Comprehensive Analysis of Toncoin: An In-Depth Study from Technology to Market

Beginner3/14/2025, 9:24:39 AM
For investors, when considering investing in TON coin, they need to fully understand the high risks and volatility of the cryptocurrency market. It is important to closely monitor market dynamics, project progress, and regulatory changes, and to manage risks and asset allocation effectively. It is recommended that investors do not concentrate all their funds in TON coin or any other single cryptocurrency, but diversify their investments to reduce risks. At the same time, it is important to have a deep understanding of the technical principles, application scenarios, and market prospects of TON coin to avoid blindly following investment trends.

1. Introduction

1.1 Background and Purpose

With the rapid development of blockchain technology, the cryptocurrency market is showing a trend towards diversification and innovation, constantly emerging with various new digital coin projects. Among many cryptocurrencies, TON coin, with its unique technical architecture and potential applications, has gradually attracted widespread attention from investors and industry participants. TON coin, short for The Open Network Coin, was initially conceived and developed by the Telegram team, aiming to build a high-performance, scalable, and user-friendly blockchain platform to meet the growing demand for decentralized applications (DApps). Telegram, as a globally renowned instant messaging application, has a large user base, providing solid user and market support for the development of TON coin.

However, the development of the TON coin has not been smooth sailing. It encountered many setbacks in its early stages, including legal disputes with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which led to the project stalling at one point. Despite the challenges, the TON community and developers did not give up. Through continuous technological innovation and community governance, they pushed the project forward, demonstrating strong vitality and adaptability.


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2. Overview of TON Coins

2.1 Definitions and Basic Concepts

TON coin, short for The Open Network Coin, is the native cryptocurrency issued on The Open Network (TON) blockchain platform. The TON blockchain is a decentralized network designed to achieve high performance, scalability, and user-friendliness, with TON coin playing a key role in it as the essential support for the entire ecosystem.

From a functional perspective, TON coin has multiple important use cases. First, it serves as a medium of value transfer within the network, used for paying transaction fees, ensuring users can smoothly complete various operations on the TON blockchain (such as transfers, executing smart contracts, etc.). Secondly, TON coin plays a crucial role in network governance, where holders can participate in the network consensus mechanism by staking TON coins, voting on important decisions such as network upgrades, parameter adjustments, influencing the development direction of the entire TON ecosystem. Additionally, TON coin can also serve as an investment asset, with its value potentially increasing along with the growth and development of the TON ecosystem, attracting the attention and participation of numerous investors.

At the technical level, TON coin operates based on the unique technical architecture of the TON blockchain. TON adopts a multi-layer and multi-chain structural design, including the Masterchain, Workchains, and Shardchains. The Masterchain is responsible for maintaining core information and consensus of the entire network, Workchains are used to support various applications and smart contract operations, and Shardchains achieve parallel processing of transactions and data by dividing them into different shards, greatly improving the network’s scalability and transaction processing capabilities. This enables TON coin to achieve rapid and secure value transfer and application support in such an efficient blockchain environment.

2.2 Background and Development History of Birth

The birth of the TON coin is closely related to the well-known instant messaging application Telegram. At the end of 2017, Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov announced the launch of the Telegram Open Network (TON) project, aiming to create a fast, scalable, and fully decentralized ecosystem, revolutionize the internet infrastructure, achieve secure and efficient global payments, and provide a platform for developers to innovate applications. This idea stems from a profound insight into the potential of blockchain technology and an understanding of the limitations of the existing internet architecture, hoping to leverage the decentralized and tamper-proof characteristics of blockchain to address issues such as privacy protection, data security, and trust mechanisms in traditional internet.

At the beginning of 2018, the TON project conducted two rounds of secret private placements, raising approximately $1.7 billion with the massive user base of Telegram and the project’s innovation. This amount was considered a huge fundraising in the cryptocurrency field at that time, demonstrating high market recognition of the Telegram brand and the TON vision, and providing sufficient funding support for the project’s subsequent development. In September of the same year, TON released a detailed whitepaper, elaborating on its technical architecture, economic model, and future plans, outlining a ‘blockchain universe’ that integrates instant messaging, payments, decentralized storage, domain name services, and other diverse functions, further fueling public expectations for the TON project and making it a prominent focus in the cryptocurrency field.

However, the development of the TON coin has not been smooth sailing. In October 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Telegram, claiming that the GRM (Gram) tokens issued by TON were unregistered securities. This sudden regulatory blow forced the originally scheduled TON launch at the end of October to be postponed, leading the project development into a standstill. The SEC believed that TON’s token issuance violated U.S. securities laws by selling unregistered securities to U.S. investors without registration, sparking widespread legal controversy and industry attention. After months of legal tug-of-war, in May 2020, the New York federal court ruled that Telegram must cease the issuance and circulation of TON. Faced with severe regulatory pressure, Telegram had to reach a settlement with the SEC, agreeing to return investor funds and pay a $18.5 million fine. This legal dispute ultimately led to the temporary suspension of the TON project, dealing a heavy blow to its development.

Despite setbacks to the official project, the technology and ideas of TON have gained firm support from some community developers. In May 2021, a group of community developers initiated the ‘Free TON’ movement, open sourcing TON’s technology in an attempt to restart the project without Telegram’s involvement. This move marks the start of a new chapter led by the community for TON, with the project gradually shifting towards decentralized governance and community-driven development. With the community’s efforts, the TON network continues to undergo technical optimizations and feature expansions, attracting more and more developers and projects to join the ecosystem. Subsequently, the project was renamed to The Open Network, continuing to progress towards the goal of realizing a decentralized internet. Under the new community governance model, TON coin has revitalized its development vitality, gradually building its own ecosystem covering decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), smart contracts, and other areas, demonstrating strong vitality and adaptability.

3. Toncoin Technical Analysis

3.1 Technical Architecture and Innovation

3.1.1 Multilayer Architecture

TON coin is based on the unique multi-level architecture of the TON blockchain, and this architecture design is the key to achieving high performance and scalability. The TON blockchain mainly consists of the Masterchain, Workchains, and Shardchains, with clear division of labor at each level, working together to build an efficient, flexible, and powerful blockchain network.

The main chain, as the core of the entire TON network, undertakes the important responsibility of maintaining global consensus and key metadata. It is similar to the “commander-in-chief” of the network, responsible for coordinating the operation of the entire network, storing configuration information about shard chains, validator lists, and other key system parameters, ensuring coordination and consistency between shard chains and work chains, and providing a stable infrastructure for the entire network.

The work chains are levels that handle actual transactions and application logic. They receive instructions and data from the master chain and independently execute smart contracts and various types of transactions. Each workchain can be seen as an independent blockchain with its own rules and characteristics, capable of supporting different types of application scenarios and business requirements. By dispersing different transactions and smart contracts to multiple workchains for processing, the TON network can achieve parallel computing, greatly improving transaction processing efficiency and throughput, effectively reducing transaction latency, and providing users with a faster and more efficient service experience.

Sharding is a further subdivision of the working chain and one of the core technologies for TON to achieve high scalability. The principle of sharding technology is to divide the entire network into multiple smaller parts, called shard chains, with each shard chain responsible for processing a portion of transactions and data. This design is similar to dividing a busy highway into multiple lanes, allowing transactions to be processed in parallel, thus breaking through the performance bottleneck of traditional single-chain structures and significantly improving the network’s processing capabilities. For example, when a large number of users are conducting transactions simultaneously, different transactions can be allocated to different shard chains for processing, each shard chain operates independently without interference, greatly increasing the speed and efficiency of transaction processing. Furthermore, TON’s shard chains have the ability to dynamically adjust by automatically adjusting the number and configuration of shards based on network load and demand changes, ensuring efficient resource utilization. When network traffic increases, the system can automatically create more shard chains to share the load; and when network traffic is low, excess shard chains can be merged to save resources. This dynamic adjustment mechanism enables the TON network to always maintain optimal operation.

