The Open Network (TON) has one of the most unusual origin stories in crypto. Originally developed by Telegram founder Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai as the “Telegram Open Network,” the project raised $1.7 billion in a 2018 token sale — one of the largest ever. But in 2020, the SEC sued Telegram for conducting an unregistered securities offering. Telegram settled for $1.2 billion and abandoned the project. The open-source community picked it up, and TON was reborn as a community-driven blockchain.
What makes TON uniquely powerful is its relationship with Telegram — the messaging app with 900+ million monthly active users. While Telegram officially distanced itself from TON after the SEC settlement, the integration deepened over time. In 2024, Telegram launched @wallet (a custodial wallet built into Telegram), integrated TON-based payments, and created a marketplace for “mini apps” — lightweight applications running inside Telegram chats, powered by TON.
The mini-app ecosystem exploded in 2024. Notcoin, a tap-to-earn game where users tapped their phone screens to earn NOT tokens, attracted over 35 million players and became one of the most successful token launches of 2024. Hamster Kombat, another Telegram mini-app game, claimed 300 million users. These viral gaming apps demonstrated TON’s unique distribution advantage: no app store downloads, no wallet setup, just tap a link in Telegram and start playing.
TON’s technical architecture — designed for the scale Telegram requires — uses infinite sharding, where the network automatically creates new shards as demand grows. Transaction costs are fractions of a cent, and throughput can theoretically handle millions of TPS. The USDT stablecoin launched on TON in 2024, bringing serious DeFi infrastructure. Pavel Durov’s arrest in France in August 2024 on charges related to Telegram’s content moderation created uncertainty but didn’t stop TON’s ecosystem growth. The chain’s bet is simple: if even 10% of Telegram’s users become crypto users, TON becomes one of the most-used blockchains in the world.
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