Opinion by: Tracy Jin, chief working officer of MEXC
Whereas Ethereum stays the core infrastructure for DeFi and sensible contract innovation, it nonetheless hasn’t solved its most important promise: mass adoption. After practically a decade of growth, Ethereum-based apps are nonetheless too complicated, fragmented and costly for the common person.
The Open Community (TON) is betting on a totally completely 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 functions; it’s about making Web3 disappear into the UX in the very best means.
From idea to cultural layer
Conceived in 2018 to combine blockchain expertise into Telegram’s messaging platform, TON took time to ascertain a foothold as its infrastructure and ecosystem had been constructed out. By 2024, the ecosystem had skilled a parabolic adoption curve, aided by Tether’s resolution in Might to launch USDt (USDT) on the chain.
This yr, TON has solidified its place as an important cog within the omnichain panorama. A significant 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 worthwhile infrastructure in TON DNS, TON Storage and TON Proxy, supporting decentralized domains, storage and privateness options.
In the present day, The Open Community has comfortably fulfilled its promise of leveraging Telegram’s huge person base to onboard thousands and thousands to Web3 in a way that feels extra akin to Web2. Greater than 150 million accounts have been created on TON, whose community data a mean of two million day by day transactions. The variety of lively month-to-month wallets additionally stands at across the 2-million mark. These are strong benchmarks, however they don’t make TON the preferred blockchain ecosystem. Not but.
What TON does in another way
TON shouldn’t be promoting an ecosystem. It’s giving customers instruments they already know the best way to use, with crypto working below the hood. Telegram Pockets, now accessible to thousands and thousands of customers globally, turns tokens from speculative devices into usable items inside chats, channels, video games and P2P experiences.
What can we find out about the way forward for crypto onboarding and on a regular basis utilization? It’s going to get easy, and a lot of the present friction factors, from gasoline charges to personal key storage, shall 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 right into a single interface.
What else do we all know in regards to 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 present Web2 platforms. These are attributes that first-generation sensible contract chains resembling 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 bins.
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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 person base. Mini Apps, resembling Notcoin, Hamster Kombat and Catizen, are onboarding thousands and thousands of customers, a lot of whom don’t even notice they’ve began utilizing blockchain infrastructure. These are real-world stress exams of what scalable, low-friction Web3 can appear 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. In contrast, Ethereum apps like Uniswap or Aave require browser extensions, seed phrases and an understanding of gasoline mechanics — boundaries nonetheless insurmountable for the common mainstream person. Even Solana and BNB Chain, regardless of sooner networks and bigger whole worth locked, depend on exterior wallets and Web3 onboarding flows. TON bypasses these frictions completely.
A brand new behavioral norm
TON’s rise coincides with a broader shift within the crypto business. International belief in conventional platforms is eroding, and a focus is shifting to ecosystems that provide 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 be experiencing fatigue from over-engineered UX, speculative volatility and fractured onboarding experiences. TON, against this, rides the wave of the Mini App growth — a format popularized in Asia through platforms like WeChat — now changing into a world behavioral norm. TON’s skill 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 getting ready for worst-case situations, guaranteeing the infrastructure isn’t reliant on a single entity.
TON may outline the subsequent period of blockchain
The place does this momentum lead? Based mostly on present adoption charges, TON might attain over 2.6 million day by day lively customers in 2026 and surpass 10 million by 2027. Simply two years in the past, that quantity was below 40,000. In contrast, Ethereum has remained steady at round 420,000 day by 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 another way. Whereas Solana’s spike is pushed by hypothesis and incentives, TON’s is predicated on embedded habits, resembling tipping, gaming and funds, repeated thousands and thousands 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 widespread messenger app. And the blockchain powering its Mini Apps is TON. No different blockchain has entry to one of these distribution community, which is why, relating to plotting the way forward for blockchain adoption, all roads result in TON.
If its initiated enlargement into the US market good points traction, TON might add thousands and thousands of customers at present embedded in platforms like WhatsApp and Fb. The American market stays one of the crucial aggressive and extremely regulated crypto environments, however TON’s frictionless UX, mobile-first design and deep Telegram integration provide it a novel benefit. Positioning itself as a platform for creators, micro-transactions and native monetization, TON could unlock a market traditionally dominated by Ethereum and missed by many different chains.
By 2027, Ethereum should lead DeFi. Solana could dominate onchain liquidity and buying and selling. But when TON continues its present path, it can personal one thing else completely: 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 basic data functions and isn’t supposed 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 mirror or characterize the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
