💀 How does the TON Bridge era come to an end?

⚫️ A few days ago, TON Core announced the final stage of the token bridge shutdown. Users were asked to withdraw their wrapped assets by September 1, 2026: after that date, the bridge will stop processing transfers.

⚫️ At one point, this bridge was one of the first attempts to connect TON with the broader crypto market. Back in 2021, the NewTON team — which later became TON Foundation — introduced the TON-ETH Bridge. At the time, it served a very practical purpose: it helped move Toncoin to other networks to access more mature DeFi markets.

⚫️ The bridge continued to evolve. In April 2023, TON added support for transferring tokens from Ethereum into TON, including USDT, USDC, DAI, and WBTC. That is how jUSDT and other wrapped assets appeared on the network. For early DeFi on TON, this was a noticeable step: native USDT was still almost a year away, while the ecosystem already needed stablecoins.

⭐️ By the way, we covered the bridge back in its testnet days — in 2022, we tried bringing wrapped USDT into TON together with you and even published a short guide for our readers.

⚫️ Then the context changed. In April 2024, native USDT on TON was announced at TOKEN2049. After that, the rationale for wrapped stablecoins gradually started to fade: once the network had real USDT issued by Tether, holding jUSDT through an old bridge became less convenient and less necessary.

⚫️ That is why the bridge shutdown looks like a natural end to an older phase. It was useful while TON lacked direct integrations. Now, its main job has largely been done.

⚫️ So if you still have Wrapped Toncoin, jUSDT, jUSDC, jDAI, jWBTC, or any other j-tokens sitting somewhere, it is better not to postpone: they need to be withdrawn through bridge-v3.ton.org before September 1, 2026.

The time of TON’s old bridges is coming to an end.

@thedailyton

👁 How is Telegram losing in the attention economy?

⚫️ Telegram has a recurring pattern: once the team picks up a new narrative, it spends some time shaping development around it. That was the case with Fragment, Mini Apps, Telegram Gifts, and now AI agents and TON.

⚫️ Telegram rarely creates a new narrative from scratch. More often, the market brings it one that is already almost fully formed. Gifts unexpectedly took off, clicker apps powered the Mini Apps wave, and AI agents simply fit well into the existing bot platform. Telegram is usually quick to catch these waves, but once the interest fades, previous directions start living on residual attention.

⚫️ The most recent example is Telegram Gifts. While the market was actively reacting to new collections, Telegram kept giving it reasons to talk. But once the interest cooled down, new collectible gifts stopped coming out, and some older collections have still not received upgrades for 15 months.

⚫️ The situation with Mini Apps is similar, although slightly more predictable. As long as the market was driven by clickers and expectations of major airdrops, Telegram was actively improving the platform. Once the hype ended, attention shifted elsewhere. For Telegram, this is a normal response to demand. But for developers, that logic is painful: they build projects for longer than a narrative stays alive.

⚫️ The story with AI agents follows the same pattern. Telegram happened to be in the right place at the right time: it already had a bot platform, while AI services needed a convenient interface for interacting with their products. No wonder the latest messenger updates increasingly look like improvements tailored to this scenario. The same Markdown formatting support expected in the next update fits neatly into that logic.

⚫️ But this, in our view, is where the risk for TON begins. Telegram now has two major narratives competing for attention. AI agents are moving fast: new features are being rolled out for them, while Telegram is actively shitposting on X to attract a Western audience. Meanwhile, the next MTONGA step has already missed the initially announced timeline.

⚫️ Telegram is good at catching new waves. But TON is not Gifts and not clickers. It cannot be developed through short bursts of attention: it requires long-term focus. Otherwise, MTONGA risks becoming yet another narrative that started brightly, but quickly moved into the background.

@thedailyton

🏆 Mischief managed!

⚫️ Much of TON’s modern success story was built around selling one idea: that one day, the blockchain would find its way back to Telegram and become a core part of the messenger. Yesterday, that story seemed to reach the conclusion: Pavel Durov announced that TON’s native coin is returning to its roots and will soon become Gram.

