The TON ecosystem is the network of apps, wallets and tokens built on The Open Network, the blockchain tied to Telegram, and its marketing advantage has always been distribution. Telegram's founder Pavel Durov said in March 2025 that the app had "significantly over 1 billion monthly active users", and since January 2025 TON has been the only blockchain allowed to power Telegram's mini apps, the small programs that open inside a chat.

The 2024 tap-to-earn wave showed how fast that front door can fill a funnel, and how fast it can empty one. At AnkhLabs we have run Telegram-native launches, and our view is that 2026 is a better year to market on TON than 2024 was, for a less exciting reason. The easy money has gone, Telegram itself now runs the chain, and the projects left are the ones with a product people come back to. We covered the earlier phase in our pieces on Telegram marketing and tap-to-earn games. This article is about TON as it stands now.

What is the TON ecosystem in 2026?

TON is a layer 1 blockchain, meaning it runs its own network rather than settling to another chain. Pavel and Nikolai Durov launched it in 2018, and Telegram withdrew in 2020 after a legal dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Benzinga notes. Independent developers kept it running. In January 2025 the TON Foundation made TON Connect, its wallet connection standard, the exclusive way for Telegram mini apps to link to wallets, and apps built on other chains had to move to TON by February 2025, Cointelegraph reported.

Usage inside Telegram is large. The TON Foundation says Telegram Web3 mini apps have passed 100 million monthly active users, according to Bitcoinist in September 2026. That count can include bot sessions and other activity that never touches the blockchain, so it is not the same as 100 million people using TON wallets.

Onchain, the picture is much smaller. The network's coin Gram traded at about $1.10 on 6 November 2026 with a market value of about $3.1 billion, according to CoinGecko. That is about 43% lower than a year earlier and far below its all-time high of $8.25 in June 2024. DeFi value on TON, the money deposited in lending, trading and staking apps, was about $43 million on DefiLlama. Stablecoins on TON were worth about $585 million on DefiLlama's stablecoin tracker, and its decentralised exchanges handled about $105 million of trading in the 30 days to 6 November, per DefiLlama's DEX data.

What happened to TON after the tap-to-earn wave?

Tap-to-earn games such as Notcoin and Hamster Kombat turned Telegram into the largest onboarding channel crypto had seen. Users tapped a screen, earned points and expected a token. The tokens came, and the prices then fell almost all the way. As of 6 November 2026, CoinGecko showed Notcoin about 98.8% below its June 2024 high, Hamster Kombat about 98.2% below its September 2024 high, DOGS about 98.1% down and Catizen about 96.3% down.

The DeFi money followed the same curve. TON's DeFi value peaked at about $778 million on 21 July 2024, according to the same DefiLlama series, and fell to about $263 million by January 2025, $86 million by January 2026 and $43 million by November. The users who came for free tokens mostly took them and left. Our article on why play-to-earn failed describes the same loop in an earlier cycle.

Sources: CoinGecko, DefiLlama, Cointelegraph. Figures as of 6 November 2026.

How has Telegram changed TON in 2026?

The biggest change is ownership of the agenda. On 4 May 2026 Durov said Telegram would replace the TON Foundation as the main force behind the network and become its largest validator, the computers that confirm transactions, Cointelegraph reported. He said fees had already dropped sixfold to "nearly zero" and that the next focus was "tech superiority", including new developer tools, under a plan he called "Make TON Great Again". The coin rose 33.8% in a day to $1.86. Cointelegraph noted that the foundation's future role was not yet clear.

A month later Durov announced that Toncoin would be renamed Gram, the name used in the original 2018 whitepaper, over about three weeks, Benzinga reported on 2 June 2026. The blockchain is still called TON. The Defiant reported that the coin briefly rose as high as $2.21 on the news, and it has fallen by about half since then.

Telegram has also been adding financial products to its wallets. Kraken-backed xStocks launched ten tokenized US stocks, including Apple, Amazon and Coinbase, inside TON Wallet on 18 December 2025, available in most markets except the US, the European Union and Australia, according to Cointelegraph. In 2024 Durov had already said Telegram would pay channel owners their 50% share of ad revenue in TON, Cointelegraph noted. For a marketer, the direction is clear. Telegram wants TON to be its payment and trading layer, run from inside the app.

How do you market a project in the TON ecosystem now?

The mechanics that made tap-to-earn spread still work. Mini apps open from a link in a chat, friends can be invited with one tap, and a user never has to leave Telegram. What changed is what you can promise at the other end. These are the points we would plan around.

• Count wallets and returning users, not opens. A mini app session is cheap. A connected wallet, a second visit and a first payment are the numbers that show a business. Report those to your community and your investors, and you will avoid the credibility gap that hurt the 2024 games.

• Reward staying, not tapping. Points that pay out once invite farmers, and our guide to sybil detection explains how quickly they arrive. Tie rewards to activity over weeks, and say plainly what a point is and is not worth.

• Build on what Telegram is pushing. With Telegram running the chain, its priorities become the ecosystem's priorities. Payments, trading inside the wallet and creator income are the areas Telegram has built for. A product that slots into those flows is easier to discover than one that fights them.

• Treat channels as your media. Channels are how news travels on Telegram, and their owners earn ad revenue in TON. Partnering with a few trusted channels in each language usually beats buying a large, untargeted list.

• Update the name. Your copy, your listings and your help pages should say Gram, with the old name in brackets for a while. It is a small thing that tells users you are current.

What are the risks of building on TON now?

The first is concentration. A chain run by one messaging company moves at that company's speed, which is how fees and even the coin's name changed within weeks of the takeover. The same speed applies to decisions you may not like. The January 2025 rule that forced mini apps onto TON Connect is a reminder that Telegram can change the terms for every app on the platform at once.

The second is thin onchain markets. With about $43 million of DeFi value on the whole chain, a new token on TON launches into shallow liquidity, and prices can move hard on small trades. If a token is part of your plan, budget for market depth and be careful about what you promise holders. Durov's own situation is a third factor that founders weigh. He was arrested in France in August 2024, the authorities lifted his travel ban in November 2025 and the investigation was still open in mid-2026, crypto.news reported. None of that has stopped the network, but it belongs in any honest risk section of a pitch deck.

What we'd tell a founder building on TON

First, use the native mechanics before you spend on paid reach. For Pudgy Penguins we ran content, distribution and launch strategy for Pengu Clash and the Telegram collectible drops, with a waitlist funnel built on viral referral using Telegram's native mechanics. It reached 2M+ users on the waitlist and $4M+ collectible sale volume.

Second, plan the rewards for month three, not day one. Our Mythical Forest programme was a points-driven engagement programme powered by the $MYTH token, with a social farming system where rewards were tied to sustained activity. It onboarded 1M+ users and produced 10M+ campaign impressions. The design choice that matters is the last one. Rewarding sustained activity is how you avoid the tap-to-earn cliff. More examples are in our case studies, and our guide to user retention covers the measurement side.

Third, run the community like a product. On Telegram the group chat is the support desk, the newsroom and the referral engine at once. Our community building and management work starts by deciding what each channel is for.

If you are planning a Telegram mini app or a launch in the TON ecosystem and want a second opinion, talk to AnkhLabs.

The bottom line

TON in 2026 is a chain with enormous reach and very little money parked on it. Telegram's takeover gives it a single owner with a clear plan for payments and trading, which helps founders who build for that plan and adds a dependence on one company for everyone. The tap-to-earn era proved that Telegram can deliver millions of users in weeks. The task now is to give them a reason to stay once the rewards stop.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Figures are as of 6 November 2026 unless stated.