The New Journey After the TON Craze: Is It the End of the Bubble, or Is the Super Entrance Settling Down?

1. Data Cooling and Traffic Decline: The Cooling Period of the TON Ecosystem

In 2024, the TON blockchain created a miracle of on-chain growth with the traffic entry of Telegram and the Tap-to-Earn mini-games. However, after the frenzy, TON is entering a cooling period that is worth being cautious about:

• The market cap of Toncoin has dropped from over $25 billion to its current approximate $10 billion.
• The number of active addresses on the chain has dropped from a peak of 1.65 million to around 500,000.
• The TVL and trading volume of the core DEX have significantly declined from their peak.
• Google Trends shows that the overall search popularity of TON is gradually declining.

However, there are also some positive signals: the number of non-zero balance wallets continues to rise steadily, and the number of NFT mintings is also maintaining growth, indicating that the accumulation of fundamental users and the construction of the application ecosystem are still ongoing.

2. Frequent Major Actions: Team Restructuring, Compliance Layout, Infrastructure Upgrades

On the surface, the heat is cooling down, but in reality, TON is entering a phase of accelerated layout.

1. Leadership Changes and Compliance Efforts

• Appoint Manuel Stotz as the new president and Maximilian Crown as CEO to strengthen globalization and compliance strategies.
• Actively communicate with US regulators and plan to launch a self-custody wallet in the United States in the second quarter of 2025.
• Disclose that multiple American venture capital firms hold a large amount of Toncoin, paving the way for compliance and globalization transformation.

2. Deep integration with Telegram

• TON is designated as the sole blockchain infrastructure for the Telegram Mini Apps ecosystem.
• Telegram promises to exclusively accept Toncoin as a non-statutory payment currency within its ecosystem.
• The TON Space wallet has launched a feature that allows users to pay transaction fees with Telegram Stars.

3. Ecosystem Expansion and Capital Injection

• Strategic cooperation with Chinese gaming giant KingNet to expand the Asian game developer ecosystem
• Promote multiple new tracks such as PayFi, RWA, AI, and contract trading.
• Obtained investments from institutions such as Foresight Ventures, Bitget, and Gate, with TVM Ventures initiating a $100 million ecological fund.

4. Technical Upgrade

• Accelerator mainnet upgrade: Achieve "infinite sharding" mechanism to enhance network stability and scalability.
• Layer 2 payment network: Similar to the Bitcoin Lightning Network, supports instant transactions and very low fees.
• BTC Teleport Cross-chain Bridge: Achieve asset cross-chain transfer between TON and the Bitcoin network.
• Technical Tool Optimization: Launching tools to enhance validator operating efficiency, strengthening security mechanisms, etc.

3. Financial Narrative Reconstruction: Extending from DeFi to PayFi and RWA

1. DeFi ecosystem remediation

• TVL has rapidly grown from a low point to 115 million USD, but still ranks low among mainstream public chains.
• Promote the layout of core DeFi modules, including cross-chain bridges, CDP, AMM, lending, LSD, etc.
• Access to the two major stablecoin issuers, Tether and Ethena, enriching the payment and yield ecosystem.

2. PayFi and RWA: The Connecting Bridge from On-Chain Earnings to Real-World Value

• Build a "dual-drive" financial application architecture: Core DeFi Layer, Real Yield Layer, Retail TMA Layer
• PayFi: Connects "Everyday Payments + On-chain Wealth Management" to naturally convert Telegram users into Web3 financial users.
• RWA: Access real-world financial assets through Telegram bond funds, providing verifiable real yield sources for the ecosystem.

4. The Future of TON: A Period of Accumulation for Super Entry or a Castle in the Air?

TON is transitioning from a "hit narrative" to a value path of "high-frequency necessity + long-term accumulation", with the core still relying on Telegram, the Web2 platform that is closest to the standard of a "super entrance" globally.

However, TON still faces three major challenges:

1. The gap between user quality and financial depth
2. The application value is difficult to close the loop on the chain.
3. Uncertainty of the Compliance Route

TON is at a critical point of "from attention to value accumulation." The next 6-12 months will be a key window for its transition from "narrative-driven" to "fundamental value support."

5. Conclusion

The story of TON is an attempt "from platform traffic to on-chain value." It is a Web3 popularization experimental field that is user-centered, hub-based, and uses a lightweight experience as a weapon.

Whether TON can truly evolve from a "super entry point on the chain" to a "super application platform on the chain" still needs time to verify. However, it provides a sample worth observing - a sample that guides users to gradually touch the chain and use the chain with a familiar interface, lightweight payments, mini-games, and social experiences.

This is an experiment, and also a gamble. In the current unresolved bear market, what TON offers is not a "get-rich-quick myth", but a Web3 imagination that is closer to real use cases. It may be nurturing the possibility of the next round of genuine Web3 scaling transformation.