TON entered 2025 with strong momentum from the mini‑app and GameFi wave, but this year marked the beginnings of something more structural: DeFi on TON scaled into a robust, multi‑layered ecosystem.

What began as an ecosystem of experimental trading bots and simple liquidity pools has become a network of stablecoins, yield products, tokenized assets, and payment rails operating directly inside Telegram.

For the first time, large‑scale financial instruments built on blockchain rails are running inside a social messenger. This matters because people no longer need to move funds into separate, complex applications to access on‑chain finance; instead, DeFi has become accessible where they already are.

2025 demonstrated that TON can power DeFi embedded inside Telegram's user experience for both retail savers and more sophisticated participants, while remaining anchored to decentralized, permissionless infrastructure.

Why TON DeFi Broke Through in 2025

At the start of the year, TON already had strong engagement, but DeFi activity was still driven mainly by early adopters experimenting with swaps and yield farming. 2025 marked a turning point: foundational financial infrastructure arrived at scale, allowing TON to move from experiment‑heavy usage into a truly user‑driven DeFi environment.

On the yield side, TON welcomed Ethena's USDe and tsUSDe, synthetic digital-dollars that combine on‑chain stability and yield. Users can hold a dollar‑pegged asset and earn without managing complex strategies themselves. Affluent complemented this by launching a money‑market protocol that wraps lending pools and yield routes into one‑click strategies inside Telegram so the entire process feels like tapping an "earn" button rather than navigating a complex dashboard.

The ability for people to gain exposure to equities in Telegram followed. Wallet in Telegram, xStocks, and Kraken brought around 60 tokenized U.S. equities into TON, demonstrating how retail users can access global financial instruments from a chat‑native interface.

Underneath these products, liquidity infrastructure deepened. STON.fi's Omniston lets applications tap aggregated liquidity and best‑available swap routes from multiple sources through a single integration, so trades feel predictable and efficient. TONCO introduced concentrated liquidity and has proved that LPs can achieve significantly better capital efficiency while traders benefit from tighter spreads and lower slippage.

With these building blocks in place, distribution became the final unlock. The launch of TON Wallet in the United States gave millions of additional Telegram users native access to send, swap, and store digital assets inside the messaging app.

Together, these developments turned TON into an ecosystem where swaps, yields, and collateral use feel predictable, reliable, and delivered through the familiar chat interface that users already understand.

How People Are Using TON DeFi

TON and Telegram work together to make DeFi feel as simple as sending a message. Users can acquire USDT, USDe, or tgUSD inside popular Telegram‑based wallets, then swap, lend, and earn through bots and mini‑apps without ever leaving chat. TON DEXs handle routes and approvals behind the scenes, allowing trades to complete in just a couple of taps.

Lending and yield products from Affluent, STON.fi, and Ethena appear as mini‑apps with mobile‑first flows rather than complex dashboards. Assets move seamlessly because TON Connect lets users sign in to any TON‑based service with a single tap, ensuring they can shift from a DEX to a payment bot to a game without re‑configuring their wallet.

The entire DeFi journey happens inside Telegram's UI, so barriers to participation drop sharply, and each interaction creates more wallets, more on‑chain actions, and greater financial surface area for builders.

Big Picture: Consumer DeFi on Social Platforms

Stepping back, TON's progress in 2025 sits within a broader shift: social platforms are evolving into financial environments where everyday interactions naturally flow into transactions. Instead of redirecting users to separate applications, financial tools appear inside the chats, channels, and communities they already use.

TON and Telegram are clear first‑movers in this model. TON already enables stablecoins, real‑world assets, and liquidity systems to operate at social‑network scale inside a mainstream app. As this infrastructure matures, we can expect a new generation of in-chat financial workflows to emerge spanning payments, equities, loyalty systems, tokenized savings, and more.

Conclusion

2025 marked the year DeFi on TON scaled into a robust, multi‑layered ecosystem. Stablecoins, real‑world assets, liquidity engines, and payment rails now operate natively inside Telegram, turning DeFi from a separate destination into something users encounter in everyday messaging.

Mainstream blockchain-based digital finance is most likely to grow from environments where people already spend their time, not from isolated platforms that demand new behaviour. This is where the relationship between TON and Telegram shows its potential.

Together, they demonstrate how programmable finance can reach everyday users and set the foundation for the next wave of mass adoption.