TL;DR:
- Toncoin surged 36.7% in the last 24 hours to $1.88 after Pavel Durov announced that Telegram will lead TON’s development.
- Telegram will replace the TON Foundation as the network’s main driving force and will become its largest validator within 2 to 3 weeks.
- Volume spiked 684% and surpassed $923 million. TON’s market cap exceeded $5 billion.
Toncoin posted a 36.7% gain in the last 24 hours and reached $1.88 after Pavel Durov announced that Telegram will replace the TON Foundation as the main driving force behind The Open Network and become its largest validator.
The token moved from around $1.35 to nearly $1.90, according to CoinMarketCap data, which placed Toncoin among the top 20 tokens by market capitalization during the rally. Trading volume spiked 684% and surpassed $923 million, while the network’s market cap exceeded $5 billion.
Durov also provided some technical details and a specific timeline. “Fees on TON dropped sixfold, to near zero. The next step is for Telegram to replace the TON Foundation as the driving force of TON and become its largest validator. The focus shifts to technological superiority,” he wrote. He also announced a new ton.org website, new developer tools and performance improvements, all within two to three weeks.
Telegram as Infrastructure
The fee reduction was not a complete surprise to the ecosystem. On April 23, Durov had already signaled that fees would fall sixfold to “just 0.00039 TON” per transaction, with a fixed cost independent of network load, and that most operations would be free in the short term. That cost structure is central to TON’s model, whose commercial appeal does not rest solely on speculation but on high-frequency activity within Telegram.
In January 2025, the TON Foundation confirmed that TON would become the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for Telegram’s Mini Apps ecosystem, whose platform surpasses 950 million monthly active users. The platform also preserves Toncoin as the only cryptocurrency accepted to execute non-fiat payments in services such as Stars, Premium, Ads and Gateway.
Telegram originally developed the network under the Durov brothers, until the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission halted the project in 2020 over the unregistered sale of Gram tokens, which led to the return of more than $1.2 billion to investors and the payment of an $18.5 million fine. Durov’s proposal does not represent an expansion of the partnership, but a change in leadership.
