TON DeFi metrics: TVL, volume, active users (2026)

#analytics #ton #defi #tvl

DeFi on TON is the youngest part of the ecosystem and the most interesting one for an analyst. Explosive growth in 2024, a local peak followed by a sideways grind in 2025-2026, and a structural shift toward stablecoin liquidity. This piece is a breakdown of which metrics matter, where to find them, and how to read them.

What TVL actually is

Total Value Locked — the dollar-denominated value of assets sitting in protocol smart contracts at a given moment. It is not cumulative volume and not revenue — just a snapshot of liquidity. A falling TVL doesn’t always mean capital outflow: more often it reflects a drop in the underlying asset’s price.

That matters especially for TON, because a meaningful share of TVL is denominated in Toncoin. When TON’s price drops, the dollar TVL drops automatically — even if no one has redeemed from the protocols.

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Key takeaway

TVL is a lagging, not a leading indicator. It shows the past. For forward-looking signals, watch swap volumes, the growth of unique LPs, and the speed of stablecoin inflows.

TON TVL by the numbers

Per DefiLlama (chain/ton) and blog.ston.fi as of 2026:

Period	TON ecosystem TVL
January 2024	~$50M
June 2024 (peak)	~$650M
December 2024	~$500M
May 2026	~$300-400M (depends on TON price)

TON’s share of global DeFi in 2026 is around 0.4-0.6%. For comparison: Ethereum 50-55%, Solana 7-9%, Base 4-6%. TON is far from the leaders, but the segment is growing faster than 12-month averages.

TVL by protocol

DefiLlama data (mid-2025 / early-2026):

STON.fi — the largest DEX, TVL $130-150M, 35-45% of ecosystem TVL.
DeDust — second DEX, TVL $50-80M, 15-25%.
Tonstakers / Hipo / bemo — liquid staking — combined ~$250M in TON terms.
EVAA / Storm Trade — lending and perpetuals, $20-50M combined.
Other — small pools, synthetics, niche protocols.

Important caveat: liquid staking is sometimes counted separately from DEX TVL, sometimes together. When reading someone else’s analysis, always check the methodology. Without staking, TON’s TVL is lower than a clean DeFi-comparison would suggest.

DEX volumes

Daily swap volumes on TON in 2026 sit in the $15-40M range (source: DefiLlama, blog.ston.fi). The split:

DEX	24h share	Note
STON.fi V2	~60%	Main AMM, V2 launched in 2024
STON.fi V1	~10-15%	Legacy pools, gradually migrating to V2
DeDust	~15-20%	Alternative AMM with hybrid model
Other	less than 5%	Tonsoft, OpenLib and niche DEXes

A useful analyst metric is the Volume/TVL ratio. For mature AMMs it sits at 0.05-0.3 per day; TON falls in the same range, which signals healthy use of liquidity.

DeFi active users

The hardest metric, because TON DeFi is heavily linked to the Telegram audience. Baseline figures:

Unique daily DEX traders — around 20,000-50,000 (depends on volatility and airdrop cycles).
Unique LPs — a few thousand active per week.
Liquid stakers — about 70,000+ via Tonstakers (source: 99bitcoins, updated).

For comparison, Uniswap’s daily unique active addresses sit at 200,000-400,000. TON trails on absolute numbers, but the average transaction size is materially smaller — this is retail traffic, not institutional.

Stablecoins — the main driver of 2024-2026

Since Tether’s launch of USDT-jetton in April 2024, stablecoin liquidity has been the key driver of TON DeFi. As of May 2026:

USDT on TON — over $1B market cap (per aggregators).
USDC — several hundred million, mostly via Circle integration.
USDe (Ethena) — added in 2024 via LayerZero, volumes growing.

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Why USDT on TON matters

USDT-jetton gave the ecosystem something it lacked — a stable unit of account for P2P swaps, mini-app payments and DEX pools. After its launch, STON.fi’s Volume/TVL noticeably picked up. It is the biggest structural change in TON DeFi since 2023.

Liquid staking — a separate vertical

Liquid staking is a sizable slice of TON DeFi. The main players:

Protocol	TVL (in TON)	APY	Note
Tonstakers	~50-70M TON	~4-5%	TVL and stake-count leader (70k+)
Hipo	~5-10M TON	~4-4.5%	Auction-based validator selection
bemo	~5-15M TON	~4-4.5%	Certik audit, yield programme

Combined liquid-pool stake is around 96M TON (source: tonstat.com, May 2026) — roughly 3.5% of circulating TON, close to where ETH was before Lido took off.

Lending and perpetuals

The weakest segments of TON DeFi in 2026:

EVAA Protocol — main lending protocol, TVL ~$20-30M. The TON answer to Aave.
Storm Trade — perp DEX, daily volume $5-15M (source: DefiLlama, blog.ston.fi).
Aqua — synthetics, experimental segment.

Compared to Ethereum/Solana the gap is wide: TON lending is nowhere near Aave/Compound dominance, and perpetual DEXes are still catching up to GMX/dYdX in product maturity.

What matters for practical analytics

If you’re building a TON DeFi dashboard, I’d pick this first-tier metric set:

Ecosystem TVL (excluding staking) — clean DEX/lending TVL.
Liquid staking TVL — separate vertical.
24h DEX volume — 7-day rolling average to smooth weekend dips.
Stablecoin market cap on TON — the main leading indicator.
Volume/TVL ratio — liquidity-utilisation health.
Unique daily DEX traders — base width.
TON price — without it, dollar TVL is misleading.

Want to try TON DeFi hands-on?

STON.fi is the largest DEX in the TON ecosystem. Start with a TON-USDT swap and gradually explore the liquidity pools.
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Common mistakes

Comparing TON TVL with Ethereum head-on. Without adjusting for ecosystem age, protocol count and tooling maturity, the comparison is meaningless.
Ignoring airdrop waves. Hamster Kombat and DOGS produced temporary volume spikes. They need to be subtracted when assessing trends.
Counting stablecoin market cap as part of TVL. Circulating USDT-jetton is not TVL. TVL is what’s locked in protocols.
Trusting a single source. DefiLlama sometimes diverges from blog.ston.fi and tonviewer.com by 10-20%. That’s normal — different methodologies.