Key Takeaways:
Toncoin ($TON) rose 6% to $1.43 after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced the messaging platform will take over as the largest validator and primary driver of The Open Network (TON), the blockchain it originally founded.
“Telegram replaces the TON Foundation as the driving force behind TON and becomes its largest validator,” Durov said Monday in a post. “The focus shifts to tech superiority.”
The strategic shift follows a series of technical improvements as part of a roadmap dubbed “Make TON Great Again,” or MTONGA. Transaction fees on the network were cut by approximately six times, falling from about $0.0023 to $0.0005 per transaction. In April, the deployment of a new consensus mechanism, Catchain 2.0, reduced block times from 2.5 seconds to 400 milliseconds, resulting in sub-second transaction finality.
This deeper integration signals a new chapter for a project that Telegram was forced to abandon in 2020 amid regulatory pressure from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its initial coin offering. The project was kept alive by the community, which formed The Open Network Foundation. With Telegram now stepping back into a leadership role, upcoming updates include a new developer website and further performance upgrades expected within three weeks. For a blockchain integrated with Telegram's 900 million users, these performance metrics are a baseline requirement for powering in-app purchases and peer-to-peer transfers.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
