Can TON flip Solana and take over the blockchain’s popularity?

TON and Solana are firmly established among the top coins and tokens. Each has a thriving audience and well-known bot activity. Speculation is rising on whether TON can flip the position of SOL tokens. 

The Solana blockchain has gained significant support in the past and has the first-mover advantage. But the TON chain integrated with the Telegram chat app is also showing signs of growth and the potential to hold and move value. 

Alex Svanevik, the CEO of Nansen, recently speculated on the possibility of a new blockchain balance. 

Over time, newer blockchains can take over based on several measures, including active wallets. However, Ethereum has advantages over Solana due to its already established apps and liquidity. TON is using an older scaling solution based on shards. Regarding activity, TON got its biggest boost from the hype of bot trading. 

TON is on track to gain over Solana’s daily active users

Ethereum, Solana, and TON are in a similar range regarding daily active users. Ethereum’s use has fallen down to around 300K active daily users, due to some token activity moving to Layer 2 networks. 

Read: Solana price prediction 2024-2030: Is SOL a good investment?

TON marks around 500K active daily wallets, with 800K for Solana. This result could easily be reversed with a single event. Both chains are close together regarding activity, but Solana leads with more bot-driven transactions. 

Solana still carries over 75% of bot traffic, spearheaded by the leading Bonk Bot. The Banana Gun is still a leader in token sniping but lags behind larger trading bots. 

Solana also has the advantage of lower fees, and a recent update is making the network even faster for on-chain apps. TON is highly tailored to everyday users and has a native payment system, but for now, it offers slightly more expensive transactions, as high as $0.25 in some cases. While this is relatively low for DeFi usage, it may be prohibitive for building apps at scale.

The other enormous challenge to wider TON adoption is the blockchain’s regulatory status. TON carries USDT, which may not be available to EU-based traders after June 30. 

In the past few years, both TON and SOL have spent some time in a similar price range. SOL fell under $20 due to the fallout of FTX and the subsequent bear market. Yet TON will have a hard time rising up the charts due to its relatively high supply of 2.5B tokens.

TON pressured by Telegram culture

The good news for TON is that it inherited the Telegram user base. This was also bad news for the network, as the chat app has been tied to illegal crypto schemes and scams in the past. In the past few months, TON has shown significant growth in its DeFi projects, reaching an all-time high of value locked above $671M. Projects like DeDust grew by 465% in the last month, and most DeFi protocols on TON are expanding.

Also read: The Rise of Telegram-Integrated DeFi Platforms

The TON network aims to tap the highly active Telegram chat app, which remains one of the most successful crypto and social media crossovers. Bot activity is also key to generating significant, predictable fees.

Telegram culture also affects the creation of meme tokens, which diverge from Solana’s meme selection. TON meme tokens are harder to track and rely on a different selection of users. For now, TON invites cautious optimism, mostly due to the potential of the Telegram integration. Yet TON lags behind more established networks because of its reputation for degen activity and risk-taking.

A lot is on offer, though, like making cross-border payments instant for @telegram‘s 900M users and 11M $TON in incentives. Plus, who cannot be tempted by airdrops and games?

Currently, TON’s popularity also depends on NOT Coin, a newly launched asset that often defies the market’s direction. NOT traded at $0.014, still halfway to its all-time high of $0.03. NOT is also one of the TON assets with the deepest liquidity and highest stability.

Another advantage of TON is using native Tether (USDT). Telegram users also correspond to Tether’s requirement for a community-driven project, hence the focus on issuing more USDT for Telegram. Conversely, Tether stopped issuing new tokens for EOS and Algorand, citing a lack of community engagement.

Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva