TON Social Buzz Explodes 6x in an Hour: Centralization Suddenly Looks Bullish?

Toncoin (TON) has rallied significantly this week after Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed that his company will replace the TON Foundation, assume the role of the largest validator, and reduce fees by roughly six times. The price moved from $1.30 on May 3 to around $2.50 in a span of three days. In fact, TON was up by more than 30% in the past 24 hours alone.

At the same time, the crypto asset recorded a rapid surge in social chatter.

TON Chatter Goes Vertical

On-chain analytics platform Santiment found that social activity spiked, as mentions reached 91 in a four-hour window on May 5th, about six times higher than usual, and stayed high across several windows. The major driver behind the move is Telegram assuming direct control over validation and protocol direction.

Santiment stated that while a similar centralization step by Arbitrum recently triggered governance concerns, Telegram’s move is being received positively despite following a comparable pattern.

On Monday, Durov took to X to reveal that fees on TON have been reduced by about six times and are now close to zero. He also stated that Telegram will become its largest validator. The next step includes introducing new developer tools and rolling out performance upgrades to strengthen the network.

The ton.org website now shows a simple holding page that reads,

Previous Upgrades

This latest move follows through on an announcement made last month by Durov, who had said TON would soon transition toward fully fee-less transactions. He had then revealed that fees would remain fixed regardless of network load.

Previously, the network rolled out a major core consensus upgrade (Catchain 2.0) on April 10 that reduced transaction finality from around ten seconds to about one second using a revised consensus mechanism, which enabled faster confirmations. The update also increased block production, which impacted validator rewards and adjusted staking dynamics, thereby leading to a higher annual inflation rate.

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