⚫️ If someone had told us in 2020 that Toncoin would eventually become Gram after all, we would have been genuinely surprised. Back then, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission effectively blocked the launch of Telegram’s cryptocurrency, while Durov publicly announced that Telegram’s active involvement in TON was over. After several years of development, the second-largest ICO in history, and big promises about a blockchain inside the messenger, Telegram had to act as if the story was finished. But as we can now see, this idea was simply too big to fail — and too big to disappear.

⚫️ Even within the community, not everyone believed that “the original TON” had a major future ahead of it. Fedor Skuratov — formerly Community Manager at TON Labs, and someone we once interviewed in Russian, so definitely check it out — put it rather bluntly back in 2021 (in Russian):

“Support for ‘that same TON’ is being carried out by a handful of enthusiasts. If there is any support from the Telegram team, it is either moral support, or they stopped working at Telegram yesterday (sarcasm). […] So there is no point in ‘working on’ this old TON, because there is almost nothing to do there except code. And even if there is, you will never get anything for it.” Translated

⚫️ Then the story began to change. At first, the network really was kept alive by enthusiasts who were simply working with Durov’s technology. But by the end of 2021, the first familiar names from the old VK space started entering the empty ecosystem. Oleg Andreev and Oleg Illarionov — two of VK’s earliest employees — launched Tonkeeper and ton.app. Looking back now, it is hard not to notice which way the wind was blowing.

⚫️ Then came the story we already know: the transfer of the original domain, TON Foundation, NFT marketplaces, DeFi, hackathons, Fragment, anonymous numbers, Telegram Gifts, and the blockchain’s return into the messenger. And now Toncoin is getting the name Gram. In the end, TON spent several years taking the long way around — only to return almost exactly to the point where everything once broke off.

⚫️ There are still plenty of blind spots in this story. It is unclear why Telegram decided to take TON under its wing now, of all times. The old restrictions following the SEC case expired back in June 2023. The political climate in the United States, which has always had a strong influence on crypto adoption, did not change overnight either. Perhaps we will learn the details behind this decision later. Or perhaps, as often happens with TON, much of it will remain between the lines.

⚫️ English has a useful word: hindsight. It describes the way events can look obvious after the fact, even though they felt chaotic and unclear in the moment. It fits TON’s story almost perfectly. What once looked like a string of coincidences has now come together into one clear line.

@thedailyton

🐤 How TON is getting ready for heavier loads

⚫️ In just an hour, the network will begin voting on a new set of validator upgrades. Ahead of the vote, Dr. Awesome Doge published a detailed breakdown of what is changing — so we’ll recap the key points.

⚫️ If April’s upgrade was about making transactions faster, June’s is about something less exciting but no less important: keeping the network stable under heavy load.

⚫️ TON plans to create a dedicated lane for validators to exchange block drafts. Right now, that traffic shares the same route as regular transactions. During sharp spikes in activity, this can hurt network performance — as already happened during the Hamster Kombat and DOGS listings.

⚫️ The same vote also includes other items: staking changes for validators and the gradual shutdown of TON Bridge, which we recently covered separately. Voting progress can be tracked here, and the original code for the changes is available on GitHub.

@thedailyton

🪙 Why does TON need AI agents?

⚫️ At the end of last year, we wrote about TON’s updated documentation. An AI chat assistant was added to docs.ton.org, allowing users to ask questions about the documentation directly. It was a relatively minor change, but a useful one for developers: if you cannot find the page you need, just ask the bot. It was especially helpful for newcomers just getting started with the ecosystem.

⚫️ Now AI in TON is gradually moving beyond documentation. This spring, the ecosystem got its own MCP — a toolkit that allows AI agents to interact with the blockchain: making transactions and swaps, managing .ton domains, and working with NFTs.

