TON Foundation veteran says push for wallet democratization ‘critical’ for Mini Apps ecosystem

Tied to Telegram’s massive user base, The Open Network (TON) quickly soared in popularity with the success of Telegram Mini Apps, including tap-to-earn games accessible on the messaging app. Such a case of success has influenced Asian messenger giant LINE to launch its own in-app dApps.However, TON has seen reduced activity since last year's peak, signified by a steady decline in network volume and native token Toncoin's market cap, which has dropped 70% to $7.3 billion from last April's $25 billion.During a one-on-one interview at the BUIDL 2025 conference in Hong Kong, Steve Yun, former president and current board member of TON Foundation, expressed confidence in TON's resilience despite ongoing challenges."The main decline happened when Pavel was arrested in France … the market recognized that Pavel being arrested and going through this trial will affect TON," Yun said. "We accept that. But at the same time, it didn't go to zero. So it proves that TON by itself is recognized as an independent, self-sustainable, self-growing ecosystem to some extent." Yun said that the tap-to-earn gaming fever, which happened during his term, proved to have a "very limited" wealth effect."Despite that, there [are] so many new experiments in TON, we did not lose the social momentum," said Yun, who added that TON is working on developing two new languages — Tolk and Tact — to make the network more attractive to builders.Addressing favoritismOne criticism the TON ecosystem faces is the perceived favoritism toward certain applications, which has sparked negative feedback from the community. Specifically, some TON community members pointed out that select Mini Apps within the Wallet in Telegram appear to receive more push from TON Foundation than community favorites."TON is [run] poorly on the marketing and governance front," wrote X user @HommiesDrey. "It was the TON community that pushed Aqua Protocol and PocketFi to the limelight. But the TON Foundation pumped attention and money into Blum."During the interview, Yun acknowledged that the issue is a "critical challenge" that needs to be resolved for the future of TON. Yun said he had pushed for the democratization of the Telegram wallet alongside the community and made it his "number one job" during his tenure as president of the foundation."If only a select project gets exposure there, it just demotivates other people from building," Yun said. "So the ecosystem doesn't grow as fast as it could."Yun noted that the company in charge of the wallet is currently working on new product aggregation measures, and that the platform is expected to become more democratized in-principle once it's shipped. The Open Platform (TOP) is the third-party company developing and updating the Wallet in Telegram.Meanwhile, Yun said such complaints of perceived favoritism are not unique to TON, mentioning that Ethereum and Solana faced similar accusations."I think all Layer-1 chains, we can divide it into two," Yun said. "One that cannot overcome this stage and just dies down, and one that escapes this stage. We are really pushing TON to escape this."Advertising stands as major challengeAside from ongoing efforts for democratization, Yun said the biggest bottleneck for the network today is advertising on Telegram, which remains untargeted."The reason is because Telegram does not want to be intrusive, they want to respect the privacy of people," Yun said. "But we have to strike the right balance because, without an efficient way to showcase your product to Telegram users, the conversion will take just much longer time than needed."The foundation's former leader said there is a simple solution, despite not being able to speak on behalf of Telegram. "We make it opt-in. People should go to the settings and particularly allow that to happen," Yun said. "And in exchange, you make revenue in Toncoin … So if I can make like $500 passive income just by watching some ads that are relevant to me — whereas on Google, you don't get anything; on YouTube, you don't get anything — I think it's a powerful approach."US ExpansionIn the coming years, TON's focus will be growing its payment applications and expanding its Mini Apps ecosystem."We cannot process the number of transactions in one shard that Solana can, but Solana cannot process such a scalable number of transactions at a given time like TON can," Yun said.Considering its capabilities, TON's "right vertical" is merging its strength to host seamless peer-to-peer transactions at scale and the uniqueness of the Telegram Mini Apps environment. Since Yun stepped down from his position as president of TON Foundation earlier this year, the foundation appointed Kingsway Capital founder Manuel Stotz as its new president for more U.S.-centered growth."When it comes to U.S. expansion, we need to, of course, be listed in the prominent exchanges there but also have one important stablecoin asset in the U.S. that should be hosted in TON," Yun said. Yun now puts more focus on growing TVM Ventures, a venture capital supporting start-ups in the TON ecosystem.In February, TVM launched a $100 million fund, part of which was contributed by Yun himself. The fund would be dedicated to providing liquidity for new DeFi projects."I'm set to deploy about $20 million as of current projection by probably the end of this year," Yun told The Block during the interview. Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.