Toncoin (TON) is still on a growth track despite the arrest of Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov at the end of August. Toncoin also showed resilience after two episodes of network outage during the Dogs (DOGS) token distribution.
Toncoin (TON) showed resilience in building up its user base, growing to more than 7M active monthly users. It still lags behind the activity of Base, which has expanded to more than 15M monthly active users.
Toncoin managed to flip Arbitrum, which peaked at 9.8M monthly active users but is now down to a count of only 2.9M. Toncoin established itself as a separate layer-1, becoming one of the relatively successful independent networks. Toncoin also expanded despite not being compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, thus being cut off from Ethereum users and liquidity inflows.
The inflow of users now puts Toncoin in a similar position to Solana at the beginning of 2024. Solana now hosts more than 40M monthly active users, mostly due to the effect of the meme coin mania.
What drives Toncoin adoption
Toncoin has several use cases that promise to bring in and retain users. Tap-to-earn games, with their Web2 features and gameplay, continue to stay highly active. A wide social network of social media groups organizes appealing daily challenges.
The biggest immediate effect came from new token holders when receiving their DOGS allocation. The DOGS effect was also felt in daily active wallets, which expanded beyond 700K daily on average.
The Toncoin community hinges on a handful of leading Telegram groups, including the Hamster Kombat announcements group, TapSwap, as well as the DOGS community. Other tap-to-earn games are also boosting the inflow of users. As a baseline, Telegram advertising that uses Toncoin has been boosting platform activity since March.
The effect of the DOGS token launch lifted the number of new users in just days. Additionally, returning users also got a boost, lifting Toncoin activity to its highest level so far. The Toncoin network is now in expectation of its second major airdrop for Hamster Kombat.
Hamster Kombat may gain its first listings from September 26. In the weeks leading up to the airdrop, the project also had a crackdown on Sybill users with multiple wallets. Bots and Sybill users also boosted the final active user count, though not in a positive way.
More than 50% of Hamster Kombat point farming accounts were reset to zero. The rest may be eligible for an even larger airdrop of tokens in the coming weeks. The Hamster Kombat game may also compete with meme tokens, bringing in its sizable community from Telegram. The Toncoin channel has more than 54M subscribers, expecting to turn some into crypto traders and investors.
Toncoin struggles to regain value locked
Despite on-chain activity and wallet growth, Toncoin saw significant outflows of value.
The most significant outflow happened on August 26, when more than $3.13M in value flowed out of TON decentralized trading pools.
Protocols on Toncoin also shed value in the past month due to the shrinking liquidity and the slide in TON market prices. At the same time, the network continued to get inflows from native USDT in addition to bridged USDT. Native Tether stablecoins expanded to more than 730M, extending the growth since the asset was first introduced on April 19. Since July, native Toncoin USDT is also accepted on Binance.
Toncoin now carries 340.7M in value locked, down from close to $900M near the project’s peak performance. As a DeFi protocol, Toncoin lags behind, as its network cannot easily host DeFi app versions of Uniswap or Aave. Instead, Toncoin relies on native DEXs and protocols.
TON, the project’s native token, is also on the edge of leaving the top 10 of crypto assets. TON broke down under $5 and a market cap at $12.8B, hovering just above the valuation of Cardano (ADA). TON managed to recover to $5.06, just days after a trading glitch caused additional confusion with a price quote of $0.33.
Despite the recent price drop, TON remains a popular token and even a target of hackers. Recently, a Bybit account on X was hijacked, displaying a malicious link for a fake TON airdrop.
Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva
