Opinion by: Tracy Jin, chief working officer of MEXC
Whereas Ethereum stays the core infrastructure for DeFi and good contract innovation, it nonetheless hasn’t solved its most vital promise: mass adoption. After almost a decade of growth, Ethereum-based apps are nonetheless too advanced, fragmented and costly for the common consumer.
The Open Community (TON) is betting on a very totally different future, and that’s already unfolding inside Telegram.
With over 900 million customers globally, Telegram is the biggest lively social layer in crypto, and TON is the one blockchain natively embedded into it. This isn’t nearly constructing decentralized purposes; it’s about making Web3 disappear into the UX in the absolute best means.
From idea to cultural layer
Conceived in 2018 to combine blockchain expertise into Telegram’s messaging platform, TON took time to determine a foothold as its infrastructure and ecosystem have been constructed out. By 2024, the ecosystem had skilled a parabolic adoption curve, aided by Tether’s resolution in Could to launch USDt (USDT) on the chain.
This yr, TON has solidified its place as a significant cog within the omnichain panorama. A serious pockets improve in March aided it, including buying and selling and TON staking for over 100 million Telegram Pockets customers. Within the final two years, TON has additionally launched helpful infrastructure in TON DNS, TON Storage and TON Proxy, supporting decentralized domains, storage and privateness options.
At present, The Open Community has comfortably fulfilled its promise of leveraging Telegram’s huge consumer base to onboard tens of millions to Web3 in a fashion that feels extra akin to Web2. Greater than 150 million accounts have been created on TON, whose community data a mean of two million each day transactions. The variety of lively month-to-month wallets additionally stands at across the 2-million mark. These are stable benchmarks, however they don’t make TON the preferred blockchain ecosystem. Not but.
What TON does in a different way
TON shouldn’t be promoting an ecosystem. It’s giving customers instruments they already know use, with crypto operating below the hood. Telegram Pockets, now out there to tens of millions of customers globally, turns tokens from speculative devices into usable items inside chats, channels, video games and P2P experiences.
What will we find out about the way forward for crypto onboarding and on a regular basis utilization? It’s going to get easy, and many of the present friction factors, from fuel charges to personal key storage, might be abstracted away. It doesn’t require a crystal ball to glean this. The historical past of the web tells you that Web3 will comply with Web2’s arc: higher UX, much less complexity and deep integration and aggregation of services and products right into a single interface.
What else do we all know concerning the subsequent wave of retail-focused blockchain adoption? Will probably be pushed by chains that summary complexity — no convoluted onboarding — and quick, cheap and deeply built-in into current Web2 platforms. These are attributes that first-generation good contract chains akin to Ethereum, which is embroiled in a multi-year scaling problem, can’t provide. And neither can so-called next-gen chains which are extremely scalable however lack a Web2 distribution channel. Solely TON, with its native integration into Telegram’s billion-strong messenger, ticks all these containers.
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This brings us again to Mini Apps, the important thing to mainstreaming TON. If there’s one benefit the blockchain has over its rivals, it’s native integration with Telegram’s 900-million consumer base. Mini Apps, akin to Notcoin, Hamster Kombat and Catizen, are onboarding tens of millions of customers, a lot of whom don’t even notice they’ve began utilizing blockchain infrastructure. These are real-world stress assessments of what scalable, low-friction Web3 can seem like.
Whereas Ethereum has talked about onboarding the next billion customers since 2018, TON is quietly doing it — one meme, one microtransaction, one faucet at a time. Against this, Ethereum apps like Uniswap or Aave require browser extensions, seed phrases and an understanding of fuel mechanics — boundaries nonetheless insurmountable for the common mainstream consumer. Even Solana and BNB Chain, regardless of quicker networks and bigger complete worth locked, depend on exterior wallets and Web3 onboarding flows. TON bypasses these frictions solely.
A brand new behavioral norm
TON’s rise coincides with a broader shift within the crypto business. World belief in conventional platforms is eroding, and a spotlight is shifting to ecosystems that supply self-custody, interoperability and fluid UX. Whereas L2s and rollups compete to scale Ethereum, TON is constructing the place most layer 1s can’t attain — inside a local, on a regular basis interface.
The broader crypto group can also be experiencing fatigue from over-engineered UX, speculative volatility and fractured onboarding experiences. TON, against this, rides the wave of the Mini App increase — a format popularized in Asia by way of platforms like WeChat — now turning into a world behavioral norm. TON’s potential to embed crypto into on a regular basis habits provides it a novel benefit on this mobile-first actuality.
Furthermore, TON has already confirmed resilient. Throughout Pavel Durov’s arrest in 2024, the platform continued to function independently — an indication of its rising decentralization. Telegram has additionally begun making ready for worst-case eventualities, guaranteeing the infrastructure isn’t reliant on a single entity.
TON would possibly outline the following period of blockchain
The place does this momentum lead? Based mostly on present adoption charges, TON might attain over 2.6 million each day lively customers in 2026 and surpass 10 million by 2027. Simply two years in the past, that quantity was below 40,000. Against this, Ethereum has remained secure at round 420,000 each day lively accounts, whereas Solana’s current explosion to over 5 million has been fueled by high-volume airdrops and memecoin exercise.
TON is unlikely to be the biggest chain in uncooked numbers subsequent yr. However its development is constructed in a different way. Whereas Solana’s spike is pushed by hypothesis and incentives, TON’s relies on embedded habits, akin to tipping, gaming and funds, repeated tens of millions of occasions inside a well-recognized interface.
No different app is as crypto-friendly or crypto-native as Telegram. Not solely is it the world’s favourite blockchain-enabled app, nevertheless it’s the world’s fourth-most well-liked messenger app. And the blockchain powering its Mini Apps is TON. No different blockchain has entry to such a distribution community, which is why, in the case of plotting the way forward for blockchain adoption, all roads result in TON.
If its initiated growth into the US market beneficial properties traction, TON might add tens of millions of customers at present embedded in platforms like WhatsApp and Fb. The American market stays some of the aggressive and extremely regulated crypto environments, however TON’s frictionless UX, mobile-first design and deep Telegram integration supply it a novel benefit. Positioning itself as a platform for creators, micro-transactions and native monetization, TON might unlock a market traditionally dominated by Ethereum and missed by many different chains.
By 2027, Ethereum should lead DeFi. Solana might dominate onchain liquidity and buying and selling. But when TON continues its present path, it is going to personal one thing else solely: the on a regular basis layer of the web. A blockchain individuals use with out fascinated by it — as a result of it’s already there, contained in the apps that they by no means shut.
Opinion by: Tracy Jin, chief working officer of MEXC.
This text is for common data functions and isn’t meant to be and shouldn’t be taken as authorized or funding recommendation. The views, ideas, and opinions expressed listed here are the creator’s alone and don’t essentially replicate or symbolize the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