In terms of cross-chain communication, TON has designed an efficient communication protocol to ensure fast and reliable information exchange between the main chain, working chains, and shard chains. Through this cross-chain communication mechanism, different chains can collaborate to share and interact data, providing strong support for building complex decentralized applications. For example, in a scenario involving multiple applications and smart contracts, different working chains and shard chains can collaborate through cross-chain communication to jointly complete complex business logic, providing users with richer and more diverse services.

3.1.2 Consensus Mechanism

TON coin adopts the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which has many significant advantages compared to the traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, playing a key role in improving network throughput and reliability.

In the PoS consensus mechanism, validator nodes in the network need to stake a certain amount of TON coins as collateral to qualify for block validation and accounting. The stake of validators (i.e., the amount of staked TON coins) determines their influence in the network and the probability of receiving accounting rewards. When new transactions need to be validated and packaged into blocks, the network will randomly select a validator based on their stake to create a new block. Validators need to validate transactions and ensure the legitimacy and consistency of the block when creating it. Once a new block is created and broadcasted to the network, other validators will validate and confirm it. If the majority of validators agree on the legitimacy of the block, it will be added to the blockchain as the latest block, and the validator who created the block will receive corresponding rewards, including transaction fees and newly issued TON coins.

PoS consensus mechanism has obvious advantages in improving network throughput. Since the PoS mechanism does not require a large amount of computational resources like the PoW mechanism to compete for the right to bookkeeping, it can avoid the waste of resources and network congestion caused by computing power competition. In the PoW mechanism, miners need to continuously invest a large amount of computing devices and energy to perform hash calculations in order to compete for the right to bookkeeping, which not only consumes a lot of resources, but also leads to extended transaction confirmation times and reduces the network’s processing capacity during network congestion. The PoS mechanism selects validators through staking, greatly reducing the consumption of computational resources, allowing the network to allocate more resources to transaction processing, significantly increasing network throughput. For example, in the TON network, with the adoption of the PoS consensus mechanism, theoretically it can process millions of transactions per second, whereas Bitcoin’s PoW consensus mechanism can only process several to several tens of transactions per second. Before adopting the PoS consensus mechanism, Ethereum’s transaction processing capacity per second was relatively low as well, highlighting the clear advantages of the PoS mechanism.

The PoS consensus mechanism can effectively improve the reliability of the network. Under the PoS mechanism, the stake of validators is closely related to the stability and security of the network. If validators attempt to maliciously tamper with transactions or create invalid blocks, once detected and confirmed by other validators, their staked TON coins will be deducted as a penalty. This incentivizes validators to abide by the network rules for their own benefit, ensuring the normal operation of the network. Moreover, due to the wider distribution and decentralization of validators under the PoS mechanism, it is difficult for individual validators or a few validators to attack and control the network, thereby enhancing the network’s resistance to attacks and security. In contrast, in the PoW mechanism, mining pools with concentrated computing power may pose potential threats to the network, such as 51% attacks, while the PoS mechanism largely mitigates this risk.

3.2 Technical Advantages and Challenges

3.2.1 Technical Advantages

In terms of transaction speed, the TON coin has demonstrated outstanding performance. As mentioned earlier, its unique multi-layer architecture and the synergistic effect of the PoS consensus mechanism enable the TON network to achieve astonishing speeds of processing millions of transactions per second, far exceeding traditional cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin adopts the PoW consensus mechanism, with transaction confirmation typically taking around 10 minutes, and Ethereum had relatively long transaction confirmation times before adopting the PoS consensus mechanism. Moreover, transaction delays were more severe during network congestion. However, leveraging its advanced technology, TON coin can achieve transaction confirmation in an extremely short time, enabling near real-time transaction processing, making it have enormous potential in high-speed transaction scenarios such as payment settlement and decentralized finance (DeFi). For example, in cross-border payment scenarios, TON coin can achieve rapid fund transfers, significantly reducing transaction times, lowering transaction costs, improving payment efficiency, and providing users with a more convenient and efficient payment experience.

In terms of security, the TON coin also has a solid protection. The TON network adopts multiple security mechanisms to ensure the security of transactions and the integrity of data. In addition to the security provided by the PoS consensus mechanism itself, TON also uses advanced encryption technology to encrypt transaction data to prevent data theft and tampering. At the same time, TON’s multi-layer blockchain structure makes the network highly fault-tolerant, so that even if some nodes fail or are attacked, the entire network can still operate normally. For example, in sharded chains, each shard chain independently processes transactions and stays synchronized with other shard chains through cross-shard communication. When a shard chain encounters a problem, other shard chains can continue to operate without affecting the normal operation of the entire network, greatly enhancing the security and reliability of the network.

In terms of scalability, the technical advantages of the TON coin are also significant. Its dynamic sharding technology and multi-layered architecture design enable the TON network to easily cope with the growing user demand and transaction load. With the increasing number of network users and the continuous expansion of application scenarios, the TON network can increase the transaction processing capacity by dynamically adding the number of shard chains to achieve seamless scalability. Compared to the scalability challenges faced by cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, the technical solutions of TON coin are more flexible and efficient. Ethereum initially adopted a single-chain structure, and as the number of users and applications increased, network congestion became increasingly serious. In order to address scalability issues, Ethereum is undergoing a series of technical upgrades, such as transitioning to the PoS consensus mechanism and implementing sharding technology, but this process faces many challenges and difficulties. TON coin, on the other hand, adopted advanced scalable technology architecture from the beginning, laying a solid foundation for its future development and better adapting to the demands of large-scale applications.

3.2.2 Technical Challenges Ahead

Despite the many technical advantages of the TON coin, it also faces some technical challenges in its development. Among them, the security of smart contracts is an important challenge. TON smart contracts are mainly written in FunC language, which is a low-level Lisp-like language. Although it focuses on efficiency and flexibility, allowing developers to directly manipulate memory and perform fine-grained resource management, it also increases the difficulty of programming for developers and the possibility of errors. Manual memory management easily introduces issues such as memory leaks and buffer overflows, leading to potential security vulnerabilities in smart contracts. For example, in some DeFi projects based on TON, if smart contracts have vulnerabilities, they may be exploited by malicious attackers, leading to asset theft or project failures, which will seriously affect the stability and user trust of the TON ecosystem. Although the community has also introduced and supported a higher-level programming language Tact to reduce the threshold for smart contract development and improve security, FunC language is still the main language for TON smart contract development at present. Therefore, the security of smart contracts still requires high attention and resolution.

The difficulty of development is also a challenge facing the TON coin. Due to the unique technical architecture and programming language adopted by TON, developers need to spend more time and effort to learn and master the relevant technology. In contrast, the development ecosystem of Ethereum is more mature. Developers can use the familiar Solidity language for smart contract development, and there is rich development tools and documentation support. TON needs further improvement in this regard. Currently, its development tools and documentation are relatively scarce, which to some extent limits the participation of developers and the speed of project development. If more developers cannot be attracted to join the TON ecosystem, it will be detrimental to the expansion of its application scenarios and the prosperity of the ecosystem.

In addition, as the cryptocurrency market continues to develop and competition intensifies, TON coin needs to constantly respond to technical challenges from other competitors. Other emerging blockchain projects are also constantly innovating and improving technology to enhance performance, security, and scalability. TON coin needs to maintain its technological leadership, continuously upgrade and optimize its technology in order to remain invincible in the fierce market competition.

4. Toncoin Market Analysis

4.1 Market Performance

4.1.1 Price Trends

The price trend of TON coin is like a roller coaster, full of ups and downs and changes, which is the result of the intertwining of various complex factors. Since its inception, TON coin has been highly anticipated in the cryptocurrency market due to Telegram’s strong endorsement and innovative technological ideas, attracting a lot of investors’ attention and capital inflow, driving prices up rapidly. However, during 2019-2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Telegram, accusing it of issuing unregistered securities, dealing a heavy blow to the development of TON coin. This legal dispute triggered panic in the market, with investors selling off their TON coins, causing prices to plummet significantly from their highs, entering a long period of stagnation, and severely undermining market confidence.

