Telegram Founder: TON Transaction Fees to Drop to Nearly Zero and Remain Fixed
Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, announced that the TON network will reduce transaction fees by about six times to 0.00039 TON (approximately $0.0005) per transaction within a week, and the fees will no longer fluctuate with network congestion, maintaining a fixed level; subsequently, most transactions will become completely free.
This adjustment is based on TON's current high-throughput architecture and low resource consumption design, and is deeply integrated with Telegram's internal ecosystem (including payments, bots, mini-apps), aiming to shift on-chain behavior from "paid actions" to "default infrastructure".
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
This is not merely a "fee reduction" but a directional adjustment to the blockchain pricing model. Traditional public chains rely on transaction fees as a resource allocation and security mechanism, but TON is compressing fees to nearly zero, essentially relinquishing "transaction pricing power" and shifting to rely on ecosystem scale and application layer monetization. This is closer to an internet platform rather than financial infrastructure.
A fixed rate that does not fluctuate with congestion means that TON is attempting to weaken the core assumption of "block space scarcity". Networks like Ethereum achieve dynamic resource competition through gas prices, while TON avoids congestion pricing through high throughput and architectural expansion, representing two completely different scaling paths: one is price adjustment, and the other is capacity expansion.
As most transactions approach free, real competition will shift from "on-chain fees" to "entry distribution rights". Telegram has a natural user distribution capability, and TON's strategy is to lock in user behavior at the application layer rather than charging rent at the underlying level. This makes it more like the infrastructure logic of WeChat Pay or Alipay, rather than the "toll road" of traditional public chains.
On a deeper level, the impact of this model on the entire crypto industry is that if users no longer pay for transactions, value capture will shift to wallets, traffic entry points, application services, and financial products. The blockchain is moving from "selling block space" to "selling attention and liquidity", leading to a rearrangement of income structures and power structures.