TON (The Open Network) has transformed from silence to explosion at an astonishing speed

In the tumultuous landscape of cryptocurrencies, few projects have captured attention and sparked as much discussion as The Open Network (TON). After two years of nearly complete silence, TON has burst onto the scene with an astonishing speed, quickly establishing a strong presence within the crypto community.

Levering off Telegram’s hundreds of millions of users, and with a narrative tension built on a gamified ecology, the robot economy, Stars payment system, and official voice, one might think that TON is invincible.

However, as we confront the reality of coin price fluctuations, market value declines, and decreasing activity, a closer inspection reveals some deep-seated structural problems with TON:

* Extremely concentrated chips: widening the rift between whales and retail investors

* A homogeneous ecology: lacking in-depth development of emerging tracks

* Weak infrastructure: affecting the efficiency of developer productivity

This article will systematically sort out TON’s chip distribution, token economy, user and capital flow, development ecology and TAC architecture, and try to answer a core question: Does TON’s short-term prosperity have the structure to support its long-term value?

A glance at the gloomy data: Is the bleakness of the capital markets transferring to the blockchain world?

TON is a project that did not have a smooth start. From the beginning, it was burdened with structural problems such as huge chip concentration and historical miners' lock-up, and now it is trying to reshape itself with these "sunk costs". We can get a glimpse of the true picture of its ecological development from its chip structure, token trend and capital flow.

We can get a glimpse of the true picture of its ecological development from its chip structure, token trend and capital flow.

Zoom in: What does the fabric of TON's chips look like?

The assets of the address marked as "TON Believers Fund" are confirmed to be frozen until October 12, 2025. Data shows that a total of 1,317 mTON (accounting for about 52%) are locked. In order to stabilize the selling pressure, the APY given to these frozen assets is as high as 7.176%;

Due to the suspension and being taken over by the development team, in June 2020, 98.55% of the total supply of TON can be used for mining until the mining ends on June 28, 2022, which means that most of the tokens are in the hands of early miners. The TON project has launched a discounted bulk purchase service for tokens from early miners. At the same time, if whales lock tokens for a long time (4 years), they can get 6-7% APY;

Whales on TON are frozen/inactive miners: According to data from into the block, there are 12 whale addresses that own more than 1% of the total supply, of which 6 are low-activity addresses (addresses with less than 300 transactions in their lifetime). According to the community TON vote, the whale addresses marked as "frozen" are inactive early miner addresses, which can be seen in https://tontech.io/stats/#/early-miners. There are 171 addresses in total, locking 1081m of TON;

The assets of the address marked as "TON Believers Fund" are confirmed to be frozen until October 12, 2025. Data shows that a total of 1,317 mTON (accounting for about 52%) are locked. In order to stabilize the selling pressure, the APY given to these frozen assets is as high as 7.176%;

TON chips are severely unevenly distributed

As the role of blockchain technology in revolutionizing various industries becomes increasingly apparent, interest in cryptocurrencies and the tokens that underpin them has reached new highs. Among the burgeoning class of cryptocurrencies, TON (The Open Network) has managed to carve out a unique presence with its distinctive features and narrative.

Recently, there has been a surge in discussion regarding the distribution of TON chips, raising concerns about the potential for imbalances and their implications for the long-term health of the token economy.

According to Addresses by holdings data, there are currently about 123m addresses holding TON, most of which (122.54m) still only hold less than 10 TONs. Among them, those holding more than 100K TONs were all 500+ before March 2024, and slowly climbed after March, reaching a peak of 1.3K in August 2024. However, the latest data shows that the number of large holders has decreased as the popularity of TON has