Beyond Tap-to-Earn: TON’s Strategic Path to Mainstream DeFi

The Open Network (TON) has gradually built one of blockchain’s most promising ecosystems, combining mainstream accessibility with institutional-grade DeFi infrastructure. Since its launch as an independent network in 2020, TON has processed over 2.6 billion transactions while maintaining close integration with Telegram’s billion-user platform. Today, it hosts a robust DeFi ecosystem that’s attracting serious institutional attention, but the path to this success has been anything but conventional.

The network’s evolution tells a story about multiple converging factors: technical innovation, strategic partnerships, and viral gaming applications that helped onboard millions of users. Understanding how these elements work together reveals why TON has emerged as a credible alternative to established DeFi networks, despite taking a quite unique approach to blockchain adoption.

The Viral Gaming Catalyst

While TON was building its technical infrastructure and DeFi protocols, an unexpected development accelerated user adoption beyond anyone’s projections. Tap-to-earn games such as Notcoin and Hamster Kombat exploded across Telegram in 2024 and created a massive onboarding funnel that traditional DeFi platforms had struggled to achieve.

The numbers were impressive. Hamster Kombat alone attracted over 300 million users at its peak. Hence, daily active addresses on TON surged from 20,000-30,000 in January 2024 to around 500,000 in January 2025 — a 1,900% increase. Peak numbers were even more impressive with over 2 million daily active addresses in September 2024. These games succeeded because they eliminated crypto’s typical barriers: no downloads, no complex wallet setups, no seed phrases to memorize. The narrative was really simple — fun and casual games, which promised potential high returns.

Although the gaming narrative is appealing and understandable, it is usually temporary. As the initial hype cooled, daily new wallet creation dropped from around 700,000 at peak to approximately 30,000 – 40,000 in 2025 (Figure 1). The real test wasn’t whether TON could attract users through games, but whether it could retain them as the ecosystem transitioned to more serious financial applications.

Figure 1: Wallet creation history on TON

Source: Tonstat

The conversion data tells an interesting story. Of TON’s 150 million total accounts, roughly 1.5 million remain actively engaged on a monthly basis — a 1% retention rate that, while modest, represents millions of users who discovered DeFi through gaming and stayed for the financial services. This gaming-to-finance transition became one of several factors driving TON’s growth, alongside its technical capabilities and institutional partnerships.

The Telegram Integration Advantage

TON’s relationship with Telegram represents one of its most significant strategic advantages. While legally independent since 2020, the networks maintain deep technical and user experience integration that sets TON apart from other blockchain platforms.

Over 100 million Telegram users activated TON Wallet in 2024, representing 10% of the messaging platform’s 1 billion user base. This isn’t just about convenience — it fundamentally changes how people interact with blockchain technology. Sending cryptocurrency becomes as intuitive as forwarding a message and eliminates the learning curve that typically limits crypto adoption.

The integration reached a new milestone in July 2025 when TON Wallet enabled native token swaps through STON.fi  for 87 million U.S. Telegram users. They can now swap tokens directly within their wallet interface, powered by STON.fi’s Omniston liquidity aggregator that routes through multiple sources to ensure optimal rates. Hence, users benefit from competitive pricing and minimal slippage while maintaining the security and transparency of decentralized protocols. This collaboration exemplifies how DeFi projects are working together to make decentralized finance more accessible and intuitive. In that case, protocols act as a unified ecosystem rather than isolated products competing for market share. This integration transforms DeFi interaction from a complex, multi-step process into something as simple as sending a message — a crucial breakthrough for mainstream adoption that positions TON’s ecosystem at the forefront of accessible decentralized finance.

This Telegram integration creates both opportunities and dependencies. The seamless user experience provides unparalleled access to mainstream audiences, but also means TON’s success remains partially tied to Telegram’s continued operation and regulatory compliance. It’s a calculated risk that has paid off significantly, though one that requires ongoing management as both platforms evolve.

Building Institutional-Grade DeFi Infrastructure

Beyond user acquisition, TON has focused on building a legitimate financial infrastructure that can support long-term institutional adoption. The ecosystem’s Total Value Locked (TVL) grew from $50-60 million at the start of 2024 to about $350-400 million in 2025, reflecting both user confidence and genuine utility (Figure 2).

Figure 2: TVL on TON blockchain

Source: DeFiLlama

The DeFi landscape centers around several key protocols that prioritize security and regulatory compliance (Figure 3). Tonstakers dominates liquid staking with 80% market share, managing over 66 million staked TON tokens across 100,000+ users and enabling users to earn staking rewards without sacrificing liquidity. The protocol’s 94.5/100 CertiK audit score and $100,000 bug bounty program also provide institutional credibility. 

