The Best Performing Blockchain of 2024: TON – The Open Network

TON is a layer 1 smart contract network specializing in financial applications. Telegram co-founder started it as a Proof-of-Work blockchain but later migrated to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm. The network also provides web3 services like TON Storage, TON Domain, and TON Proxy.   

Toncoin is the native token of the ecosystem and is used for transaction fees, staking, and governance. Validators and stakers receive TON rewards for securing the network, and holders submit improvement proposals through an onchain governance platform.  

Toncoin has been the best-performing layer 1 token in 2024, with a price performance of 160%, from $2.37 at the beginning of the year to $6.24 today. So, let us briefly look at what is behind this price action and the onchain fundamentals of the network.  

Transaction volume and active addresses are the two most important onchain metrics for any blockchain protocol. As seen in the above chart, TON daily transactions were at 100,000, and daily active addresses were at 12,600 at the beginning of the year, and they grew by 7.81X and 26.13X, to 881,000 and 341,900. 

This explosive growth can be attributed to several factors, such as the rise of memecoins and gaming projects in the TON ecosystem, as well as its strong integration with the existing user base of the Telegram messaging application. In these two metrics, compared to the top 20 layer 1 blockchains in the same period, TON has increased from number 17 and 18 to under 10.   

Other key metrics to track would be TVL and fees generated by the network. TON TVL was just $13.5 million at the beginning of the year; today, it is at $566 million, a growth of 40X. Similarly, network fees have grown from $5.7k to $57.4k, a 9X increase resulting from new decentralized applications going live and key industry partnerships. Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, only recently started issuing USDT on TON, and as of today, they have a total of $730 million worth of USDT on the TON blockchain.  

Despite these growing metrics, TON blockchain has a long way to go in maintaining its position in the top 10 assets by market capitalization. More USDT is issued on other layer 1 blockchain like Tron, Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche. Many other layer 1 blockchains process millions of daily transactions and have much more daily active addresses than TON. Similarly, there is a significant difference in TVL and DEX trading volume if compared with BNB, Solana, and Avalanche. Still, TON could bring true adoption because of its close integration with Telegram, which has nearly one billion active users.