders, the Durov brothers, as the Telegram Open Network. After regulatory challenges in 2020, Telegram handed it over to the open-source community. Therefore it’s now maintained by the TON Foundation, a non-profit entity.
TON is a decentralized and open internet platform with various components, including TON Blockchain, TON DNS, TON Storage, and TON Sites. TON Blockchain serves as the core protocol, connecting TON’s underlying infrastructure to form a complete ecosystem. Focused on scalability, security, and cross-chain interoperability, TON wants to process millions of transactions per second, aiming to support hundreds of millions of users in the future.
Telegram mini apps and TON
As mentioned, TON is the exclusive blockchain network for Telegram. This means that every mini app that wants to use blockchain technology, will have to tap into TON. Therefore TON is well positioned for mainstream adoption, because Telegram has 1 billion users per month. The Total Value Locked for TON now sits at a total of $150.33 million
In 2024, there was lots of hype surrounding TON, and some mini apps managed to attract millions of users. Especially projects such as Hamster Kombat and Catizen managed to attract many players, driven by the gameplay and the earning potential, of course. According to the projects tracked by DappRadar, the most popular gaming mini app right now is Gatto. This dapp attracted 14,000 active wallets in the past 30 days.
In the current market, there are a couple of non-gaming projects that are performing very well.
DeDust
A decentralized exchange built natively on TON, which has over $10 million TVL. Over 10,000 accounts per week use the DeDust exchange.
StonFi
Market leader in the TON ecosystem has to be the StonFi exchange, which also allows for cross-chain swapping. The TVL sits at $62.3 million.
MarketApp
While the NFT sector is bleeding across the industry, things are looking good on TON. MarketApp recorded $3.33 million in trading volume in the past 30 days.
GetGems
Market leader for NFT trading on the TON blockchain is GetGems. The platform recorded $5.7 million in volume in the past 30 days, but that’s a 36% drop from the previous period.
Most popular NFTs on TON
As mentioned above, NFT trading on TON is pretty hot. The ecosystem doesn’t have NFT sales that move into the 6 digits, but demand certainly is heating up. At the moment there are a couple of collections that stand out. In June the TON ecosystem did $9.7 million in trading volume, reaching an all-time high. This is driven by the success of Telegram Gifts (which allows for onchain and offchain trading), demand for anonymous Telegram numbers, and of course the popularity of valuable usernames.
- Anonymous Telegram Numbers – Anonymous phone numbers to create Telegram accounts without a SIM card. Over 2,260 sold items in the past 30 days, with $6.2 million in trading volume. That’s an average price of $2,740.
- Telegram Usernames – With 1,570 sold usernames and $110,780 in trading volume, these user names are less pricey. But that also makes more people buy them.
- Telegram Gifts – We recorded close to $1 million in onchain sales in the past 30 days, while offchain sales (often much more) aren’t recorded by DappRadar.
- TON DNS Domains – These are .ton domain names for website and wallet addresses. In the past 30 days, 293 buyers spent over $364,000 on 764 domain names.
- Plush Pepes – The closest thing to a leading PFP collection, would be the Plush Pepes. Top NFTs sell for more than $15,000. The collection did over $900,000 in trading volume in the past 30 days.
- Pengu Clash – With 737 sold assets, Pengu Clash is among the most traded collections. However, the items go for less money, resulting in the total trading volume to be just below $53,000 in the past 30 days.
Closing words
TON is just getting started. The initial hype surrounding the Telegram integration has died down, and now we’re seeing more sustainable activity. DeFi activity is on the rise, the community is making a splash by purchasing their user names, while the rise of new gaming dapps will also mean new engagement mechanics. The time to play, earn and cash out is over, because TON is now moving into new territories. The time for expansion is here!
