A look at TON and Toncoin's explosive growth, from ad revenue sharing to Hamster Kombat

It might just be TON -7.47% summer.

The Open Network was initially called the Telegram Open Network and was launched by the messaging app popular within the crypto community, boasting over 900 million users. However, the blockchain drew ire from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, leading the open-source community to continue its development, with Telegram continuing to support the network.

In February, Telegram announced ad revenue sharing , which splits profits 50/50 with channel owners. Most importantly, though, the revenue is paid out in TON’s native token — toncoin — and facilitated through the network.

According to Telegram’s CEO, Telegram channels generate 1 trillion views a month, but at the time of the ad-sharing launch, only 10% of channels were monetized with ads. While content creators can cash out of the toncoin they earn, they can also use the token to reinvest in their channels by promoting or upgrading them. The idea behind the plan was to onboard major Telegram users into the TON ecosystem.

Tether also launched its USDT stablecoin on the network in April, granting TON users access to the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin. The launch proved successful, with the supply of TON on USDT already surpassing 500 million this past week, roughly two months after first starting on the blockchain.

The network has recently seen a surge of activity and users due to the popularity of Telegram-based crypto mini-games that utilize TON. "Notcoin," "Hamster Kombat" and "Catizen" are all examples of these tap-to-earn games that allow users to earn in-game currencies that can eventually get converted into real airdrops . There was a similar phenomenon with the " Tapos " game on Aptos, highlighting how strongly these clicker games can grip users who want to earn tokens.

But as TON has grown in popularity and adoption, toncoin has also soared. Toncoin is currently the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a market cap of $18 billion, more than doubling  since the start of the year. Similarly, TON’s  total value locked has surged, breaching $600 million earlier this month after reaching $300 million just three weeks earlier.

Many people are bullish on TON since it has such a wide user base to tap into and is easily integrated into the Telegram app. The crypto VC firm  Pantera Capital is already raising a second TON fund after it made its largest-ever investment in the network in May.

And we can see TON’s explosive growth in its usage metrics. The 7-day moving average of transactions on TON has risen from 645,000 at the start of the year to 5 million, and the 7-day moving average of active addresses has surged from 26,000 to over 340,000.

The trends of these charts have had ebbs and flows, but the general direction seems to be upwards. While it's still early to tell if this level of growth is sustainable, it's likely TON has reached a point where its activity will continue to be higher than levels before 2024.

This is an excerpt from  The Block's Data Insights newsletter . Dig into the numbers making up the industry’s most thought-provoking trends.