TON: Historical Burdens and the Path of Reconstruction

In the past two years, TON( The Open Network) has undergone an amazing transformation from silence to explosion. With Telegram's hundreds of millions of users, TON quickly established a strong presence in the cryptocurrency community. The narratives of gamified ecosystems, robot economies, and the Stars payment system were once very popular. However, the reality of price fluctuations, market cap decline, and decreased activity has also exposed deep structural issues within TON: concentrated chips, homogeneity in the ecosystem, and weak infrastructure.

This article will systematically analyze the chip distribution, token economy, user and capital flow, development ecology, and TAC architecture of TON, attempting to answer a core question: Does the short-term prosperity of TON have a structure that supports its long-term value?

TON Token Concentration: The Gap Between Whales and Retail Investors

TON had a rocky start, burdened from the beginning with structural issues such as a large concentration of chips and historical miner lock-ups. Now it is trying 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.

The history of TON has led to a majority of the chips being held by a small number of miners. The official team compensates for this issue through over-the-counter trading (OTC). TON was created in 2018 and was prohibited by the SEC when preparing to launch its mainnet in 2019. The project was officially halted in May 2020, but was restarted by a team of developers. As of June 2022, all TON coins have been mined, and it has now transitioned to a proof-of-stake (POS) mechanism.

After the project was taken over by the development team, 98.55% of the total supply of TON was available for mining until the end of mining on June 28, 2022. This means that most of the tokens are in the hands of early miners. The TON project has launched a preferential plan to buy a large number of tokens from early miners, while large holders can obtain an annualized yield of 6-7% if they lock up tokens ( for a long period.

According to the data, there are 12 whale addresses that hold more than 1% of the total supply, of which 6 are low activity addresses. The whale addresses marked as "frozen" by community voting refer to inactive early miner addresses, totaling 171, locking up 1.081 billion TON. The addresses marked as "TON Believers Fund" have their assets frozen until October 12, 2025, locking up a total of 1.317 billion TON, which accounts for approximately 52%, in order to stabilize selling pressure. The annualized yield on these frozen assets is as high as 7.176%.

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The distribution of TON chips is extremely uneven. Users holding less than 100 TON account for nearly 99.9%. Since March 2024, a large number of retail investors have poured in. Currently, there are about 123 million addresses holding TON, of which the majority )1.2254 billion ( hold less than 10 TON. Before March 2024, there were less than 500 addresses holding more than 100,000 TON, which slowly increased thereafter, peaking at around 1,300 in August, but has now decreased to about 600 as the excitement wanes.

According to the data, addresses holding less than 1000 TON are numerous but account for just a little over 1% of the total tokens. The situation with TON is different from other public chains; they need to build a development path that suits them under the constraints of history.

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

) TON price, market cap and liquidity

There are several significant price increase points for TON.

1. In November 2021, launched a centralized exchange and received public support from the founder of Telegram.
2. At the end of February and early March 2024, the overall trading volume surged significantly with large capital inflows. Mirana Ventures invested 8 million USD to support TON, while the number of Telegram users surpassed 900 million, along with rumors of an IPO.
3. Late June to late July 2024
4. The arrest of CEO Durov on August 25, 2024, caused a drop of about 20%.

According to the data, the historical lowest point of TON price was 0.5194 USD in September 2021; the historical highest point was 8.25 USD on June 15, 2024.

In the past year, the TON token has dropped over 50% from its peak, and its market value has also significantly shrunk. Meanwhile, the total value locked in the TON ecosystem, ### TVL (, has plummeted from a high of over $770 million to the current $140 million, a nearly 80% decline.

Despite the price having halved from its peak, TON still has room for resurgence in terms of market capitalization. The key lies in whether it can convert ecological enthusiasm into long-term value. As of May 11, 2025, Ethereum's market cap is $306.36 billion. If ETH is to achieve a 10% annual growth, approximately $30 billion in new funds is needed. In contrast, Solana's current market cap is $91.93 billion, and to achieve the same growth rate, it requires $9 billion. Meanwhile, TON's current market cap is $8.64 billion. Although it has decreased by 65.65% from its peak of $25.17 billion in mid-2024, it indicates that there is still significant upside potential.

The market value of TON has roughly gone through several stages: it rose from 4 billion USD in mid-July 2023 to 7 billion USD at the beginning of 2024, and then to around 13 billion USD at its peak in August 2024 ) with an FDV of 27 billion USD (, almost doubling every six months. However, the market value has now fallen back to about 8 billion USD ) with an FDV of 17 billion USD (.

From November 2022 to June 2023, the construction of the TON ecosystem has led to a market value increase, stabilizing at around 3 billion USD. From June to August 2023, the popularity of Telegram bots skyrocketed, coupled with the integration of a built-in wallet and the launch of the application center in July and August, which brought a surge in enthusiasm for the bot ecosystem and an increase in the narrative around the TON ecosystem itself. Starting in March 2024, due to financing and continued ecosystem development, there has been a surge in market value.

According to the data, the significant shipment time points throughout the entire time frame are now in April to June 2022, June 2023, July 2024, and April to May 2025. In addition, the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 are the timing for a large influx of funds into TON.

