TLDR
- TON blockchain launched Catchain 2.0, cutting block times to 400 milliseconds
- Toncoin price rose over 5% to around $1.30 following the upgrade announcement
- Pavel Durov called this the first of seven steps in his “Make TON Great Again” plan
- Annual inflation is projected to rise from 0.6% to 3.6% due to faster block production
- Rakuten Wallet will add TON for spot trading on April 15, expanding access to Japanese markets
Toncoin climbed more than 5% to around $1.30 after the TON blockchain activated its Catchain 2.0 consensus upgrade. The move was announced by Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov and marks a major change to how the network processes transactions.
Before the upgrade, transactions on TON took about 10 seconds to settle. With Catchain 2.0 now live, block times have dropped to 400 milliseconds. Payment transactions now settle in roughly one second, and decentralized applications are expected to run at speeds closer to traditional apps.
The TON blockchain just got upgraded and is now 10× faster.
Block rate increased 6×.
Transactions are now instant, subsecond.
This was step 1 of 7 to Make TON Great Again (MTONGA).
Next step: cut the already low transaction fees by 6×.
— Pavel Durov (@durov) April 9, 2026
The validator vote for the upgrade took place on April 8 and 9, 2026. After that process completed, Catchain 2.0 went live on the network. Binance and Bithumb both carried out wallet maintenance this week to support the change.
The main chain block reward stays at 1.7 TON. However, because blocks are now produced much faster, validators will earn more rewards per cycle. Annual inflation on the network is projected to rise from about 0.6% to 3.6% as a result.
Durov described this as the first of seven planned steps. The next step targets lower transaction fees, with a potential reduction of around six times the current cost.
Ecosystem Expansion
TON is growing beyond the upgrade itself. Rakuten Wallet announced it will add Toncoin for spot trading starting April 15, 2026, opening access to Japanese retail investors through a regulated platform.
The TON Foundation also partnered with SCRYPT to offer Swiss-regulated USDT access on TON for businesses. Fireblocks and Dynamic introduced enterprise wallet infrastructure designed for Telegram-based financial products.
Looking further ahead, the roadmap includes the TON Teleport Bridge for Bitcoin cross-chain activity and TON Pay 2.0, both targeted for mid-2026.
What the Charts Show
Toncoin closed near $1.2868 on the day of the upgrade. The price moved above all three Alligator indicator lines, which sit near $1.2620, $1.2509, and $1.2477. The MACD histogram also turned positive, with the MACD line crossing above the signal line.
$TON long at $1.24—second target hit at $1.278. +3.39% in under 16 hours. Finora keeps these gains coming. 📈 https://t.co/Cr1PBsHiTh
— Finora AI – Your Trade Buddy (@Finora_EN) April 9, 2026
The next resistance level to watch is around $1.3168. A close above that could open the path toward $1.34 to $1.36, and eventually $1.40. Support sits near $1.25 to $1.26.
Trading volume rose more than 35% to $130.1 million. TON’s market cap stood at $3.17 billion at time of writing.
Crypto analytics firm Santiment noted that the 100 largest Toncoin whale addresses have accumulated 189,730 more TON over the past three months, even as the token lost two-thirds of its market cap since its August 2025 local top.
