Messari: TON's Telegram product revenue reached $88.5 million in Q1, with cross-chain NFT market share rising to 35.5%

BlockBeats news, on June 8, Messari released the "TON Q1 2026 Report" showing that although the TON price fell by 26.4% during the quarter, the overall TON ecosystem remained resilient thanks to Telegram's large user base. Of note, Telegram product revenue settled via Fragment decreased 20.3% quarter-on-quarter to $88.5 million, while recurring revenue from Premium subscriptions and advertising only declined 10.5%, outperforming occasional businesses such as Stars.

Data shows that, driven by on-chain demand for Telegram usernames, numbers, and Gifts, TON’s NFT cross-chain market share grew by 130.4% quarter-on-quarter, reaching 35.5%.

In DeFi, total value locked (TVL) in USD terms fell 34.9% quarter-on-quarter, but only decreased 11.6% when denominated in TON. The daily average USDT transfer amount dropped 32.5% to $77 million. However, the daily average number of transfers stayed around 73,600, indicating that peer-to-peer Telegram transfers and Mini App payments are replacing large DeFi transactions.

In terms of user activity, the number of average daily active TON addresses decreased 8.8% quarter-on-quarter to 90,800, indicating there was no significant new user growth in Q1. However, the number of transactions per address increased from 19.2 to 21, reflecting enhanced engagement among existing users.

After the end of the quarter, four out of seven measures under TON's "Make TON Great Again (MTONGA)" initiative have been completed, including the launch of Catchain 2.0 achieving sub-second finality, reducing transaction fees by about sixfold, and making Telegram the largest validator on TON, with current staking reaching 2.2 million TON.

Messari stated that the second quarter will be a critical observation period to test whether infrastructure upgrades can drive the massive conversion of Telegram’s broader user base into active on-chain users on TON.