On May 29, 2024, Durov sold 2.564 million TON off-market, but it did not affect the price of TON. Prior to this, Durov had been intermittently selling TON since mid-March.

Starting from June 10, 2024, the price of the currency and the number of short-term traders have continued to decline, while the number of holders for less than a year has increased. It is evident that most of them entered the market in June 2023 to purchase and sell TON). They continued to hold during the price drop and got stuck with their positions.

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

The initial supply of TON tokens is 5 billion, with no upper limit, growing at a rate of approximately 0.6% per year, which is about 30 million tokens ). Tokens are used to reward validators, and if validators behave improperly, their staked tokens will be reduced. Currently, you can earn an annualized yield of about 4.7% by staking TON.

The utility of TON tokens includes: paying for smart contract transaction processing fees, platform application service fees, staking, cross-chain transactions, governance and storage services of TON, and in the future, payment for TON proxy services. Currently, TON can be directly purchased with a credit card, and then used to buy virtual goods such as anonymous accounts.

Telegram has launched the Stars transfer program to comply with regulations from Apple and Google and enhance user engagement. The official core of its future ecosystem will link ( advertising and fund transfers to the TON ecosystem. To support payments for digital goods and services across the entire Telegram ecosystem, Telegram Stars has been introduced. Users can acquire Stars through in-app purchases from Apple and Google or via PremiumBot, which can then be used to purchase digital products offered by bots, such as e-books, online courses, and items in Telegram games.

TG Stars is a solution by TON to gradually guide Web2 users into the cryptocurrency space, allowing direct credit card top-ups.

• For users: easy to use, just buy with a credit card, no involvement of cryptocurrency.
• For merchants: Withdrawals must use TON). Some people claim it is a cryptocurrency scam, only cashing out is useful (.
• For Telegram: Use Stars instead of real currency to comply with Google Play/App Store rules, while also being able to convert it into TON.

The app store will support future official explanations that digital goods have a unique payment channel. The official also stated that Telegram Stars is just the beginning, and future updates will bring more features and characteristics to Stars, such as gifts for content creators and micropayments.

However, Telegram's official marketing consists of the two most important parts - traffic generation and withdrawals using TON link: 1). You must recharge TON to place advertisements. Developers' withdrawal of earnings needs to go through TON, which means that both the "beginning" and the "end" of the product are surrounded by TON.

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

The TON ecosystem is currently crowded and competitive, with the official focus shifting from the gaming ecosystem to payments: among over 1,000 projects, there are only 20 small categories, but in reality, there are only 5 major categories, such as NFT-related projects with over 120 projects, gaming-related projects with over 700 including gambling projects, trading projects such as centralized exchanges, wallets, cross-chain bridges, social channels, chat tools, and tools like blockchain explorers, development tools, VPNs, and launchpads. Furthermore, it is evident that TON is not focusing on the previously popular gaming ecosystem, as the gaming category is even the second to last in the official classification page.

But other categories of products are lacking: apart from games and meme coins, other tracks are basically less well-known. Even in the shopping category, there are issues such as the user base being single, ) only supporting the Russian region (, and the basic functionality ) mostly being to assist with TON payments (.

The continued decline in the activity on the TON blockchain clearly reveals the decline of economic vitality within its ecosystem. Both user participation and transaction frequency have decreased, reflecting a significant weakening of the growth momentum of the ecosystem.

This dilemma stems from the interplay of multiple factors. On one hand, TON initially relied on the traffic bonus from Telegram, quickly attracting users with mini-programs and "click-to-earn" type mini-games, but failed to establish effective user retention and value accumulation mechanisms. After the wealth effect faded, user interest plummeted, and the traffic bonus rapidly depleted.

On the other hand, the TON ecosystem narrative is relatively singular, mainly revolving around social and gaming aspects, lacking in-depth layouts in diversified tracks such as DeFi, AI, and decentralized physical infrastructure. According to DeFiLlama data, there are currently only a dozen projects on TON with a total locked value exceeding ten million dollars, among which Tonstakers stands out, resulting in a high concentration of ecosystem projects and prominent issues of development imbalance.

In addition, TON's unique development architecture and programming language are not developer-friendly, which limits project incubation and innovation efficiency, further weakening the vitality of the ecosystem. Although Mini Apps have seamless authorization and payment integration features, theoretically reaching 950 million Telegram users, the ecosystem is actually highly concentrated in games and NFTs, while general applications such as tools, payments, and infrastructure remain scarce.

If TON cannot break free from the path dependence on short-term popularity and expand practical application scenarios starting from the TON token, it will be difficult to solidify into sustainable on-chain value. Once the traffic dividend fades, what truly supports the ecosystem must be the healthy structure and diverse capabilities of the project. From the current composition of the TON ecosystem, the pressure for transformation is gradually becoming evident.

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Where are TON users and developers?

) The number of TON users has surged, but the activity level is declining.

TON user growth is rapid: According to tonscan data, from mid-May 2024 to early September, the number of TON addresses increased from 20 million to 70 million, with a doubling in August alone (4500万-7000万). From September 2024 to now, the number of TON addresses has doubled again, currently reaching 150 million users, showing very rapid growth.

According to Dune data, new users will increase at an average rate of 200-300 per day from early 2024, while returning users may.