⚫️ The first products have already started to appear. One of the early movers was Teleton, which lets users turn a Telegram account or bot into an autonomous agent — essentially something like OpenClaw, but with access to Telegram and the TON ecosystem. MyTonWallet took a more user-facing approach and embedded an agent directly into the wallet. There, it helps users send coins, swap tokens, stake assets, and make sense of their portfolios.

🖊 Which naturally raises the question: why do we need this if most of these features already exist in the interface? You can check your balance, tap Swap, or open a token page without AI.

⚫️ In our view, the more interesting use cases begin where a traditional interface starts to fall short. For example, an agent could explain to a newcomer why a swap went through at a different price than expected, what slippage is, or how staking differs from lending. For more advanced users, it could become a powerful trading tool: gathering information from multiple sources — Telegram channels, group chats, analytics platforms, and more — before deciding whether to swap one token for another.

⚫️ And since we’re talking about TON, the blockchain could probably use tools capable of surviving an encounter with Telegram’s billion users. After all, explaining the network’s quirks to all of them manually sounds like quite the staffing problem, doesn’t it?

Have you already tried Teleton or the AI agent in MyTonWallet?

@thedailyton

💡 Who is still at TON Foundation?

⚫️ Since the launch of MTONGA, the TON ecosystem has been undergoing a fairly noticeable restructuring. It began with the closure of international TON Hubs, with the first cuts affecting regional teams responsible for local communities. At the end of May, we wrote about the departures of Dima and Viktor, who were involved in the CIS and Global teams. Now the changes appear to have reached the U.S. Hub as well — its lead, Angela, has removed TON Foundation from her current position on X.

⚫️ At the same time, the restructuring has started affecting not only people, but products as well. Yesterday, for example, TON ID was discontinued. It served as a digital identity layer for the TON ecosystem, allowing users to collect SBTs and verify participation in various activities. But while TON Foundation's public-facing and community operations seem to be gradually winding down, its management layer appears to remain intact.

⚫️ Publicly available information suggests that part of the team is still connected to TON Foundation. For example, Inal Kardanov, the Foundation's former GameFi Lead, appears in one of the sections of the updated ton.org website: the link to the Dev Channels folder was created from his account.

⚫️ The same list likely includes Anthony Tsivarev and Martin Masser — VP of Ecosystem Growth and Head of Growth, respectively. Their public activity has noticeably slowed over the past month, but both still list TON Foundation in their profiles.

⚫️ Then there is Andrey Rogozov — CEO of TOP.co and a member of TON Foundation. He continues to write about TOP's portfolio companies and may well play a prominent role in TON's post-MTONGA structure.

⚫️ For now, it appears that the restructuring has had the greatest impact on those who worked directly with the community — regional hubs and local leads in particular. The leadership layer of the ecosystem, however, does not seem to have disappeared. Instead, it appears to be reorganizing into a new form. The only question is what that form will ultimately look like. Hopefully, the next three MTONGA steps will provide a clearer answer.

That said, the biggest mystery is still unsolved: who’s actually running Telegram’s X account these days?

@thedailyton

🍌 JUST IN: Signs of a new TON treasury project have surfaced

Rivol Research has spotted signs of a potential TON Treasury on NASDAQ — Tonmate.

TON already has a public treasury vehicle: TON Strategy, traded under the TONX ticker. Judging by its description, the new project appears to be targeting a similar role, but with a different angle: it presents itself as TON Foundation-aligned and highlights backing from the UAE.

However, as the author of the research notes, it is still too early to call this a launch: there is no trading, no ticker, and no SEC filings yet.

@thedailyton

💡 How many of us are really in TON?

⚫️ Today at 16:00 UTC, voting on the proposal to rename Toncoin to Gram will end. Technically, the vote is still ongoing, but the result already looks almost certain: Pavel Durov announced Gram’s return before voting even began, and the “yes” option currently controls around 80% of the voting power.

