Forecasts for TON and TMA in 2025

MetaLamp’s Predictions in Brief:

• Tap-to-play games will gradually give way to TMA (Telegram Mini Apps).
• New projects on TON will initially launch as TMA, often featuring Web2 mechanics.
• The memecoin season on TON is just around the corner.
• The broader public will finally pay attention to the DeFi sector within the TON ecosystem.
• The user growth rate will slow compared to 2024, but the number of active wallets could still reach 20 million.
• The price of Toncoin could rise to $30.
• A shortage of TON developers will emerge in the market.

For now, tap-to-play games remain popular — for instance, in November, the PAWS project attracted 25 million users within 10 days of its launch. However, a trend shift is expected in 2025: as predicted by MetaLamp’s CPO Philipp Listratov in our article, «Tap Games Are Over: Which Mini Apps on Telegram Will Become Popular Soon», demand for tap-to-play games will decrease due to their non-transparent reward mechanics.

At the same time, the popularity of mini apps is set to grow: marketplaces, trading bots, DEXs, custom gaming solutions, and more. Some of these apps will target a Web3 audience, such as DEXs, trading bots, apps for launching new cryptocurrencies, liquidity mining tools, and so on.

Will the new generation of TMAs include many games? Not necessarily—developing high-quality games is expensive and time-consuming. However, those that do emerge will be significantly different from tap-to-play games.

On the other hand, TON’s Web3 mechanics will increasingly be integrated into mini apps not directly tied to the blockchain industry: marketplaces, loyalty programs, quests, games, and more. Brands have already realized they can attract additional users by offering features like connecting a TON wallet, paying for goods in Toncoin or USDT, receiving rewards in tokens, and so on.

However, 2025 could mark the beginning of a «meme season» on TON.

This might seem strange: TON’s technology, with its fast transaction processing and low fees, would appear to be ideal for financial protocols and on-chain trading. Moreover, the official debut of the USDT stablecoin on TON took place in April 2024.

The most likely reason for the lag in the DeFi sector is that, until 2024, TON’s active audience was relatively small, and most of the users who joined this year are primarily interested in games. Additionally, there is a noticeable lack of venture funding needed to develop truly high-quality projects.

2025 could be a turning point in this regard. The TON Foundation has announced a $24 million investment to support DeFi development — primarily in the form of incentives for liquidity providers on the two largest DEXs, Ston.fi and DeDust. Increased ROI is expected to attract DeFi farmers.

Furthermore, as we’ve already noted, DeFi projects will increasingly launch in the TMA format. This will draw the attention of Telegram’s massive user base — people who are generally interested in DeFi income and memecoin trading but are reluctant to deal with unfamiliar web interfaces.

At the recent Token2049 conference, the TON Foundation leadership shared an ambitious plan: to onboard 500 million users to the blockchain within 5 years. Does this mean that at least 100 million new users will join TON in 2025?

In 2024, the number of active wallets per day on TON increased by a record 30 times. The main driver was airdrops from tap-to-play games like Hamster Kombat and Notcoin, which prompted millions of users to create wallets. Another factor was that the growth started from a relatively low base of fewer than 200,000 wallets.

However, if we analyze the monthly dynamics of the number of active wallets, we’ll see that in 2024 the growth was not steady but occurred in jumps, correlating with the launch of tokens for popular tap-to-play games. In recent months, however, the number of active wallets has started to decline (see the data in the table from Tonstat).

If our forecast about declining demand for tap-to-play games and increasing demand for mini apps and DeFi proves accurate, then in 2025 we can expect a fairly high growth rate, roughly at the level of July 2024 (a month without major tap-to-play airdrops), which is around 8-10% per month. There will likely also be months when the number of active wallets declines.

Our conservative forecast suggests an average annual growth in the number of active wallets by two to two and a half times, reaching 16-20 million. For comparison, on Solana, this figure exceeds 100 million, but most of the active wallets are nearly empty and belong to exchange proxy services and bots. If trading, especially memecoins, becomes more active on TON, a large number of bot and proxy addresses may also emerge. In that case, the total number of active wallets per month could reach 40-50 million.

According to an analysis by CoinCodex, in January 2025, the price of Toncoin could reach $32, after which it is expected to fluctuate between $14.6 and $27.3. At the time of writing, the price is $6.9, meaning potential short-term growth could be up to 360%.

How realistic is this? Quite realistic — just look at how much L1 blockchain coins surged at the peak of the 2020–2021 bull market:

• SOL: 30x
• NEAR: 15x
• ATOM: 8x
• BNB: 16x

Thus, a rise in TON from $6.7 to $30 would be within the norm for a bull market. Of course, everything depends on Bitcoin: the current market cycle is very different from previous ones, so an explosive growth phase for altcoins might not occur.

We can’t provide investment advice, but if you’re looking to diversify your portfolio with relatively new L1 tokens, TON is worth considering among the options. However, remember the golden rule: limit your risk and don’t invest money you’re not prepared to lose.

Developer Shortage Will Remain a Bottleneck in the Ecosystem

Smart contracts on the TON network use three specially developed languages: FunC, Tact, Fift, and the new language Tolk. All of them are very different from Solidity — and from each other. A developer wanting to join the TON ecosystem must first learn one of these languages, creating a significant barrier to entry.

According to a leading TON developer at the MetaLamp studio, the developer community in the ecosystem is growing, but not very quickly. However, he notes that he’s increasingly encountering developers coming from Web2 for whom TON is their first blockchain. Why is that?

Most likely, it’s because developers experienced in Solidity (Ethereum) or Rust (used in Solana) don’t yet see a practical need to switch to TON: learning a new language takes time, and there’s no significant difference in pay between EVM and TON developers. Paradoxically, developers from Web2 are far more aware of TON’s rapid growth, the success of Hamster Kombat, the surge in demand for mini apps, etc.— making TON a logical entry point into Web3 for them.

In 2025, we may see a situation where the demand for TON development far outpaces supply, leading to higher costs. However, the labor supply for specialists in FunC and Tact is inelastic, meaning we could see a sharp rise in developer pay in 2025 (and higher development costs for projects), followed by a delayed influx of developers in 2026. Conclusion: if you’re planning to launch an app on TON in 2025, it’s worth considering boxed solutions now.

All the prerequisites are in place for 2025 to become the year of the TON blockchain and for this L1 to finally receive as much attention as Base and Sui did in 2024. There is a massive base of potential users, the TON Foundation’s willingness to invest funds, and the technology for boxed mini app development. What’s left is the most important: high-quality projects and teams ready to build on TON.