TON becomes the exclusive blockchain of Telegram

Today, the founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, publicly and explicitly stated that TON will be the exclusive blockchain partner of Telegram.

Durov on his personal channel wrote that the decision was made together with the TON Foundation, and that in light of this decision TON will become the blockchain infrastructure of Telegram for tokenization, payments, mini app integrations, and more.

Telegram and TON

In theory, TON (The Open Network) is an independent and decentralized blockchain, whose development is managed by the TON Foundation. 

However, TON initially stood for Telegram Open Network, and its blockchain was born along with the Toncoin project in 2020. 

Indeed, the ties with Telegram are much closer than they might appear at a superficial analysis. 

Everything indeed started in 2018 with the ICO of Gram, launched by Telegram itself. However, that ICO was then blocked by the SEC in 2019, among other things when Donald Trump was still serving as the president of the USA and Gary Gensler had not yet been appointed to the top of the SEC (he was appointed by Joe Biden in 2021).

Therefore, in 2019 the official crypto project of Telegram, based on the Gram token, was definitively shelved, and from its ashes, the Toncoin project was born, behind which there was no longer Telegram, at least from a formal point of view. 

If Toncoin and the TON Foundation are currently to be considered formally independent entities from Telegram, with today’s announcement, the bond with the company tightens further. 

TON in Telegram

Technically, in addition to being a company based in Dubai, Telegram is a messaging app that over the years has added numerous features. 

One of these is the crypto wallet, now integrated. Another is the mini-apps, which are internal bots that function like apps but without the need for installation, and they also support crypto transactions based on TON. 

Among other things, the integration of TON in Telegram actually dates back only to last year, because until 2022 the Toncoin project was still in development, and in 2023 only the first attempts at integration were made, which, however, remained only partial until last year. 

Now not only is the integration complete, after the decisions of 2024, but TON even becomes the exclusive blockchain of Telegram. 

The integration 

Regarding the decision announced today, Durov stated: 

“This standardization will be fantastic for Telegram users, providing them with a consistent and predictable experience and better protection against scams. Mini app developers can refer to the Blockchain Guidelines to see what’s new. I foresee a wave of innovation from this strong integration between Telegram and TON”.

This is therefore a “strong integration,” and the initiative to exclude other blockchains from becoming native on Telegram. 

In reality, the integrated crypto wallet supports Bitcoin, but for example, it supports neither Ethereum nor Solana.

It is possible, however, to imagine that within the crypto wallet integrated into Telegram, sooner or later it will be possible to use wrapped tokens of the main other criptovalute, but at this point, it seems likely that other blockchains will not be supported.

DeFi on TON and the price of Toncoin

From the point of view of usage in the DeFi sector, the blockchain of TON is not in the top ten for TVL.

From this point of view, it had a peak last year, at the time of the launch of DeFi on TON with the first memecoins, when it reached a TVL of over 700 million dollars. Currently, however, it has decreased to 230 million, and it has been in constant decline since October of last year. 

For example, Ethereum has more than 66 billion dollars of TVL, and Solana almost 12. Avalanche has 1.4 billion, and Polygon more than 800 million. 

This dynamic has most likely also impacted the market price of Toncoin, which has fallen to the fifteenth position by market capitalization after entering the top 10 last year. 

After reaching an initial peak above $4.4 in 2021, the price of TON fell below the dollar during the subsequent bear-market, and until the beginning of last year, it had not yet recovered. 

However, with the boom of the first half of 2024, it ended up marking new all-time highs, above $8.4, only to then fall back below $5. 

After Trump’s victory on November 6, it had returned to $6.9, but only to then drop again just above $5. 

However, if Telegram were to launch a new advertising campaign like the one from a year ago, it is possible that the price of TON could rise again.