STON.fi serves as the ecosystem’s primary automated market maker (AMM) with sophisticated Omniston liquidity aggregation technology. The protocol’s native integration within Telegram is not surprising as the protocol accounts for approximately 80% of all traders on TON and has processed over $6 billion in total trading volume across 27 million operations since launch, serving 5.5 million users.

Figure 3: DeFi TVL on TON (in $ millions)

Source: DeFiLlama

TON’s stablecoin infrastructure has developed through strategic partnerships rather than experimental protocols. TON’s integration of USDT and gold-backed XAUT provides essential price stability, with over $10 million initially authorized for the network. While adoption remains modest, this conservative approach reflects TON’s emphasis on established and widely known decisions over rapid growth. 

Importantly, the ecosystem has continued to expand beyond fiat-backed instruments: Ethena’s launch of its synthetic stablecoin USDe and its staked variant brings a value-accruing, DeFi-native dimension to TON’s stablecoin mix, complementing the conservative foundation set by Tether. Institutional validation also extends deeper than token integrations alone. 

Copper’s custody services and Trail of Bits’ security auditing anchor the network with the credibility that serious investors require.

Technical Foundation and Security Model

TON’s technical architecture balances scalability, security, and decentralization through several innovative approaches. The network’s proof-of-stake consensus distributes validation across hundreds of nodes globally, providing reasonable decentralization without the energy consumption of proof-of-work systems.

The platform’s sharding architecture enables theoretical processing of millions of transactions per second, though current demand remains well below these limits with about 20-50 TPS. More importantly, the network has demonstrated stability under real-world stress, handling massive user influxes during viral gaming periods without significant performance degradation or fee increases (Figure 4).

Figure 4: TON daily transactions

Source: Tonstat

Security implementation emphasizes formal verification and comprehensive testing rather than experimental features. Major protocols undergo rigorous auditing, while partnerships with established security firms provide ongoing monitoring and incident response capabilities. The approach may be conservative, but it has prevented the high-profile exploits that have plagued many other DeFi ecosystems.

User sovereignty remains fundamental to TON’s design. Importantly, the Telegram integration preserves the fundamental security model of blockchain networks. Telegram-based Web3 apps can be self-custodial, meaning users themselves — not intermediaries — safeguard their private keys and assets, with no central authority able to freeze accounts or reverse transactions. Consequently, TON achieves a seamless user experience while upholding the non-custodial principles that define legitimate blockchain networks.

Market Position and Competitive Dynamics

TON occupies a unique position in the blockchain landscape, combining mainstream accessibility through Telegram with growing institutional backing. That credibility got a major boost in July 2025 with a $400 million token round led by Kingsway Capital, joined by Sequoia Capital and Ribbit Capital. Later in the year, Verb Technology put $713 million into acquiring 5% of TON’s circulating supply, establishing a hybrid treasury model that mirrors Bitcoin’s institutional adoption strategy. This move was anchored by the company’s rebranding to TON Strategy Co. (TSC), a $558 million Nasdaq-listed entity that marked a new milestone for institutional adoption.

The institutional adoption is also reflected in concrete metrics: TON attracted $540 million in USDT volume by Q2 2025, demonstrating real institutional capital deployment rather than speculative interest. However, this positioning also creates specific challenges and competitive dynamics as the network must balance its mainstream accessibility with the requirements of institutional users.

Competition from both established DeFi networks and emerging platforms presents ongoing challenges. While TON’s integration advantages are almost impossible to replicate, other networks are developing their own user experience improvements and mainstream adoption strategies.

Future Outlook 

TON’s evolution from a gaming-related platform to a serious DeFi infrastructure represents a notable achievement in blockchain adoption. The transition from gaming to financial services is ongoing, with user engagement patterns still evolving. The ecosystem’s concentration in a few key protocols, while efficient, raises questions about diversity and resilience.

Attracting serious developers and innovative protocols will be crucial for maintaining competitive momentum. The current focus on user experience may need to be balanced with more aggressive innovation to compete with established DeFi networks. The foundation appears solid, but execution of the next growth phase will be critical.

For users and investors, TON presents a unique proposition that combines proven user adoption with growing institutional infrastructure. The risks are real, particularly around platform dependencies and ecosystem concentration, but so are the opportunities for a network that has already demonstrated its ability to bridge mainstream and institutional audiences.

Disclaimer: This article may be in collaboration with a valued partner. Reader discernment is advised. Please read the advertorial disclosure on our privacy policy page for further clarification.