Journalist
Tanzeel Akhtar
Journalist
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By Tanzeel Akhtar
With Telegram now boasting more than a billion users globally, few blockchain ecosystems have a clearer distribution advantage than TON. Originally conceived as Telegram’s native blockchain, TON has quietly evolved into one of the most ambitious attempts to embed Web3 infrastructure directly into a mainstream consumer platform.
In an interview with Cryptonews, Max Crown, President and CEO of the TON Foundation, explains why TON has succeeded where others have struggled — and how its consumer-first design, social NFTs and institutional traction are shaping its next phase of growth.
Built for Scale From Day One
According to Crown, TON’s core advantage lies in its original design philosophy.
“Most blockchains were built for crypto-native experimentation first and only later tried to retrofit themselves into consumer platforms,” he said. “TON took the opposite approach.”
From its inception, TON was engineered for internet-scale usage — prioritising fast finality, low latency and predictable costs. That technical foundation, Crown argues, shaped the ecosystem’s culture.
“The developer culture optimised for usability and speed rather than complexity or financial engineering,” he said. “Applications on TON feel much closer to mainstream mobile apps than traditional Web3 products — intuitive, social and instant.”
Crucially, that alignment extends beyond infrastructure. TON’s blockchain, developer community, application layer and Telegram integration all pull in the same direction, turning distribution into a native feature rather than a marketing challenge.
“Other ecosystems tried to turn consumer apps into Web3 front ends after the fact,” Crown said. “TON succeeded because it was built specifically to become the Web3 infrastructure inside a consumer app.”
Rethinking Crypto Onboarding
For much of the industry, onboarding remains Web3’s Achilles’ heel. Wallets, seed phrases and gas fees continue to alienate mainstream users — a problem TON set out to eliminate.
“Most Web3 onboarding breaks down because it asks users to understand crypto before they experience value,” Crown said. “TON flips that model entirely.”
With TON embedded inside Telegram, user acquisition happens organically. Discovery begins in chats, communities or mini-apps, allowing users to interact with games, digital gifts or payments with a single tap.
In practice, “zero-friction” onboarding means two things: a deeply integrated wallet experience and abstraction of crypto’s most intimidating mechanics.
“The TON wallet lives inside Telegram,” Crown explains. “Payments, assets and interactions feel like features of the app — not separate crypto workflows.”
As a result, onboarding becomes almost invisible. “In many cases, users don’t even realise they’ve onboarded to crypto at all,” he said. “They’re just chatting, gifting or paying.”
NFTs as Social Objects, Not Speculative Assets
TON’s Telegram Gifts-to-NFT feature — which saw a reported $12 million sell-out tied to Snoop Dogg — marked a turning point in how NFTs could function at scale.
For Crown, the significance lies in reframing NFTs away from speculation.
“On TON, NFTs evolve as social and cultural objects first — and only secondarily as financial instruments,” he said.
Rather than existing in isolated marketplaces, NFTs on TON live inside conversations, fandoms and creator economies. They function as gifts, badges and access keys — closer to digital fashion or emojis than speculative collectibles.
“Financialisation doesn’t disappear,” Crown said. “But it becomes a layer on top of meaning and utility, not the starting point.” That shift, he believes, is key to mainstream adoption.
Why Institutions Are Paying Attention
TON’s consumer traction is increasingly mirrored by institutional interest. More than $400 million in Toncoin has reportedly been purchased by institutional investors this year.
Crown attributes this to a combination of network maturity, visible usage and improving infrastructure.
“TON today looks very different from even a year ago,” he said. “The network is stable at scale, and the surrounding ecosystem — custody, compliance, liquidity — is finally institutional-grade.”
Telegram’s embedded distribution model is also a differentiator. “TON isn’t trying to acquire users the hard way,” Crown said. “It’s embedded in a platform people already use every day. That asymmetry matters to long-term capital.”
Institutional demand, however, hasn’t altered TON’s direction.
“We’re not optimising for institutions at the expense of users,” he said. “What it does influence is discipline — higher standards around security, resilience and transparency.”
Navigating U.S. Expansion and Regulation
As TON expands its footprint in the U.S., regulatory complexity remains a challenge. Crown says the environment is improving, even if uncertainty persists.
“The U.S. is materially more navigable than it was a year ago,” he said. “The rules of the road are becoming more predictable.”
Crown is careful to distinguish between protocol and application-level regulation.
“TON is a decentralised blockchain — it’s a technology layer, not a regulated financial intermediary,” he said.
To support compliant activity, TON works with blockchain intelligence firms such as TRM Labs, Elliptic and Chainalysis, enabling developers to meet sanctions screening and transaction monitoring requirements where necessary.
“The goal is to keep the base layer open and neutral,” Crown said, “while enabling compliant products at the application layer.”
A Leadership Shift Focused on Execution
Crown’s recent appointment as both President and CEO reflects TON’s transition into a more operationally rigorous phase. “The challenge wasn’t vision — it was coordination,” he said.
Combining the roles tightens decision-making and aligns strategy with execution as the ecosystem scales. “We’re entering a phase where fundamentals matter more than experimentation for its own sake,” Crown said, pointing to reliability at scale, developer experience and seamless onboarding as priorities.
Lessons From MoonPay
Before TON, Crown co-founded MoonPay, a consumer-facing crypto payments platform — an experience that continues to shape his approach.
“The biggest lesson is that distribution and frictionless onboarding matter more than almost anything else,” he said.
At MoonPay, success came from abstracting complexity and emulating familiar consumer experiences. “Users didn’t want to learn how crypto worked — they just wanted it to work,” Crown said.
That principle now underpins TON’s strategy: make the blockchain layer invisible.
“If the experience feels intuitive and reliable, adoption follows.”
Competing With Ethereum and Solana
As other Layer-1s pursue mass adoption, Crown is clear about TON’s “unfair advantage”.
“TON is the only major chain with a direct path into a mainstream product people open every day: Telegram,” he said.
While Ethereum excels in composability and Solana in performance, TON’s value proposition is distribution. “If you want the fastest path from ‘I shipped’ to ‘millions of real users,’ TON is in a category of its own,” Crown said.
With improved developer tooling and plug-and-play primitives on the roadmap, TON is positioning itself as the easiest bridge from Web2 to Web3.
“The opportunity is simple,” Crown said. “Telegram has a global, Web-willing audience. TON is where the next viral consumer crypto product can feel like a normal app — and scale like one.”
