How TON Could Define the Future of Europe's Blockchain Through Everyday Use Cases As Bitcoin once again enters the investment spotlight following positive price movements, attention has once again turned to how digital currencies and blockchain will transform the future of consumerism. It appears that TON is already hard at work on solutions.
By Dmytro Spilka Edited by Jason Fell
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While Ethereum remains the world's most dominant blockchain and the cornerstone of many decentralized finance (DeFi) and smart contract innovations within Europe and beyond, it's still struggling to achieve mass adoption.
Despite around a decade of development, Ethereum's ecosystem still struggles with complex apps, high gas fees, and scalability issues, making its path to the mainstream a costly one for the average user.
However, an alternative vision for the future of blockchain technology driven by TON is already building momentum with the support of Telegram.
A look at TON and how it's driving blockchain adoption on Telegram
Having amassed more than 900 million global users, 27% of whom are based in Europe, Telegram has become the largest social platform in the cryptocurrency landscape, and TON is the only blockchain that's embedded into the messaging giant.
Rather than building decentralized applications (dApps) like Ethereum's network, TON has ambitions to infuse Web3 in its entirety into the user experience in a frictionless manner.
TON, or The Open Network, was created in 2018 as a means of integrating blockchain technology into Telegram. Fast forward to 2025, and the ecosystem's adoption levels have rapidly accelerated, thanks in part to Tether's decision to launch its USDT stablecoin on the chain.
March saw TON undergo a major wallet upgrade that added trading and staking to more than 100 million Telegram Wallet users, paving the way for an intuitive decentralized infrastructure that supports domains, storage, and privacy solutions in the form of TON DNS, TON Storage, and TON Proxy, respectively.
The true innovation behind The Open Network's mission centers on familiarity. TON's success will come in delivering Web3 experiences that have the familiar feel and usability of Web2.
With more than 150 million accounts already created on TON and an average of 2 million transactions on the network per day, we're already seeing momentum building for a revolutionary reimagining of blockchain.
The future of blockchain
TON has anticipated a cultural shift within the cryptocurrency landscape, where global trust in traditional platforms is being challenged while users are focusing their attention on self-custody ecosystems and interoperability.
Rather than selling an ecosystem, The Open Network simply focuses on providing users with the tools they already know how to use, with cryptocurrency naturally infused in the offering. Alongside Telegram Wallet, which is available to millions of users internationally, TON helps to transform crypto from speculative investments into usable assets inside chats, channels, games, and other P2P functions.
It's this ease of use and integration that allows TON to cater to the future of blockchain, opening the door to everyday use cases.
While it's difficult to know what the future of cryptocurrency holds, it's clear that entering the mainstream relies on the frictionless spending of digital assets.
The success of Web3 will depend on reclaiming the seamless UX of Web2, with streamlined integrations and aggregated products within a single interface.
For the many mini apps that TON supports, like Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and Catizen, many of its millions of users are unaware that they're even using a blockchain infrastructure, and this showcases the frictionless experiences leveraged by the network.
Tracy Jin's disruption ambitions
May saw TON gain the support of Tracy Jin, the chief operating officer at MEXC, a leading, internationally focused cryptocurrency exchange.
Having accumulated more than 10 years of fintech experience and previously holding executive roles at renowned firms like Bybit, Jin knows a thing or two about industry disruption. It's for this reason that MEXC's partnership with TON as part of a transformative $1 million (€850,000) crypto event has the potential to change the way we use blockchain.
Jin's expertise surrounds enhancing institutional-grade security, risk management, and trading efficiency throughout the cryptocurrency landscape. It's this acumen for innovation throughout different specialisms that's helped MEXC become a major force in crypto.
It's also why Jin's participation in introducing an €850,000 reward pool campaign focused on challenging established exchange revenue models in the cryptocurrency ecosystem is a big deal.
The campaign, TON Triumph, eliminates all trading fees on TON pairs while providing staking rewards that are up to 100 times more lucrative than typical yields.
TON Triumph underlines Jin's belief in the potential of The Open Network and is set to transform how users engage with emerging Layer-1 ecosystems in blockchain.
Could TON overtake Ethereum?
So, what does all this positive momentum mean for TON? According to current adoption rates, The Open Network could reach 2.6 million daily active users by 2026 and gain more than 10 million in 2027.
As recently as 2023, TON's user count was just 40,000. Such a rate of growth hasn't applied to Ethereum, which has remained stable with around 420,000 daily active accounts.
Solana's rise to over 5 million users makes for impressive reading, but it's important to note that the network's speculative nature and use of airdrops to build support have been a key driver of growth.
TON, on the flip side, has prioritized more sustainable growth models built on user-friendly interfaces and embedded habits like tipping, gaming, and payments. This more measured approach could transform how Europeans make micropayments both online and offline in the near future.
While this more measured approach to scaling means that we're unlikely to see TON become the world's biggest blockchain and overtake the likes of Ethereum and Solana in the next 12 months, it's clear that the network is focused on bridging the usability gaps between Web2 and Web3.
Should the network realize its growth ambitions and reach more users across embedded platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, it would bring transformative change to UX, mobile-first usability, and Telegram integrations for crypto spending.
If TON can naturalize micro-transactions, native monetization, and creator economies in the Web3 landscape, we could finally gain functionality for crypto beyond the confines of speculative investment. These benefits would especially improve payment flexibility throughout Europe, providing high-speed alternatives to transactions in nations using currencies other than the euro.
An ecosystem where cryptocurrency can be used in everyday use cases will help secure its path into mainstream adoption. TON has ambitions to make it happen.