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 vital promise: mass adoption. After practically a decade of improvement, Ethereum-based apps are nonetheless too advanced, fragmented and costly for the common consumer.
The Open Community (TON) is betting on a totally totally different future, and that’s already unfolding inside Telegram.
With over 900 million customers globally, Telegram is the most important energetic 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 choice in Could to launch USDt (USDT) on the chain.
This 12 months, 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 useful 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 median of two million every day transactions. The variety of energetic 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 isn’t promoting an ecosystem. It’s giving customers instruments they already know the best way to use, with crypto working beneath the hood. Telegram Pockets, now obtainable 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 learn 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, 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 and products right into a single interface.
What else do we all know in regards to the subsequent wave of retail-focused blockchain adoption? It will likely 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 equivalent 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.
Associated: How crypto consultants discover 100x cash earlier than anybody else
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, equivalent 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 checks 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 fuel mechanics — boundaries nonetheless insurmountable for the common mainstream consumer. Even Solana and BNB Chain, regardless of quicker networks and bigger whole worth locked, depend on exterior wallets and Web3 onboarding flows. TON bypasses these frictions totally.
A brand new behavioral norm
TON’s rise coincides with a broader shift within the crypto trade. International 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 growth — a format popularized in Asia through platforms like WeChat — now changing into a worldwide behavioral norm. TON’s potential to embed crypto into on a regular basis habits offers it a singular 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 may attain over 2.6 million every day energetic customers in 2026 and surpass 10 million by 2027. Simply two years in the past, that quantity was beneath 40,000. In contrast, Ethereum has remained steady at round 420,000 every day energetic 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 most important chain in uncooked numbers subsequent 12 months. However its progress is constructed in another way. Whereas Solana’s spike is pushed by hypothesis and incentives, TON’s relies on embedded habits, equivalent to tipping, gaming and funds, repeated tens of millions of instances 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, but it surely’s the world’s fourth-most standard 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 may add tens of millions of customers at the moment embedded in platforms like WhatsApp and Fb. The American market stays one of the vital aggressive and extremely regulated crypto environments, however TON’s frictionless UX, mobile-first design and deep Telegram integration supply it a singular 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 still lead DeFi. Solana could dominate onchain liquidity and buying and selling. But when TON continues its present path, it’s going to personal one thing else totally: the on a regular basis layer of the web. A blockchain individuals use with out serious about 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 info functions and isn’t supposed to be and shouldn’t be taken as authorized or funding recommendation. The views, ideas, and opinions expressed listed below are the writer’s alone and don’t essentially mirror or signify the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
