The number of transactions in the TON blockchain, which is closely connected with Telegram, has grown by thousands of percent over the year. Experts have told us who uses it and what influences it
The number of transactions on the TON blockchain increased by 2,492% in a year, according to data from analytics platform Cryptorank. The ecosystem leads the other networks in terms of the rate of increase in activity.
The blockchain, founded by Pavel Durov and closely related to Telegram, attracted a large number of new users in 2024 due to the messenger's gaming mini-apps such as Notcoin, Dogs, Catizen or Hamster Kombat.
In early May, venture capital firm Pantera Capital announced that it had invested a large sum in TON. Pantera CEO Dan Morehead admitted that the company bet on the development of this network at the expense of Telegram users and cryptocurrency functions of the messenger.
In 2024, the total value locked (TVL) within the TON network has grown about 28 times. TVL peaked this year in July, when it exceeded $770 million, according to Defillama. It was nearly $14 million in January and $404 million as of Sept. 13. TON ranks 18th among other networks in terms of TVL and is well behind established global ecosystems in the crypto market built around Ethereum or Solana blockchains. Despite investments from leading Western funds and audience growth, the geography of TON users is not as extensive as that of other popular blockchains.
It is difficult to reliably estimate the size of the audience in different countries due to lack of any open statistics
But we can make assumptions based on some secondary factors. And such factors can be the size of the community in the chat rooms of top projects, the presence of Influencers and the geography of launches.
If we proceed solely from these data, we can observe high popularity of TON in CIS countries, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Middle East countries. I.e. where Telegram is most popular.
In general, the audience of the TON ecosystem is spread all over the world, just in other countries the popularity of the project is quite low. After the scandal in France, the popularity of messenger Telegram is growing, but the conversion of its audience into users of TON cryptocurrency projects has not happened yet. In any case, the growing popularity of Telegram will lead to an increase in the number of users of the TON ecosystem as a whole. $TON
