Telegram becomes TON’s largest validator; Toncoin doubles

Telegram has taken over from the TON Foundation as The Open Network’s main operator and staked about 2.2 million TON to become the chain’s largest validator. Founder Pavel Durov confirmed the change as the third stage of his “Make TON Great Again” program.

Toncoin’s market price rose more than 100% after the announcement. The Telegram account controlling the validator holds roughly 2.2 million TON, according to on-chain data.

The Open Network was developed initially by engineers at Telegram before it was released as an open-source project. Telegram’s messaging app has about one billion users worldwide.

Recent protocol upgrades include the Catchain 2.0 update. Block times shortened from about 2.5 seconds to roughly 400 milliseconds, and finality fell from about ten seconds to about one second. Transaction fees have declined to roughly $0.0005 each, and the network is capable of processing more than 100,000 transactions per second.

Staking yields on the network are currently near 15% annually. Those yields, combined with the large validator stake, are observable features of the network’s current configuration.

Alexander Tobol, chief technology officer at Wallet in Telegram, said the validator role reflects deeper operational integration between Telegram and TON and highlighted potential for in-app services to use the chain. Denis Vasin, founder of Storm Trade, noted the recent technical metrics match the performance expectations for a high-throughput Layer-1 network.

Telegram previously sold Toncoin under four-year vesting schedules in earlier distributions. On-chain transfers and future token flows will be visible publicly as trading and staking activity continues.

Trading and network metrics over the coming weeks should indicate whether on-chain transaction volumes and active wallet counts change following Telegram’s validator status and the protocol upgrades.