Telegram Replaces TON Foundation as Lead, Toncoin Up 30%

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, announced that his company will replace the TON Foundation as the primary driving force behind The Open Network blockchain and become its largest validator, sparking a more than 30 percent surge in Toncoin's price.

In a post on X dated May 4, 2026, Durov stated, "Next step Telegram replaces the TON Foundation as the driving force behind TON and becomes its largest validator. The focus shifts to tech superiority. New ton.org, new dev tools, new performance upgrades." The announcement prompted Toncoin to climb from $1.37 to a high of $1.84 within 24 hours, boosting its market capitalization to $4.5 billion. Trading volume soared more than 600 percent to over $630 million during the same period.

The move aligns with recent technical enhancements on TON. Transaction fees have fallen sixfold to nearly zero, improving usability for microtransactions and high-frequency applications. Earlier upgrades, including a TON v4 sharding implementation in March 2026 and a consensus mechanism update in April, have increased network speed tenfold, enabling over 100,000 transactions per second and subsecond finality. In the first quarter of 2026, TON...