Pavel Durov announced that the TON blockchain is now 10x faster. The Telegram founder shared the news on April 9, explaining that transactions now confirm in under one second. Before the upgrade, users waited over five seconds for finality.
“The TON blockchain just got upgraded and is now 10× faster,” Durov wrote. “Transactions are now instant, subsecond.”
How the Upgrade Works
The speed improvement comes from Catchain 2.0, a new consensus mechanism running under the hood. Blocks now generate every 400 milliseconds, which is 6x faster than before. A new streaming layer pushes updates to apps almost instantly rather than making them wait for the next block.
For everyday users, this means payments go through in about one second. Trades execute in real time. Apps respond immediately. The delays that made blockchain interactions feel slow compared to regular apps are largely gone.
Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens
Step One of Make TON Great Again
Durov framed the upgrade as the first step in a seven-part plan he calls “Make TON Great Again,” or MTONGA. The name echoes a certain political slogan, but the goals are technical: making TON fast enough and cheap enough to compete with centralized platforms.
The next step on the roadmap: cutting transaction fees by 6x. TON fees are already low compared to Ethereum or Solana, but further reductions would make micropayments and high-frequency applications more practical.
Durov designed TON to work inside Telegram, which has over one billion users. His vision includes payments that feel like sending a message, Mini Apps that respond instantly, and DeFi tools that rival the speed of centralized exchanges.
At five-second confirmation times, delivering that experience was difficult. At sub-second finality, it becomes possible. The infrastructure now matches what users expect from any other app on their phone.
What Comes Next for TON
The upgrade went live on mainnet on April 10, 2026. Durov confirmed the fee reduction as step two but has not yet shared the timeline for the remaining six steps in the MTONGA roadmap.
For developers building on TON, the recommendation is to update their apps to use streaming APIs rather than polling. In other words, the blockchain is faster. Apps need to catch up.