With the development of the community-driven ‘Free TON’ movement in 2021, TON coin has ushered in a new turning point. Community developers actively promote the project’s open source development, continually carry out technical optimizations and ecosystem construction, attracting new investors and developers to join. With a series of positive news such as technical upgrades and expanded use cases, market confidence in TON coin gradually recovers, and the price starts to rise gradually. During the period of 2023-2024, the cryptocurrency market as a whole shows signs of recovery and prosperity, and TON coin also benefits from this market environment, with prices continuously rising significantly. According to CoinMarketCap data, at the beginning of 2023, the price of a TON coin was around $2.31, and by October 2024, the price had climbed to above $5. Over the past year, its value has increased by about 300%, demonstrating strong growth momentum.

4.1.2 Trading Volume and Market Value (2025-3-13)

  1. Market Cap: $6.73B
  2. Fully diluted market cap: $13.90B
  3. Circulating supply: 2.48B TON
  4. Total supply: 5.12B TON
  5. 24-hour highest price: $2.78
  6. 24-hour lowest price: $2.63

In terms of market capitalization, TON coin has occupied a certain share in the cryptocurrency market and shown a gradually rising trend. As of October 2024, the market capitalization of TON coin has reached billions of dollars, ranking high in the cryptocurrency market cap rankings. The growth in market capitalization not only reflects the rise in the price of TON coin but also demonstrates the market’s recognition of the future development potential of the TON project. With the continuous improvement and expansion of the TON ecosystem, more and more investors believe that TON coin has high investment value and are willing to hold TON coin, leading to a steady increase in its market capitalization. At the same time, the increase in market capitalization further enhances the status and influence of TON coin in the cryptocurrency market, attracting more investors, developers, and projects to focus on and participate in the TON ecosystem, creating a virtuous cycle.

Compared with other mainstream cryptocurrencies, TON coin still lags behind in terms of trading volume and market value. Bitcoin, as the leader in the cryptocurrency market, far exceeds TON coin in market value and trading volume, with a market value reaching hundreds of billions of US dollars and a daily trading volume often exceeding tens of billions of US dollars. Ethereum, as a pioneer in smart contracts and the main platform for decentralized finance (DeFi), also has relatively high market value and trading volume, occupying an important position in the cryptocurrency market. However, with its unique technological advantages and development potential, TON coin’s market share is gradually expanding. Compared with some emerging cryptocurrency projects, TON coin has certain advantages in trading volume and market value, has already made a name for itself in the market, and has become one of the focal points of investor attention. With the continuous development and improvement of the TON ecosystem, TON coin is expected to make greater breakthroughs in trading volume and market value in the future, further enhancing its position and influence in the cryptocurrency market.

4.2 TON Token Economics

The Open Network Coin (TON) token economy design combines its technical architecture and ecological goals, here are the key points:

1. Basic Information of the Coin

  • Name: TON Coin (native token)
  • Total supply: The initial total supply is 5 billion coins, fully released through POW mining in June 2022. Currently, it adopts the PoS consensus mechanism, with an annual inflation rate of about 0.6% (i.e. a new token supply of approximately 30 million coins per year).
  • Circulation: As of 2025, the circulation is approximately 2.5 billion coins (part of the tokens are not fully circulated due to pledge or lock-up).

2. Coin distribution mechanism

  • POW mining phase (2020-2022): 98.55% of the tokens are allocated to miners through POW mining, and the last TON will be mined in June 2022.
  • PoS stage (2022-present): Transition to Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, where stakers earn rewards by participating in network validation, with a fixed inflation rate of 0.6%.
  • Team and early investors: The remaining 1.45% of tokens (approximately 72.75 million) are allocated to the team and early supporters, and will be gradually released through a lock-up mechanism.

3. Token Usage

  • Transaction fees: Users need to pay TON as fees when transferring or using smart contracts, and the fees are adjusted based on the complexity of the transaction.
  • Staking and Governance: Users can stake TON to participate in network validation, receive inflation rewards, and influence network upgrades through governance voting.
  • Ecological incentives: The TON Foundation promotes ecosystem development by subsidizing ecological projects (such as DeFi, NFT platforms) with tokens.
  • Cross-chain and Application Integration: TON supports interoperability with other blockchains, and its tokens can be used for cross-chain transactions and payment scenarios within the Telegram ecosystem (such as purchasing usernames, content rewards).

4. Balancing Deflation and Inflation

  • Inflation mechanism: In the PoS stage, 0.6% of TON is issued annually to incentivize validators and maintain network security.
  • Destruction mechanism: Some trading fees will be destroyed to reduce circulation and create deflationary pressure.
  • Supply and demand balance: TON’s design goal is to maintain network security through inflation rewards, while adjusting token scarcity through a destruction mechanism to balance price fluctuations.

5. The core logic of the economic model

  • Incentivizing Network Participation: Attracting users to participate in consensus through staking rewards to ensure network decentralization and security.
  • Reduce transaction costs: Low fees and high throughput attract developers and users, promoting ecological prosperity.
  • Binding Telegram ecosystem: TON’s deep integration with Telegram (such as in-app payments, username auctions) creates actual demand for the token.
  • Long-term value support: Limited total supply (initial 5 billion + 0.6% annual inflation) and enhanced destruction mechanism increase the scarcity of coins, enhancing long-term investment value.

The token economics of TON aims to achieve a balance between network security, scalability, and token value through PoS inflation, destruction mechanism, and integration with the Telegram ecosystem. Its design takes into account both short-term incentives and long-term value, but attention should be paid to regulatory and market volatility risks.

4.2.1 Supply Situation

The total issuance and circulation of TON coins are key factors affecting their market supply, which have an important influence on market prices and investment value. According to official settings, the total supply of TON coins is 5 billion, and this fixed total issuance is designed to ensure the scarcity of the currency, prevent excessive inflation from impacting the stability of the currency value, similar to the limited supply mechanism of Bitcoin, providing some support for the value of TON coins. During the initial issuance phase, the Telegram team sold some TON coins through private placements and other means to raise funds for project development. Of these, 2.5 billion TON coins were sold during the ICO process, while the remaining 2.5 billion were reserved for Telegram’s business development, team incentives, and ecosystem development, among other purposes. This distribution method helps ensure the long-term development of the project and the stable operation of the ecosystem.

Over time, the circulation of TON coins gradually increases. Of the 2.5 billion TON coins that have been sold, a portion enters the market circulation process, held and traded by investors; another part is used in the Telegram ecosystem, such as rewarding content creators, incentivizing developers, etc., but these are not traded on the open market. Currently, the circulation supply of TON coins is relatively limited compared to the total issuance, but as the project develops and the ecosystem improves, more TON coins may enter the market circulation, thereby affecting market supply. For example, when reserved TON coins are used for ecosystem development and incentives, they may gradually be released into the market through various means, increasing circulation.

In the future, the supply plan of TON coin will mainly focus on ecological construction and community development. The project team may reasonably adjust the release speed and distribution method of TON coin according to the needs of the ecosystem to support the development and growth of ecological projects. In order to encourage developers to create more applications on the TON platform, a part of the reserved TON coins may be allocated to excellent developers through a reward mechanism; to promote community activity and participation, TON coins may also be used for community governance and rewarding community members. In addition, with the development of the TON network, new application scenarios and demands may arise, which may also lead to corresponding adjustments to the supply plan of TON coins. If TON coins are widely used in the decentralized finance (DeFi) field in the future, more TON coins may be needed to support related financial transactions and business, and the project team may increase the supply of TON coins or adjust their distribution method according to this demand.

