Toncoin surges 36% as Telegram replaces TON Foundation and slashes fees

The market is repricing TON as a Telegram-led ecosystem again, not just a foundation-run chain with a messaging app narrative attached.

What to know:

• Toncoin has surged more than 36% in 24 hours, outperforming the broader market.
• Telegram's founder Pavel Durov said that Telegram would replace the TON Foundation as the chain’s main driving force.
• He added that transaction fees on TON's parent blockchain, The Open Network, had fallen nearly to zero.

Toncoin (TON) is rallying as messaging app Telegram takes a more direct role in the token's parent network and pushes for lower transaction costs, a shift that seems to be driving the move.

TON has rallied more than 36% in the past 24 hours, hitting a four-month high of $1.80, according to data from CoinDesk. It is the native token of The Open Network, a Layer 1 blockchain designed to integrate crypto payments and applications within the Telegram messaging platform.

The bullish sentiment has spread across the Telegram-linked ecosystem, with Notcoin gaining nearly 26%, Dogs rising more than 100%, and several smaller TON-based tokens posting even larger daily moves.

The market seems to be reacting to Telegram's decision to replace the Ton Foundation as the driving force behind TON.

In an X post on Monday, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that the messaging platform would become TON's largest validator and take over as the driving force behind the ecosystem, with new developer tools, performance upgrades, and a refreshed ton.org expected within two to three weeks.

A validator is a specialized node or participant responsible for verifying transactions, ensuring network security, and maintaining the accuracy of a blockchain.

Becoming the largest validator is indicative of Telegram's willingness to put its own weight behind the chain’s security and direction. This likely reduces one of TON’s biggest overhangs, namely the gap between the Telegram narrative and TON Foundation's execution.

The story doesn't end there. In the same X post, Durov said TON fees have fallen sixfold to near zero, after previously announcing that transaction costs would drop to 0.00039 TON, or about $0.0005, with most transactions eventually moving toward a fee-less model.

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

Near-zero transaction costs matter most for the kinds of products Telegram can actually distribute, such as on-chain tips, games, bot payments, mini-app transactions, collectibles, and small retail transfers.

A fee that looks irrelevant to a DeFi whale can still kill a consumer app if users are moving cents or dollars at a time. Fixed, tiny costs make TON more usable for high-frequency, low-value activity, broadening its appeal as a blockchain among existing users.

Various tracking sites put Telegram's estimated monthly users at as much as one billion, though the company has not publicly claimed or denied those figures.

But TON's fundamentals have failed to catch up to that hype in recent years. DefiLlama data shows TON captures just over $69 million in locked value across its decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, far below its 2024 highs near $800 million. Daily chain fees sit around $3,600, DEX volume around $29 million, and app revenue near $134,000.

Data from Tonstat shows shows daily active wallet activity on TON at just under 50,000, coming from around 136,000 unique wallets. That compares with roughly 700,000 daily activities across more than 2.2 million wallets during August and September 2024, according to the data.

More For You

Ripple said April's $285 million Drift breach revealed a new pattern of long-cycle social engineering replacing traditional smart contract exploits.

What to know:

• Ripple is sharing its internal intelligence on North Korean threat actors with the Crypto ISAC to help crypto firms spot coordinated infiltration campaigns.
• Recent attacks like the Drift and Kelp exploits relied on long-term social engineering and malware, not smart contract bugs, allowing North Korean operatives to steal more than...

Consensus Miami Day 1: Sights and sounds

10 minutes ago

CoinDesk 20 performance update: index jumps 1.3% as all constituents trade higher

27 minutes ago

State Street and Galaxy launch tokenized fund to bring cash management onchain

33 minutes ago

K Wave Media scraps massive bitcoin treasury plan to redirect $485 million to AI

39 minutes ago

Bitcoin absorbed $200 million profit-taking at $80,000 in a bullish sign for BTC

43 minutes ago

Standard Chartered expands further into crypto with stake in GSR at $1 billion valuation

1 hour ago

Coinbase cuts 14% of staff as AI reshapes how crypto companies operate

2 hours ago

Crypto platform Bullish to buy Equiniti for $4.2 billion, building tokenized securities infrastructure

3 hours ago

Bitcoin crosses $81,000, ETH, SOL, DOGE steady as options desks bid on further price jump

7 hours ago

Bitcoin used to hate inflation. Now it might be the opposite

6 hours ago

Ripple to share North Korean threat intelligence with crypto firms

7 hours ago

U.S. voters don't trust Trump administration to oversee crypto sector, CoinDesk poll finds

May 3, 2026