⚫️ At the time of publication, around 5.2 thousand unique wallets had taken part in the vote. For a decision that changes the name of TON’s native coin and has been referenced by nearly every major project in the ecosystem, that number looks surprisingly modest.

⚫️ Gram was originally envisioned as a currency for hundreds of millions of Telegram users. Later, TON Foundation picked up a similar narrative, presenting the network as a blockchain with access to Telegram’s billion-user audience. But today, Gram’s return is being met not by millions, or even tens of thousands, but by just a few thousand wallets voting on a historic event for the entire ecosystem.

⚫️ Of course, TON has managed to build full-fledged infrastructure over the years. But the story of mass onboarding Telegram’s audience into the blockchain has still not materialized. So we want to believe that Gram is coming back not just as an old name, but as an attempt to restart the original idea. For now, we can already congratulate the community in advance on the ticker’s rename to Gram.

@thedailyton

💡 How far is TON from Solana?

⚫️ Amid Toncoin’s renaming to Gram, the same old story has resurfaced on English-language X: TON is supposedly about to overtake Solana. In reality, the narrative seems to have less to do with TON’s growth and more with SOL’s weakness in recent months — plus the usual habit of X influencers living in their own bubble. So today, let’s see how this new narrative holds up against reality.

⚫️ Let’s start with the basics: TON is currently ranked 19th on CoinMarketCap, with a market cap of around $4.6 billion. Solana is 7th, at roughly $38.2 billion. The gap is large, but not impossible to imagine closing: TON has made it into the top 10 before, though for a short moment.

⚫️ But once you look at actual network usage, things get much less comfortable. Over the past 24 hours, TON DEXs have processed around $5 million in trading volume, while Solana DEXs have handled around $50 billion. Just think about that: the difference is not several times, but roughly ten thousand times. And while Solana sees tens of millions of daily transactions, TON only has a few tens of thousands.

⚫️ To make it even clearer: a memecoin launched on Solana just a few days ago has already generated more trading volume today than the entire TON DeFi ecosystem combined.

⚫️ So yes, TON is still very, very far from Solana. And English-language X needs to step out of the bubble: TON is not flipping Solana anytime soon. But since the network has already built decent developer infrastructure over the years, Telegram, as its new driving force, should finally focus on what TON has been missing for a long time: promotion. That is exactly what we hope to see in the next steps of MTONGA.

@thedailyton

📈 TON Connect makes TON easier to use

⚫️ Today, TonTech released TON Connect v3 — the wallet connection standard used by apps across TON. The new version makes several important changes to how users interact with dApps.

⚫️ First: embedded requests. A dApp can now bundle wallet connection and an action, such as a swap or an NFT purchase, into a single request. Second: app-side gasless transactions. This will let developers cover gas fees for users, while users themselves can pay with another token — for example, USDT.

⚫️ In practice, it could work like this: a user opens an NFT marketplace, taps “Buy,” connects their wallet, pays for the NFT in USDT, and does not have to think about where to get TON for gas.

💀 However, as some community members have pointed out, the shorter the path to a transaction, the more room there is for scams. If wallet connection and the actual action can now be shown almost on the same screen, it becomes easier for an inexperienced user to miss that they are signing the wrong swap, the wrong purchase, or interacting with the wrong app altogether.

⚫️ Looking at the bigger picture, though, this update directly addresses one of the main problems with TON products. If TON wants to become a real payment layer, the user journey has to be as simple as possible. In that sense, TON Connect v3 fits neatly into the narrative of TON as a blockchain for everyday users.

@thedailyton

💡 TON wallets are moving toward a common standard

⚫️ Today, Anatoly Makosov, co-founder of The Open Network and a key TON Core developer, published new guidelines for wallets, SDKs, and libraries in TON Ecosystem. In short, the goal is to make wallet apps more compatible with each other and prevent user accounts from disappearing during seed phrase import.