4.2.2 Demand Factors

There are multiple factors that influence the demand for TON coins, these factors interact with each other, jointly determining the market demand situation and trend for TON coins. Firstly, the expansion of application scenarios is an important driving force for the growth of TON coin demand. With the continuous development of the TON ecosystem, more and more application scenarios are being realized on the TON network, covering various areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), smart contracts, distributed storage, etc. In the DeFi field, TON coins can serve as underlying assets for lending, trading, liquidity mining, and other financial activities, providing users with efficient and low-cost financial services. In the NFT field, TON coins can be used to purchase, trade, and collect various unique digital assets, supporting the prosperity of the NFT market. These diverse application scenarios have attracted a large number of users and developers to participate, who need to hold TON coins to perform various operations and transactions, thereby driving the growth of TON coin demand.

Investor interest is also one of the key factors affecting the demand for TON coins. As the popularity and influence of TON coins in the market continue to rise, more and more investors are starting to pay attention to and invest in TON coins. Investor interest in TON coins mainly stems from its potential investment value and development prospects. With its unique technical advantages such as high-speed transaction processing capabilities, low fees, high scalability, and strong community support, TON coins are considered to have high investment potential. Many investors are optimistic about the future development of TON coins in the cryptocurrency market, hoping to gain asset appreciation returns by holding TON coins. In addition, some institutional investors have also started to focus on and invest in TON coins, further increasing the market demand for TON coins. The participation of institutional investors not only brings in a large amount of funds but also enhances the market acceptance and stability of TON coins, attracting more investors to follow suit in investment.

Market trends and macroeconomic environment also affect the demand for TON coins. When the overall cryptocurrency market is on an upward trend, investors have a higher risk appetite, leading to increased demand for various cryptocurrencies, and TON coins will also benefit from this market sentiment, resulting in an increase in demand. Conversely, when the market is in a downtrend or the economic situation is unstable, investors may reduce their investment in cryptocurrencies and turn to safer assets, causing a decrease in demand for TON coins. For example, during global economic slowdowns or financial crises, investors may become more cautious, reducing investments in high-risk cryptocurrencies, including TON coins. In addition, changes in policies and regulations also have a significant impact on the demand for TON coins. If some countries or regions adopt proactive regulatory policies towards cryptocurrencies, recognizing their legitimacy and utility, it may promote the application and development of TON coins locally, increasing market demand; Conversely, if regulatory policies become stricter, restricting or prohibiting cryptocurrency transactions and usage, it will have a negative impact on the demand for TON coins.

5. TON coin application scenarios and ecological construction

5.1 Main Application Scenarios

5.1.1 Payment and Transaction

In the field of payment and transactions, TON coin exhibits many significant advantages. Firstly, its transaction speed is extremely fast, with the unique multi-layer architecture and PoS consensus mechanism, it can achieve the processing capacity of millions of transactions per second, enabling payments to be completed in an instant, greatly improving transaction efficiency. For example, in the cross-border e-commerce payment scenario, traditional payment methods may take hours or even days to complete fund transfers, while using TON coin for payment, the transaction confirmation can be completed in just a few seconds, funds can be quickly credited, greatly improving the timeliness of transactions, providing a more convenient payment experience for merchants and consumers.

5.1.2 Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

In the field of DeFi, the application of TON coin covers multiple aspects, demonstrating enormous development potential. In the lending business, TON coin provides users with more convenient and efficient lending services. Users can obtain corresponding loans on the TON chain’s lending platform by pledging TON coins or other supported assets, without the need for cumbersome credit checks and intermediary participation, significantly reducing borrowing costs and time costs.

5.1.3 Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

In the field of NFT, the application of TON coin brings a new mode and opportunity for the confirmation, transaction, and collection of digital assets. NFTs issued based on the TON blockchain have unique advantages. Due to the tamper-resistant and decentralized nature of the TON blockchain, ownership information of NFTs is securely and permanently recorded on the blockchain, ensuring the authenticity and uniqueness of digital assets. Each NFT based on the TON chain has a unique identifier that cannot be replicated or tampered with, providing strong technical support for copyright protection and value determination of digital assets. For example, artists can issue their works in the form of NFTs on the TON chain to ensure ownership of the works and track the transaction history and ownership changes of the works.

5.2 Ecological Construction and Development

5.2.1 Introduction to Ecological Projects

TON ecosystem has seen the emergence of many innovative projects based on the TON coin, covering multiple fields, providing strong support for the application and value enhancement of the TON coin. TON Space is an important ecological project launched by the TON Foundation. It is a self-hosted wallet based on Telegram, embedded in Telegram, providing users with convenient and secure digital asset management services. Users can easily manage their TON coins and other digital assets, carry out operations such as transfers, receipts, and transactions through TON Space. In addition to basic wallet functions, TON Space also has unique features and functions. It allows users to recover wallets via email and Telegram accounts, ensuring asset security even if the mnemonic is lost. Through the Wallet’s TON Space function, users can directly connect to TON-based dApps, making it easy to use various decentralized applications, providing users with a richer and more diverse service experience, and promoting the prosperity and development of the TON ecosystem.

DeDust is a native DEX built on the TON network, developed by Scaleton, playing an important role in the decentralized trading sector of the TON ecosystem. It supports trading, liquidity provision, and cross-chain functionality, providing users with an efficient, secure decentralized trading platform. In terms of trading, DeDust offers a fast and convenient trading experience, allowing users to freely trade various digital assets on the platform, achieving rapid exchange and appreciation of assets. In terms of liquidity provision, DeDust encourages users to provide liquidity, and through liquidity mining and other means, users can receive corresponding rewards, which helps improve market liquidity and trading efficiency. DeDust also supports cross-chain functionality, enabling assets from different blockchains to interact and trade, expanding the scope and possibilities of trading, providing users with a wider range of trading options.

5.2.2 Community and Developer Support

The activity and developer support of the TON coin community play a crucial role in its ecosystem construction. In terms of community activity, TON coin has a large and active community. Community members come from all over the world, covering different groups such as investors, technology enthusiasts, developers, and ordinary users. They actively communicate and interact through various social platforms and online channels. Discussions about the TON coin are lively on social media such as Telegram, Twitter, and Reddit. Community members share project progress, technical analysis, application cases, investment experiences, and other information, creating a good community atmosphere. For example, in the official TON Telegram group, there is a large amount of message exchange every day. Members actively participate in project discussions, provide suggestions and questions, and the project team responds and answers promptly. This interaction enhances the sense of involvement and belonging of community members, promoting the development and growth of the community.

In terms of developer support, TON provides developers with abundant resources and a good development environment. The TON blockchain adopts an advanced technical architecture, supports multiple programming languages, reduces the technical threshold for developers, and enables developers to more easily develop applications on the TON platform. The TON Foundation has launched a series of developer incentive programs, providing funding, technical guidance, training, and other services to encourage developers to create more innovative applications in the TON ecosystem. For example, the TON Foundation has introduced token incentives for specific projects or communities, such as the recently announced TON/USDT liquidity pool incentive program worth $30 million; it also provides incentives of 1 million TON tokens for Chinese-speaking MiniApp developers. These incentive measures have attracted the participation of numerous developers, driving the richness and innovation of applications in the TON ecosystem, laying a solid foundation for the expansion and value enhancement of the TON coin’s application scenarios.

Conclusion

For investors, when considering investing in TON coins, it is necessary to fully understand the high risk and volatility of the cryptocurrency market. Pay close attention to market dynamics, project progress, and changes in regulatory policies, and manage risks and asset allocation properly. It is recommended that investors do not concentrate all funds on TON coins or other single cryptocurrencies, but diversify investments to reduce risks. At the same time, have a deep understanding of the technical principles, application scenarios, and market prospects of TON coins to avoid blind trend investing.

