TON Surges 36% as Telegram ‘Replaces’ TON Foundation

In brief

• Pavel Durov announced Telegram’s “next step” will see it replace the TON Foundation and become the network's largest validator, with transaction fees slashed sixfold to near-zero.
• TON meme coins surged alongside the network’s native token, with $DOGS and $UTYA posting gains of over 100% and 140%, respectively, in the last 24 hours.
• Analysts see a narrative-driven token spike, with a post-upgrade pullback likely.

Toncoin jumped by 36% after the platform’s founder, Pavel Durov, announced Telegram’s “next step” would see it assume control of The Open Network, replacing the TON Foundation, slashing fees to near-zero, and installing itself as the blockchain's largest validator.

“The focus shifts to tech superiority. New ton.org, new dev tools, new performance upgrades. Timeline: 2-3 weeks,” Durov tweeted Tuesday.

Fees in TON have dropped 6× — to nearly zero.

Next step — Telegram replaces the TON Foundation as the driving force behind TON and becomes its largest validator.

The focus shifts to tech superiority.

New https://t.co/Me0w683UiK, new dev tools, new performance upgrades.…

— Pavel Durov (@durov) May 4, 2026

The TON token was trading at $1.86 at press time, according to CoinGecko data, up roughly 36% on the day but still more than 77% below its all-time high of $8.25, set in September 2024.

The ton.org domain now displays a holding page reading: "ton.org is now controlled by MTONGA. Expect changes soon."

Decrypt has reached out to the TON Foundation for further comment.

Illia Otychenko, Lead Analyst at CEX.IO, told Decrypt the rally fits a familiar pattern.

"Toncoin has a history of sharp rallies whenever Telegram increases its involvement or signals deeper integration, and this move fits that pattern," he said. "Right now, it looks more like an early-stage narrative-driven spike rather than a full fundamental repricing."

Otychenko flagged $2 as the key resistance level, a ceiling TON failed to break earlier this year, and warned that momentum indicators are flashing caution.

"The daily RSI has moved into overbought territory, which often precedes short-term corrections," he said. "A pullback around or shortly after the upgrade window is a realistic scenario, especially if traders start locking in profits after the news is fully priced in."

“There’s a fairly high probability of a pullback after the actual upgrade launch if TON maintains its sharp rise,” Ben Caselin, CMO at crypto exchange VALR, told Decrypt, noting that markets often “buy in on the announcement… and then lock in profits upon execution.”

He drew parallels to the Dencun upgrade on Ethereum, where fees dropped significantly, but price gains did not persist.

“Durov effectively designated Telegram as the network’s future driving force… and the market has already responded,” he echoed, adding that the real test will be whether near-zero fees translate into sustained growth in transactions, wallets, and Telegram-native use cases.

Similarly, Otychenko noted that lower fees can boost usage but may also erode direct value capture at the token level.

The analyst said that for long-term price appreciation, increased usage must translate into stronger reasons to hold or use Toncoin, or else the benefits of growth may not fully accrue to the token itself.

Meanwhile, TON meme coins ripped alongside the native token, with CoinGecko tweeting that the ecosystem’s combined meme coin market cap hit $156 million as the rally took hold.

$NOT posted double-digit gains, while $DOGS and $UTYA surged over 100% and 140%, respectively, over the past 24 hours.

TON memecoins hit a combined market cap of $156M as the ecosystem rallies alongside its native token.

Notable coins include $NOT, $DOGS, and $UTYA. pic.twitter.com/fSUk6W07A9

— CoinGecko (@coingecko) May 5, 2026

Legal woes, strategic pivot

French authorities lifted Durov’s travel ban last November after more than a year of legal restrictions following his August 2024 arrest in Paris, where he was charged with twelve counts including complicity in drug trafficking and failure to moderate illegal content on Telegram.

His passport was returned last March, a development that itself sent TON up 29%.

In October, he unveiled Cocoon, a decentralized AI compute network built on TON that pays GPU owners in Toncoin for powering private AI inference, positioning Telegram as a direct challenger to centralized cloud providers like AWS and Azure.

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