⚫️ The issue is not new. In TON, the same seed phrase can correspond to several different wallet contracts: V3R1, V3R2, V4R2, V5R1, and others. As a result, when users import a seed phrase from one app into another, they may end up seeing a different address or only one of the accounts linked to that seed phrase.

⚫️ Developers are now advised to use Wallet V5R1 by default when creating new wallets. When importing an existing seed phrase, wallet apps should show users all related accounts from V3R1 to V5R1, even if some of them have a zero balance.

⚫️ There is also a separate section on seed phrases. Historically, TON wallets have shown users a 24-word recovery phrase when creating a wallet. Now the recommended approach is shifting toward greater compatibility with other blockchains: new wallets are advised to display 12-word phrases by default. The goal is simple — to reduce confusion during imports and gradually move TON wallets toward a more unified standard.

⚫️ Earlier, the community spotted Gram Wallet — a standalone TON wallet from the MyTonWallet team. It briefly appeared in the TON Connect list and app stores, then suddenly disappeared. We can cautiously assume that wallet unification and the Gram Wallet release may be part of the same process, with the official launch likely to happen by the end of the third week of June. That is when the transition period for renaming TON to Gram is expected to end.

@thedailyton

🍌 What’s really going on with the TON rename?

⚫️ By the end of June, most of the TON ecosystem is expected to switch to the new GRAM ticker. This is the fourth step of MTONGA, and exchanges are handling the rename alongside ecosystem projects. That is the reason why TON pairs will be temporarily taken off and later brought back under the new name.

⚫️ The move has sparked debate in the community. At first glance, it really does look strange: if this is just a name change, why can’t exchanges simply replace TON with GRAM in the interface? Why delist old pairs, close futures positions, cancel orders, and relaunch trading?

⚫️ The issue is that, on an exchange, a ticker is not just the name shown in a trading pair. It is tied to futures, margin, loans, Earn products, trading bots, deposits, withdrawals, APIs, and internal accounting. That is why transitions like this are usually handled by shutting down the old markets and cancelling open orders.

⚫️ Polygon went through a similar process in 2024, when MATIC was migrated to POL. As with TON, Binance and Bybit also paused trading in the old pairs for several days, while OKX chose a smoother path: it listed POL first and only removed MATIC afterward. In both cases, the chart history did not carry over.

⚫️ The logic is the same with TON and GRAM. The difference is that this transition will likely have a real market impact. Before GRAM launches, the market will effectively be reset: old orders will be cancelled, some futures positions will be force-closed, and the new pairs will likely open with blank charts. So the next few weeks may end up being more interesting than the rebrand itself.

@thedailyton

📒 Essential The Daily TON reads for getting into TON

The Daily TON has been covering TON for more than four years. Over that time, we’ve built up a large library of materials: guides, explainers, deep dives, and posts you can come back to whenever you need them.

⚫️ For newcomers to the ecosystem, we have #howtoton — an educational series covering the basics:

— What is TON, Web3, and why are we all here?
— How to set up your first TON wallet?
— How to buy TON and why you need it?
— What is a TON address and what is TON DNS for?
— Why create multiple TON wallets?
— How to properly analyze a token before purchasing it?
— Where to store crypto assets and what is a “cold wallet”?
— What are OTC deals and how does over-the-counter trading work?
— What is a «Smart Contract Audit» and why is it important?
— What is liquidity provision and how can you profit from it?
— What should beginners know about liquidations?
— Beginner's guide to Telegram Gifts: what are they, anyway?

👁 Besides #howtoton, you can also use our other hashtags to navigate the channel:

— #antiscam brings together posts about staying safe online and avoiding common scam tactics.
— In #metrics, we explain how to analyze a token before buying it.
— In #gifts, we break down Telegram Gifts and their value for users.
— #opinion is where we collect our more subjective pieces on the state of TON and where the ecosystem could go next.