Penulis: Frank
* Informasi ini tidak bermaksud untuk menjadi dan bukan merupakan nasihat keuangan atau rekomendasi lain apa pun yang ditawarkan atau didukung oleh Gate.io.
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Comprehensive Analysis of Toncoin: An In-Depth Study from Technology to Market

Beginner3/14/2025, 9:24:39 AM
For investors, when considering investing in TON coin, they need to fully understand the high risks and volatility of the cryptocurrency market. It is important to closely monitor market dynamics, project progress, and regulatory changes, and to manage risks and asset allocation effectively. It is recommended that investors do not concentrate all their funds in TON coin or any other single cryptocurrency, but diversify their investments to reduce risks. At the same time, it is important to have a deep understanding of the technical principles, application scenarios, and market prospects of TON coin to avoid blindly following investment trends.

1. Introduction

1.1 Background and Purpose

With the rapid development of blockchain technology, the cryptocurrency market is showing a trend towards diversification and innovation, constantly emerging with various new digital coin projects. Among many cryptocurrencies, TON coin, with its unique technical architecture and potential applications, has gradually attracted widespread attention from investors and industry participants. TON coin, short for The Open Network Coin, was initially conceived and developed by the Telegram team, aiming to build a high-performance, scalable, and user-friendly blockchain platform to meet the growing demand for decentralized applications (DApps). Telegram, as a globally renowned instant messaging application, has a large user base, providing solid user and market support for the development of TON coin.

However, the development of the TON coin has not been smooth sailing. It encountered many setbacks in its early stages, including legal disputes with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which led to the project stalling at one point. Despite the challenges, the TON community and developers did not give up. Through continuous technological innovation and community governance, they pushed the project forward, demonstrating strong vitality and adaptability.


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2. Overview of TON Coins

2.1 Definitions and Basic Concepts

TON coin, short for The Open Network Coin, is the native cryptocurrency issued on The Open Network (TON) blockchain platform. The TON blockchain is a decentralized network designed to achieve high performance, scalability, and user-friendliness, with TON coin playing a key role in it as the essential support for the entire ecosystem.

From a functional perspective, TON coin has multiple important use cases. First, it serves as a medium of value transfer within the network, used for paying transaction fees, ensuring users can smoothly complete various operations on the TON blockchain (such as transfers, executing smart contracts, etc.). Secondly, TON coin plays a crucial role in network governance, where holders can participate in the network consensus mechanism by staking TON coins, voting on important decisions such as network upgrades, parameter adjustments, influencing the development direction of the entire TON ecosystem. Additionally, TON coin can also serve as an investment asset, with its value potentially increasing along with the growth and development of the TON ecosystem, attracting the attention and participation of numerous investors.

At the technical level, TON coin operates based on the unique technical architecture of the TON blockchain. TON adopts a multi-layer and multi-chain structural design, including the Masterchain, Workchains, and Shardchains. The Masterchain is responsible for maintaining core information and consensus of the entire network, Workchains are used to support various applications and smart contract operations, and Shardchains achieve parallel processing of transactions and data by dividing them into different shards, greatly improving the network’s scalability and transaction processing capabilities. This enables TON coin to achieve rapid and secure value transfer and application support in such an efficient blockchain environment.

2.2 Background and Development History of Birth

The birth of the TON coin is closely related to the well-known instant messaging application Telegram. At the end of 2017, Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov announced the launch of the Telegram Open Network (TON) project, aiming to create a fast, scalable, and fully decentralized ecosystem, revolutionize the internet infrastructure, achieve secure and efficient global payments, and provide a platform for developers to innovate applications. This idea stems from a profound insight into the potential of blockchain technology and an understanding of the limitations of the existing internet architecture, hoping to leverage the decentralized and tamper-proof characteristics of blockchain to address issues such as privacy protection, data security, and trust mechanisms in traditional internet.

At the beginning of 2018, the TON project conducted two rounds of secret private placements, raising approximately $1.7 billion with the massive user base of Telegram and the project’s innovation. This amount was considered a huge fundraising in the cryptocurrency field at that time, demonstrating high market recognition of the Telegram brand and the TON vision, and providing sufficient funding support for the project’s subsequent development. In September of the same year, TON released a detailed whitepaper, elaborating on its technical architecture, economic model, and future plans, outlining a ‘blockchain universe’ that integrates instant messaging, payments, decentralized storage, domain name services, and other diverse functions, further fueling public expectations for the TON project and making it a prominent focus in the cryptocurrency field.

However, the development of the TON coin has not been smooth sailing. In October 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Telegram, claiming that the GRM (Gram) tokens issued by TON were unregistered securities. This sudden regulatory blow forced the originally scheduled TON launch at the end of October to be postponed, leading the project development into a standstill. The SEC believed that TON’s token issuance violated U.S. securities laws by selling unregistered securities to U.S. investors without registration, sparking widespread legal controversy and industry attention. After months of legal tug-of-war, in May 2020, the New York federal court ruled that Telegram must cease the issuance and circulation of TON. Faced with severe regulatory pressure, Telegram had to reach a settlement with the SEC, agreeing to return investor funds and pay a $18.5 million fine. This legal dispute ultimately led to the temporary suspension of the TON project, dealing a heavy blow to its development.

Despite setbacks to the official project, the technology and ideas of TON have gained firm support from some community developers. In May 2021, a group of community developers initiated the ‘Free TON’ movement, open sourcing TON’s technology in an attempt to restart the project without Telegram’s involvement. This move marks the start of a new chapter led by the community for TON, with the project gradually shifting towards decentralized governance and community-driven development. With the community’s efforts, the TON network continues to undergo technical optimizations and feature expansions, attracting more and more developers and projects to join the ecosystem. Subsequently, the project was renamed to The Open Network, continuing to progress towards the goal of realizing a decentralized internet. Under the new community governance model, TON coin has revitalized its development vitality, gradually building its own ecosystem covering decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), smart contracts, and other areas, demonstrating strong vitality and adaptability.

3. Toncoin Technical Analysis

3.1 Technical Architecture and Innovation

3.1.1 Multilayer Architecture

TON coin is based on the unique multi-level architecture of the TON blockchain, and this architecture design is the key to achieving high performance and scalability. The TON blockchain mainly consists of the Masterchain, Workchains, and Shardchains, with clear division of labor at each level, working together to build an efficient, flexible, and powerful blockchain network.

The main chain, as the core of the entire TON network, undertakes the important responsibility of maintaining global consensus and key metadata. It is similar to the “commander-in-chief” of the network, responsible for coordinating the operation of the entire network, storing configuration information about shard chains, validator lists, and other key system parameters, ensuring coordination and consistency between shard chains and work chains, and providing a stable infrastructure for the entire network.

The work chains are levels that handle actual transactions and application logic. They receive instructions and data from the master chain and independently execute smart contracts and various types of transactions. Each workchain can be seen as an independent blockchain with its own rules and characteristics, capable of supporting different types of application scenarios and business requirements. By dispersing different transactions and smart contracts to multiple workchains for processing, the TON network can achieve parallel computing, greatly improving transaction processing efficiency and throughput, effectively reducing transaction latency, and providing users with a faster and more efficient service experience.

Sharding is a further subdivision of the working chain and one of the core technologies for TON to achieve high scalability. The principle of sharding technology is to divide the entire network into multiple smaller parts, called shard chains, with each shard chain responsible for processing a portion of transactions and data. This design is similar to dividing a busy highway into multiple lanes, allowing transactions to be processed in parallel, thus breaking through the performance bottleneck of traditional single-chain structures and significantly improving the network’s processing capabilities. For example, when a large number of users are conducting transactions simultaneously, different transactions can be allocated to different shard chains for processing, each shard chain operates independently without interference, greatly increasing the speed and efficiency of transaction processing. Furthermore, TON’s shard chains have the ability to dynamically adjust by automatically adjusting the number and configuration of shards based on network load and demand changes, ensuring efficient resource utilization. When network traffic increases, the system can automatically create more shard chains to share the load; and when network traffic is low, excess shard chains can be merged to save resources. This dynamic adjustment mechanism enables the TON network to always maintain optimal operation.

