- Back to menuPrices
- Back to menuResearch
- Back to menuConsensus
- Back to menu
- Back to menu
- Back to menu
- Back to menuWebinars & Events
Apps on the TON Blockchain Have Become Extremely Popular. Is It Sustainable?
This year, games on TON have taken off, garnering hundreds of millions of users in a few months. TON Foundation’s Alena Shmalko and Jack Booth share their insights on how TON, after Telegram had run-ins with the SEC, got here.
ABOUT
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
The Open Network, aka TON, has been on a tear since late February. TVL has skyrocketed 34x since the beginning of the year, reaching over $750 million as of the time of recording. The price of TON has more than tripled from about $2 to $7, and daily active addresses recently exceeded those of Ethereum in May and June. Games with fun names like Hamster Kombat and Catizen are gaining traction, and Pantera Capital, an OG crypto investor, is making its largest investments yet in TON.
In this episode, Alena Shmalko and Jack Booth from the TON Foundation discuss how TON has managed to garner this traction, especially after a rocky start when the SEC went after the original founder, Telegram.
Show highlights:
- Alena’s and Jack’s backgrounds and how they ended up at TON
- How TON evolved from its origins with Telegram to its current status, and how it began getting traction this year, according to Jack
- How The Open League helped TON grow its TVL and other important metrics
- How Telegram's collaboration with TON has evolved through time and how much they work together
- Whether there are plans for TON to integrate with apps beyond Telegram
- What in TON’s architecture allows it to be extremely scalable
- The mechanics of Notcoin and why it has been so successful
- Whether the rise of games like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat can be sustainable
- The importance of USDT in Ton
- When might a Bitcoin trustless bridge be deployed and why it could be significant
- Whether TON is being used by criminals and what could be done to combat it
- What strategies will lead TON to have $1 billion in TVL by the end of the year
Visit Unchained for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com
Thank you to our sponsors!
Guests:
- Alena Shmalko, Ecosystem Lead at the TON Foundation
- Jack Booth, Director of Marketing at the TON Foundation
Links
- Previous coverage on Unchained of TON:
- undefined
Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk.
HOST
Laura Shin is a crypto journalist, host of the Unchained podcast, and author of “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (Public Affairs, 2022). Formerly a senior editor at Forbes, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, and her podcasts and videos have had more than 15 million downloads and views. Shin has spoken about cryptocurrency at places such as TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University and the Oslo Freedom Forum.
She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors from Stanford University and has a master of arts from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She lives in New York City.

EPISODES
THE MINING POD: The Trumps Mine BTC Now: Inside American Bitcoin w/ Matt Prusak
Hut 8 is splitting its mining business into a new subsidiary, American Bitcoin, with backing from Eric Trump and Dona...
Apr 8, 2025
BITCOIN SEASON 2: Inside Bitcoin’s Darknet Markets
We’re exploring darknet markets, from their history with the Silk Road to how they function today. Bitcoin vs. Monero...
Apr 5, 2025
THE MINING POD: Hut 8’s Trump-Backed American Bitcoin, Galaxy’s $4.5B CoreWeave Deal, Tariff Impact on Bitcoin Miners
Two stories dominated headlines this week, and they both have to do with Trump: Hut 8 launches a new Trump-back subsi...
Apr 4, 2025
BITCOIN SEASON 2: Julian Assange’s Brother, Gabriel Shipton on Wikileaks & BTC
Julian Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton and Brian Laughlin announce Project Spartacus - an initiative to preserve th...
Apr 2, 2025

The Mining Pod
Feb 10, 2025

CoinDesk Podcast Network
The top stories and best shows in the blockchain world, delivered daily from the team at CoinDesk.
Dec 20, 2023

Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
Tune in as CoinDesk runs down daily action in bitcoin markets and some of the most important recent industry development.
Dec 19, 2023

Unchained
Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto by former Forbes senior editor Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians.
Dec 18, 2023