TON Records Six-Day Winning Streak. Price Doubles to Lead Market, Is Open Network Becoming the ‘King of Public Chains’ in 2026?

TradingKey - Telegram resumes control of TON, fueling a price surge that significantly outperforms other public chains.

On May 7, the native token of The Open Network (formerly known as Telegram Open Network) TON extended its recent strong rally, surging over 30% today to a high of $2.89, its highest level since October 2025. As of press time, TON's price has pulled back slightly and is currently trading at $2.82.

TON Price Chart, Source: TradingView

Since May 2, TON's price has recorded six consecutive days of gains, with a cumulative increase of 115%. The initial catalyst was the increase in TON's staking threshold. On May 2, TON released an update for mainnet validators, noting that capital inflows have significantly raised the entry threshold for the TON validation network. The minimum requirement was raised from 824,000 TON to 1 million TON, and the maximum staking threshold was raised from 824,000 TON to 3 million TON.

Following the release of the news, TON's price rose slightly that day, but the event that triggered the major rally was Telegram's return to take over the network. On May 4, Telegram founder Pavel Durov issued a major statement, announcing that Telegram had decided to officially replace the TON Foundation and resume control of the network. Following the announcement, TON's price surged over 20% that day, and its rally has since become unstoppable, making it the best-performing public chain this year.

Year-to-date, TON's price has risen by a cumulative 70%, far outperforming other public chain tokens. During the same period, Bitcoin ( BTC) fell nearly 8%, Ether ( ETH) fell 21%, Ripple ( XRP) fell 23%, BNB ( BNB) fell 25%, Solana ( SOL) fell 29%, Cardano ( ADA) fell 20%, and TRON ( TRX) rose 21%.

Six years ago, Telegram was forced to abandon the project due to regulatory hurdles from the U.S. SEC. The code was open-sourced and taken over in 2021 by community developers (the newTON team, now the TON Foundation), who officially renamed it The Open Network. Now that Telegram is leading TON again, what does this actually mean?

According to Pavel Durov's statement, TON's focus will shift toward technical advantages, while Telegram will take a series of actions, including a new version of the ton.org website, new developer tools, and performance upgrades. It is clear that Telegram is attempting to build TON into Web3 infrastructure to compete with other public chains.

Furthermore, Telegram has officially staked millions of TON, signaling a substantial "alignment of interests" between Telegram and TON, which is likely to attract more institutional investment. As early as August last year, Nasdaq-listed TON Strategy Company (formerly Verb Technology) announced it would include TON into its corporate treasury, and Swedish-listed digital asset management giant CoinShares has already launched a TON staking ETP.