In terms of cross-chain communication, TON has designed an efficient communication protocol to ensure fast and reliable information exchange between the main chain, working chains, and shard chains. Through this cross-chain communication mechanism, different chains can collaborate to share and interact data, providing strong support for building complex decentralized applications. For example, in a scenario involving multiple applications and smart contracts, different working chains and shard chains can collaborate through cross-chain communication to jointly complete complex business logic, providing users with richer and more diverse services.

3.1.2 Consensus Mechanism

TON coin adopts the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which has many significant advantages compared to the traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, playing a key role in improving network throughput and reliability.

In the PoS consensus mechanism, validator nodes in the network need to stake a certain amount of TON coins as collateral to qualify for block validation and accounting. The stake of validators (i.e., the amount of staked TON coins) determines their influence in the network and the probability of receiving accounting rewards. When new transactions need to be validated and packaged into blocks, the network will randomly select a validator based on their stake to create a new block. Validators need to validate transactions and ensure the legitimacy and consistency of the block when creating it. Once a new block is created and broadcasted to the network, other validators will validate and confirm it. If the majority of validators agree on the legitimacy of the block, it will be added to the blockchain as the latest block, and the validator who created the block will receive corresponding rewards, including transaction fees and newly issued TON coins.

PoS consensus mechanism has obvious advantages in improving network throughput. Since the PoS mechanism does not require a large amount of computational resources like the PoW mechanism to compete for the right to bookkeeping, it can avoid the waste of resources and network congestion caused by computing power competition. In the PoW mechanism, miners need to continuously invest a large amount of computing devices and energy to perform hash calculations in order to compete for the right to bookkeeping, which not only consumes a lot of resources, but also leads to extended transaction confirmation times and reduces the network’s processing capacity during network congestion. The PoS mechanism selects validators through staking, greatly reducing the consumption of computational resources, allowing the network to allocate more resources to transaction processing, significantly increasing network throughput. For example, in the TON network, with the adoption of the PoS consensus mechanism, theoretically it can process millions of transactions per second, whereas Bitcoin’s PoW consensus mechanism can only process several to several tens of transactions per second. Before adopting the PoS consensus mechanism, Ethereum’s transaction processing capacity per second was relatively low as well, highlighting the clear advantages of the PoS mechanism.

The PoS consensus mechanism can effectively improve the reliability of the network. Under the PoS mechanism, the stake of validators is closely related to the stability and security of the network. If validators attempt to maliciously tamper with transactions or create invalid blocks, once detected and confirmed by other validators, their staked TON coins will be deducted as a penalty. This incentivizes validators to abide by the network rules for their own benefit, ensuring the normal operation of the network. Moreover, due to the wider distribution and decentralization of validators under the PoS mechanism, it is difficult for individual validators or a few validators to attack and control the network, thereby enhancing the network’s resistance to attacks and security. In contrast, in the PoW mechanism, mining pools with concentrated computing power may pose potential threats to the network, such as 51% attacks, while the PoS mechanism largely mitigates this risk.

3.2 Technical Advantages and Challenges

3.2.1 Technical Advantages

In terms of transaction speed, the TON coin has demonstrated outstanding performance. As mentioned earlier, its unique multi-layer architecture and the synergistic effect of the PoS consensus mechanism enable the TON network to achieve astonishing speeds of processing millions of transactions per second, far exceeding traditional cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin adopts the PoW consensus mechanism, with transaction confirmation typically taking around 10 minutes, and Ethereum had relatively long transaction confirmation times before adopting the PoS consensus mechanism. Moreover, transaction delays were more severe during network congestion. However, leveraging its advanced technology, TON coin can achieve transaction confirmation in an extremely short time, enabling near real-time transaction processing, making it have enormous potential in high-speed transaction scenarios such as payment settlement and decentralized finance (DeFi). For example, in cross-border payment scenarios, TON coin can achieve rapid fund transfers, significantly reducing transaction times, lowering transaction costs, improving payment efficiency, and providing users with a more convenient and efficient payment experience.

In terms of security, the TON coin also has a solid protection. The TON network adopts multiple security mechanisms to ensure the security of transactions and the integrity of data. In addition to the security provided by the PoS consensus mechanism itself, TON also uses advanced encryption technology to encrypt transaction data to prevent data theft and tampering. At the same time, TON’s multi-layer blockchain structure makes the network highly fault-tolerant, so that even if some nodes fail or are attacked, the entire network can still operate normally. For example, in sharded chains, each shard chain independently processes transactions and stays synchronized with other shard chains through cross-shard communication. When a shard chain encounters a problem, other shard chains can continue to operate without affecting the normal operation of the entire network, greatly enhancing the security and reliability of the network.

In terms of scalability, the technical advantages of the TON coin are also significant. Its dynamic sharding technology and multi-layered architecture design enable the TON network to easily cope with the growing user demand and transaction load. With the increasing number of network users and the continuous expansion of application scenarios, the TON network can increase the transaction processing capacity by dynamically adding the number of shard chains to achieve seamless scalability. Compared to the scalability challenges faced by cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, the technical solutions of TON coin are more flexible and efficient. Ethereum initially adopted a single-chain structure, and as the number of users and applications increased, network congestion became increasingly serious. In order to address scalability issues, Ethereum is undergoing a series of technical upgrades, such as transitioning to the PoS consensus mechanism and implementing sharding technology, but this process faces many challenges and difficulties. TON coin, on the other hand, adopted advanced scalable technology architecture from the beginning, laying a solid foundation for its future development and better adapting to the demands of large-scale applications.

3.2.2 Technical Challenges Ahead

Despite the many technical advantages of the TON coin, it also faces some technical challenges in its development. Among them, the security of smart contracts is an important challenge. TON smart contracts are mainly written in FunC language, which is a low-level Lisp-like language. Although it focuses on efficiency and flexibility, allowing developers to directly manipulate memory and perform fine-grained resource management, it also increases the difficulty of programming for developers and the possibility of errors. Manual memory management easily introduces issues such as memory leaks and buffer overflows, leading to potential security vulnerabilities in smart contracts. For example, in some DeFi projects based on TON, if smart contracts have vulnerabilities, they may be exploited by malicious attackers, leading to asset theft or project failures, which will seriously affect the stability and user trust of the TON ecosystem. Although the community has also introduced and supported a higher-level programming language Tact to reduce the threshold for smart contract development and improve security, FunC language is still the main language for TON smart contract development at present. Therefore, the security of smart contracts still requires high attention and resolution.

The difficulty of development is also a challenge facing the TON coin. Due to the unique technical architecture and programming language adopted by TON, developers need to spend more time and effort to learn and master the relevant technology. In contrast, the development ecosystem of Ethereum is more mature. Developers can use the familiar Solidity language for smart contract development, and there is rich development tools and documentation support. TON needs further improvement in this regard. Currently, its development tools and documentation are relatively scarce, which to some extent limits the participation of developers and the speed of project development. If more developers cannot be attracted to join the TON ecosystem, it will be detrimental to the expansion of its application scenarios and the prosperity of the ecosystem.

In addition, as the cryptocurrency market continues to develop and competition intensifies, TON coin needs to constantly respond to technical challenges from other competitors. Other emerging blockchain projects are also constantly innovating and improving technology to enhance performance, security, and scalability. TON coin needs to maintain its technological leadership, continuously upgrade and optimize its technology in order to remain invincible in the fierce market competition.

