Telegram founder Pavel Durov: TON transaction fees will "drop by 6 times," and he previews a future with completely free transactions

Let TON Rise Again!
Telegram founder Pavel Durov dropped a shocking announcement late at night, revealing that transaction fees on the TON blockchain will “drop by 6 times” within a week, costing only about $0.0005 per transaction, and boldly predicting that most future transactions will become “completely fee-less.”
This is the second phase of TON’s recent “MTONGA” seven-step upgrade plan, combined with the speed upgrade completed earlier this month. TON seems to be fully targeting competitors like Solana, aiming to dominate global Web3 payments and gaming.
(Background summary: TON mainnet Catchain 2.0 upgrade completed! Block production speed increased 6 times, inflation rose to 3.6%, but “staking rewards exploded”)
(Additional background: Russia bans Telegram “file and video sharing”! Demands elimination of anonymity, TON ecosystem faces tests)

Table of Contents

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• Fees drop 6×! Moving toward “completely free” in the future
• Decoding the MTONGA seven-step upgrade plan
• Why aim for “zero transaction fees”?

Leveraging Telegram’s massive global user base of one billion, The Open Network (TON) blockchain is trying to thoroughly outperform competitors in performance and cost.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov posted a message on X (formerly Twitter) on April 23, 2026, that set the community abuzz. He announced that the TON network will undergo an unprecedented fee reduction, using the community meme slogan “MTONGA” (Make TON Great Again) to celebrate this milestone.

⚡️ In one week, TON fees will drop 6× — to just 0.00039 TON (~$0.0005) per transaction, fixed regardless of network load.

🆓 Soon after most transactions go fully feeless. Zero commission. MTONGA!

— Pavel Durov (@durov) April 23, 2026

Fees drop 6×! Moving toward “completely free” in the future

Durov clearly stated in the post that in just one week, TON’s transaction fees will be drastically reduced by 6 times, down to only 0.00039 TON (about $0.0005, or 0.05 cents). He emphasized that this extremely low fee will be “fixed” regardless of network load at the time.

What’s even more shocking is his subsequent prediction:

“Soon, most transactions will be completely free. Zero fees. MTONGA!”

Decoding the MTONGA seven-step upgrade plan

Durov’s “MTONGA” is not just a community slogan but a set of seven upgrade steps designed to make TON faster, cheaper, and more competitive.

• Step 1: Speed Revolution (Completed)
  Between April 9 and 10, TON successfully launched the Catchain 2.0 consensus mechanism upgrade. This upgrade increased block production speed by 6 times (from about 2.4 seconds to approximately 400 milliseconds), achieving sub-second real-time confirmation of transactions.
• Step 2: Cost Revolution (Coming Soon)
  The fee reduction by 6 times, as announced by Durov, is expected to be officially implemented before the end of April.

There are five more steps with undisclosed timelines, aiming to further enhance network scalability and pave the way for high-frequency micro-payments, AI agents, and DeFi applications.

Why aim for “zero transaction fees”?

Analysts point out that TON’s strategy is very clear: to create a seamless experience indistinguishable from centralized Web2 apps.

Although TON has the advantage of a built-in Telegram wallet, facing competition from high-performance public chains like Solana, TON must optimize “Telegram Mini Apps,” casual games, and daily micro-payment scenarios to achieve extremely low friction. When transaction fees drop to zero and confirmation times are under a second, users will completely forget they are interacting with a blockchain backend.

However, moving toward zero fees will pose challenges to TON’s tokenomics. Currently, TON burns 50% of transaction fees (a deflationary mechanism), with the remaining distributed to validators. As block production speeds up and fees decrease significantly, the team will likely need to adjust validator incentives to balance network security and control token inflation (which could rise from 0.6% to 3.6%).