⚫️ In addition, we at The Daily TON have also published many other pieces that are still relevant today:

— Jettons on TON
— Bridges on TON: Part 1 and Part 2
— Commissions on TON. Part 1 and Part 2
— Who are validators and nominators?
— How do liquidity providers make money?
— What do beginners need to understand about APY?
— Multi-chain wallets with TON support: Part 1 and Part 2
— What are RWA (real world assets)?
— What is a lending protocol?
— How does liquid staking work?
— What are oracles?
— What is ZK?
— A brief overview of the main versions of TON wallets
— How to clearly explain custodial vs. non-custodial?
— How to sell NFTs without royalties and fees?
— How do DEX differ from CEX?
— How anonymous is the blockchain
— What is TON Connect for?
— What are gasless transactions for?
— How does the TON Sites technology work?
— How TON addresses work and why they have multiple forms?
— Payment Network: what is it and why is it needed?
— Analytics platforms for every use case
— What's difference between on-chain and off-chain?

⚫️ Given the current mood in the ecosystem, it’s also a good time to revisit our opinion series on how TON could move forward:

— Opinion 1: The Carrot.
— Opinion 2: Onboarding.
— Opinion 3: "Code Red”.
— Opinion 4: Transparency.
— Opinion 5: USP.

⚫️ Developers may also find this selection useful:

— Tolk becomes the primary language in TON
— What's inside Cocoon?
— Why does TON need a new node?
— Why is it so hard to make things simple for developers?
— EVM vs non-EVM
— Why was Acton created?

⚫️ We also have a few long-read articles:

— TON Blockchain: Three years later, a story of resilience and reinvention
— The main feature of TON: sharding in simple terms
— What a regular person can use crypto for: TON case study

Enjoy reading!

@thedailyton

🍌 JUST IN: The official Toncoin channel has been renamed to Gram of TON. The English-language channel has also received the username @gram.

📈 A memecoin starts with DexScreener

⚫️ If you’ve ever traded memecoins, chances are you’ve had DexScreener open. For on-chain traders, it has long been one of the go-to tools for tracking the market: you can quickly check a token’s chart, trading volume, liquidity, recent trades, and new pairs across different networks. TON is there too, by the way.

⚫️ But DexScreener is not just for traders. For memecoin creators, it has become something close to a gold standard. Want your token to be taken seriously? Then you need to update the token info: add a banner, a description, and links to your socials.

⚫️ That costs $300. By crypto standards, it is not a huge amount, but in memecoin culture it works almost like a basic credibility check. If a project is not willing to pay for a proper DexScreener listing, traders immediately start wondering: is this token even worth watching?

⚫️ By the way, for teams launching tokens on TON, x1000 has announced a promo: projects that launch on Uranus and meet three conditions will get a free DexScreener page update. More details are available in the project’s channel.

@thedailyton

🏆 Polymarket comes to TON

⚫️ Over the past couple of years, prediction markets have become one of the most accessible crypto products for a broader audience. You do not need to study charts, listings, or keep asking why a token is going up in the first place — there is an event, a set of possible outcomes, and a price that shows how the market estimates each outcome’s probability.

⚫️ Now that experience has become available inside Telegram too. Predict with Polymarket has just launched, letting users make predictions on everything from sports and crypto to politics and culture.

⚫️ What makes it especially relevant for our ecosystem is that Predict with Polymarket works with USDT on TON. No separate wallet, no bridges, no manual asset transfers between networks: you simply need to connect a TON wallet, top up your balance, and open a position. At the same time, users get access to Polymarket’s existing liquidity, including active markets and real trading volume.

⚫️ Another important point: the app takes care of the technical side. All the cross-chain magic happens under the hood, so the user does not have to deal with it directly.

🖊 For our ecosystem, this is a good example of how crypto products in Telegram should feel: the blockchain runs in the background and does not force the user to figure out the technical details.

⚫️ Overall, we recommend opening @ipredict, trying it for yourself, and seeing how it works. Especially now that the FIFA World Cup has already started, and match markets are already available in the app.

Looks like we may have a candidate for an unofficial next step in MTONGA.

@thedailyton