4. Toncoin Market Analysis

4.1 Market Performance

4.1.1 Price Trends

The price trend of TON coin is like a roller coaster, full of ups and downs and changes, which is the result of the intertwining of various complex factors. Since its inception, TON coin has been highly anticipated in the cryptocurrency market due to Telegram’s strong endorsement and innovative technological ideas, attracting a lot of investors’ attention and capital inflow, driving prices up rapidly. However, during 2019-2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Telegram, accusing it of issuing unregistered securities, dealing a heavy blow to the development of TON coin. This legal dispute triggered panic in the market, with investors selling off their TON coins, causing prices to plummet significantly from their highs, entering a long period of stagnation, and severely undermining market confidence.

With the development of the community-driven ‘Free TON’ movement in 2021, TON coin has ushered in a new turning point. Community developers actively promote the project’s open source development, continually carry out technical optimizations and ecosystem construction, attracting new investors and developers to join. With a series of positive news such as technical upgrades and expanded use cases, market confidence in TON coin gradually recovers, and the price starts to rise gradually. During the period of 2023-2024, the cryptocurrency market as a whole shows signs of recovery and prosperity, and TON coin also benefits from this market environment, with prices continuously rising significantly. According to CoinMarketCap data, at the beginning of 2023, the price of a TON coin was around $2.31, and by October 2024, the price had climbed to above $5. Over the past year, its value has increased by about 300%, demonstrating strong growth momentum.

4.1.2 Trading Volume and Market Value (2025-3-13)

  1. Market Cap: $6.73B
  2. Fully diluted market cap: $13.90B
  3. Circulating supply: 2.48B TON
  4. Total supply: 5.12B TON
  5. 24-hour highest price: $2.78
  6. 24-hour lowest price: $2.63

In terms of market capitalization, TON coin has occupied a certain share in the cryptocurrency market and shown a gradually rising trend. As of October 2024, the market capitalization of TON coin has reached billions of dollars, ranking high in the cryptocurrency market cap rankings. The growth in market capitalization not only reflects the rise in the price of TON coin but also demonstrates the market’s recognition of the future development potential of the TON project. With the continuous improvement and expansion of the TON ecosystem, more and more investors believe that TON coin has high investment value and are willing to hold TON coin, leading to a steady increase in its market capitalization. At the same time, the increase in market capitalization further enhances the status and influence of TON coin in the cryptocurrency market, attracting more investors, developers, and projects to focus on and participate in the TON ecosystem, creating a virtuous cycle.

Compared with other mainstream cryptocurrencies, TON coin still lags behind in terms of trading volume and market value. Bitcoin, as the leader in the cryptocurrency market, far exceeds TON coin in market value and trading volume, with a market value reaching hundreds of billions of US dollars and a daily trading volume often exceeding tens of billions of US dollars. Ethereum, as a pioneer in smart contracts and the main platform for decentralized finance (DeFi), also has relatively high market value and trading volume, occupying an important position in the cryptocurrency market. However, with its unique technological advantages and development potential, TON coin’s market share is gradually expanding. Compared with some emerging cryptocurrency projects, TON coin has certain advantages in trading volume and market value, has already made a name for itself in the market, and has become one of the focal points of investor attention. With the continuous development and improvement of the TON ecosystem, TON coin is expected to make greater breakthroughs in trading volume and market value in the future, further enhancing its position and influence in the cryptocurrency market.

4.2 TON Token Economics

The Open Network Coin (TON) token economy design combines its technical architecture and ecological goals, here are the key points:

1. Basic Information of the Coin

  • Name: TON Coin (native token)
  • Total supply: The initial total supply is 5 billion coins, fully released through POW mining in June 2022. Currently, it adopts the PoS consensus mechanism, with an annual inflation rate of about 0.6% (i.e. a new token supply of approximately 30 million coins per year).
  • Circulation: As of 2025, the circulation is approximately 2.5 billion coins (part of the tokens are not fully circulated due to pledge or lock-up).

2. Coin distribution mechanism

  • POW mining phase (2020-2022): 98.55% of the tokens are allocated to miners through POW mining, and the last TON will be mined in June 2022.
  • PoS stage (2022-present): Transition to Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, where stakers earn rewards by participating in network validation, with a fixed inflation rate of 0.6%.
  • Team and early investors: The remaining 1.45% of tokens (approximately 72.75 million) are allocated to the team and early supporters, and will be gradually released through a lock-up mechanism.

3. Token Usage

  • Transaction fees: Users need to pay TON as fees when transferring or using smart contracts, and the fees are adjusted based on the complexity of the transaction.
  • Staking and Governance: Users can stake TON to participate in network validation, receive inflation rewards, and influence network upgrades through governance voting.
  • Ecological incentives: The TON Foundation promotes ecosystem development by subsidizing ecological projects (such as DeFi, NFT platforms) with tokens.
  • Cross-chain and Application Integration: TON supports interoperability with other blockchains, and its tokens can be used for cross-chain transactions and payment scenarios within the Telegram ecosystem (such as purchasing usernames, content rewards).

4. Balancing Deflation and Inflation

  • Inflation mechanism: In the PoS stage, 0.6% of TON is issued annually to incentivize validators and maintain network security.
  • Destruction mechanism: Some trading fees will be destroyed to reduce circulation and create deflationary pressure.
  • Supply and demand balance: TON’s design goal is to maintain network security through inflation rewards, while adjusting token scarcity through a destruction mechanism to balance price fluctuations.

5. The core logic of the economic model

  • Incentivizing Network Participation: Attracting users to participate in consensus through staking rewards to ensure network decentralization and security.
  • Reduce transaction costs: Low fees and high throughput attract developers and users, promoting ecological prosperity.
  • Binding Telegram ecosystem: TON’s deep integration with Telegram (such as in-app payments, username auctions) creates actual demand for the token.
  • Long-term value support: Limited total supply (initial 5 billion + 0.6% annual inflation) and enhanced destruction mechanism increase the scarcity of coins, enhancing long-term investment value.

The token economics of TON aims to achieve a balance between network security, scalability, and token value through PoS inflation, destruction mechanism, and integration with the Telegram ecosystem. Its design takes into account both short-term incentives and long-term value, but attention should be paid to regulatory and market volatility risks.

4.2.1 Supply Situation

The total issuance and circulation of TON coins are key factors affecting their market supply, which have an important influence on market prices and investment value. According to official settings, the total supply of TON coins is 5 billion, and this fixed total issuance is designed to ensure the scarcity of the currency, prevent excessive inflation from impacting the stability of the currency value, similar to the limited supply mechanism of Bitcoin, providing some support for the value of TON coins. During the initial issuance phase, the Telegram team sold some TON coins through private placements and other means to raise funds for project development. Of these, 2.5 billion TON coins were sold during the ICO process, while the remaining 2.5 billion were reserved for Telegram’s business development, team incentives, and ecosystem development, among other purposes. This distribution method helps ensure the long-term development of the project and the stable operation of the ecosystem.

Over time, the circulation of TON coins gradually increases. Of the 2.5 billion TON coins that have been sold, a portion enters the market circulation process, held and traded by investors; another part is used in the Telegram ecosystem, such as rewarding content creators, incentivizing developers, etc., but these are not traded on the open market. Currently, the circulation supply of TON coins is relatively limited compared to the total issuance, but as the project develops and the ecosystem improves, more TON coins may enter the market circulation, thereby affecting market supply. For example, when reserved TON coins are used for ecosystem development and incentives, they may gradually be released into the market through various means, increasing circulation.

In the future, the supply plan of TON coin will mainly focus on ecological construction and community development. The project team may reasonably adjust the release speed and distribution method of TON coin according to the needs of the ecosystem to support the development and growth of ecological projects. In order to encourage developers to create more applications on the TON platform, a part of the reserved TON coins may be allocated to excellent developers through a reward mechanism; to promote community activity and participation, TON coins may also be used for community governance and rewarding community members. In addition, with the development of the TON network, new application scenarios and demands may arise, which may also lead to corresponding adjustments to the supply plan of TON coins. If TON coins are widely used in the decentralized finance (DeFi) field in the future, more TON coins may be needed to support related financial transactions and business, and the project team may increase the supply of TON coins or adjust their distribution method according to this demand.

4.2.2 Demand Factors

There are multiple factors that influence the demand for TON coins, these factors interact with each other, jointly determining the market demand situation and trend for TON coins. Firstly, the expansion of application scenarios is an important driving force for the growth of TON coin demand. With the continuous development of the TON ecosystem, more and more application scenarios are being realized on the TON network, covering various areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), smart contracts, distributed storage, etc. In the DeFi field, TON coins can serve as underlying assets for lending, trading, liquidity mining, and other financial activities, providing users with efficient and low-cost financial services. In the NFT field, TON coins can be used to purchase, trade, and collect various unique digital assets, supporting the prosperity of the NFT market. These diverse application scenarios have attracted a large number of users and developers to participate, who need to hold TON coins to perform various operations and transactions, thereby driving the growth of TON coin demand.

Investor interest is also one of the key factors affecting the demand for TON coins. As the popularity and influence of TON coins in the market continue to rise, more and more investors are starting to pay attention to and invest in TON coins. Investor interest in TON coins mainly stems from its potential investment value and development prospects. With its unique technical advantages such as high-speed transaction processing capabilities, low fees, high scalability, and strong community support, TON coins are considered to have high investment potential. Many investors are optimistic about the future development of TON coins in the cryptocurrency market, hoping to gain asset appreciation returns by holding TON coins. In addition, some institutional investors have also started to focus on and invest in TON coins, further increasing the market demand for TON coins. The participation of institutional investors not only brings in a large amount of funds but also enhances the market acceptance and stability of TON coins, attracting more investors to follow suit in investment.

Market trends and macroeconomic environment also affect the demand for TON coins. When the overall cryptocurrency market is on an upward trend, investors have a higher risk appetite, leading to increased demand for various cryptocurrencies, and TON coins will also benefit from this market sentiment, resulting in an increase in demand. Conversely, when the market is in a downtrend or the economic situation is unstable, investors may reduce their investment in cryptocurrencies and turn to safer assets, causing a decrease in demand for TON coins. For example, during global economic slowdowns or financial crises, investors may become more cautious, reducing investments in high-risk cryptocurrencies, including TON coins. In addition, changes in policies and regulations also have a significant impact on the demand for TON coins. If some countries or regions adopt proactive regulatory policies towards cryptocurrencies, recognizing their legitimacy and utility, it may promote the application and development of TON coins locally, increasing market demand; Conversely, if regulatory policies become stricter, restricting or prohibiting cryptocurrency transactions and usage, it will have a negative impact on the demand for TON coins.

5. TON coin application scenarios and ecological construction

5.1 Main Application Scenarios

5.1.1 Payment and Transaction

In the field of payment and transactions, TON coin exhibits many significant advantages. Firstly, its transaction speed is extremely fast, with the unique multi-layer architecture and PoS consensus mechanism, it can achieve the processing capacity of millions of transactions per second, enabling payments to be completed in an instant, greatly improving transaction efficiency. For example, in the cross-border e-commerce payment scenario, traditional payment methods may take hours or even days to complete fund transfers, while using TON coin for payment, the transaction confirmation can be completed in just a few seconds, funds can be quickly credited, greatly improving the timeliness of transactions, providing a more convenient payment experience for merchants and consumers.

5.1.2 Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

In the field of DeFi, the application of TON coin covers multiple aspects, demonstrating enormous development potential. In the lending business, TON coin provides users with more convenient and efficient lending services. Users can obtain corresponding loans on the TON chain’s lending platform by pledging TON coins or other supported assets, without the need for cumbersome credit checks and intermediary participation, significantly reducing borrowing costs and time costs.

5.1.3 Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

In the field of NFT, the application of TON coin brings a new mode and opportunity for the confirmation, transaction, and collection of digital assets. NFTs issued based on the TON blockchain have unique advantages. Due to the tamper-resistant and decentralized nature of the TON blockchain, ownership information of NFTs is securely and permanently recorded on the blockchain, ensuring the authenticity and uniqueness of digital assets. Each NFT based on the TON chain has a unique identifier that cannot be replicated or tampered with, providing strong technical support for copyright protection and value determination of digital assets. For example, artists can issue their works in the form of NFTs on the TON chain to ensure ownership of the works and track the transaction history and ownership changes of the works.

5.2 Ecological Construction and Development

5.2.1 Introduction to Ecological Projects

TON ecosystem has seen the emergence of many innovative projects based on the TON coin, covering multiple fields, providing strong support for the application and value enhancement of the TON coin. TON Space is an important ecological project launched by the TON Foundation. It is a self-hosted wallet based on Telegram, embedded in Telegram, providing users with convenient and secure digital asset management services. Users can easily manage their TON coins and other digital assets, carry out operations such as transfers, receipts, and transactions through TON Space. In addition to basic wallet functions, TON Space also has unique features and functions. It allows users to recover wallets via email and Telegram accounts, ensuring asset security even if the mnemonic is lost. Through the Wallet’s TON Space function, users can directly connect to TON-based dApps, making it easy to use various decentralized applications, providing users with a richer and more diverse service experience, and promoting the prosperity and development of the TON ecosystem.

DeDust is a native DEX built on the TON network, developed by Scaleton, playing an important role in the decentralized trading sector of the TON ecosystem. It supports trading, liquidity provision, and cross-chain functionality, providing users with an efficient, secure decentralized trading platform. In terms of trading, DeDust offers a fast and convenient trading experience, allowing users to freely trade various digital assets on the platform, achieving rapid exchange and appreciation of assets. In terms of liquidity provision, DeDust encourages users to provide liquidity, and through liquidity mining and other means, users can receive corresponding rewards, which helps improve market liquidity and trading efficiency. DeDust also supports cross-chain functionality, enabling assets from different blockchains to interact and trade, expanding the scope and possibilities of trading, providing users with a wider range of trading options.

5.2.2 Community and Developer Support

The activity and developer support of the TON coin community play a crucial role in its ecosystem construction. In terms of community activity, TON coin has a large and active community. Community members come from all over the world, covering different groups such as investors, technology enthusiasts, developers, and ordinary users. They actively communicate and interact through various social platforms and online channels. Discussions about the TON coin are lively on social media such as Telegram, Twitter, and Reddit. Community members share project progress, technical analysis, application cases, investment experiences, and other information, creating a good community atmosphere. For example, in the official TON Telegram group, there is a large amount of message exchange every day. Members actively participate in project discussions, provide suggestions and questions, and the project team responds and answers promptly. This interaction enhances the sense of involvement and belonging of community members, promoting the development and growth of the community.

In terms of developer support, TON provides developers with abundant resources and a good development environment. The TON blockchain adopts an advanced technical architecture, supports multiple programming languages, reduces the technical threshold for developers, and enables developers to more easily develop applications on the TON platform. The TON Foundation has launched a series of developer incentive programs, providing funding, technical guidance, training, and other services to encourage developers to create more innovative applications in the TON ecosystem. For example, the TON Foundation has introduced token incentives for specific projects or communities, such as the recently announced TON/USDT liquidity pool incentive program worth $30 million; it also provides incentives of 1 million TON tokens for Chinese-speaking MiniApp developers. These incentive measures have attracted the participation of numerous developers, driving the richness and innovation of applications in the TON ecosystem, laying a solid foundation for the expansion and value enhancement of the TON coin’s application scenarios.

Conclusion

For investors, when considering investing in TON coins, it is necessary to fully understand the high risk and volatility of the cryptocurrency market. Pay close attention to market dynamics, project progress, and changes in regulatory policies, and manage risks and asset allocation properly. It is recommended that investors do not concentrate all funds on TON coins or other single cryptocurrencies, but diversify investments to reduce risks. At the same time, have a deep understanding of the technical principles, application scenarios, and market prospects of TON coins to avoid blind trend investing.

Penulis: Frank
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