How to Track Active Users and Capital Scale on the TON Blockchain

The core tool for tracking active users and capital scale on the TON chain is Dune Analytics. Given TON's special "asynchronous message" architecture, you cannot rely solely on surface-level data, and a set of standard filtering methods is required to capture real user behavior and capital flows.

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1. Filter out "real users" on Dune and exclude bots

What to do: The "address count" displayed on many data platforms includes exchange wallets, project party wallets, and Sybil addresses (wash-trading bots). Before starting tracking, filter out all these non-user addresses first.

How to do it:

When running queries on Dune, refer to the filtering standards officially provided by TON:

1. Keep only wallet interface interactions: Only count addresses that interact via wallet_* or multisig_, as these are the operation entry points for real users.

2. Remove main system addresses: Addresses starting with -1: are usually for staking or network infrastructure, not ordinary user wallets.

3. Remove marked third-party addresses: TON official has tagged over 8 million addresses belonging to exchanges, trading bots, or payment service providers, which should be excluded from user statistics.

4. Remove Sybil addresses: Mass-generated addresses created exclusively for airdrop farming should also be excluded.

Completion criteria: You can run a custom query on Dune that clearly distinguishes "real user addresses" from the total address count.

Prerequisite: Register for a free Dune account.

Common failure causes: TON's active address count fluctuates dramatically. For example, during the TGE (Token Generation Event) of popular apps like Notcoin, active users will surge, but may drop sharply after the event ends, which does not necessarily indicate an ecosystem recession.

2. Track capital scale: Break down TVL and stablecoins

What to do: Do not only look at the absolute value of TVL, but analyze its composition and trends. TON's TVL is highly dependent on the price of native Toncoin and liquid staking, while the overall DeFi footprint on the chain is still relatively small.

How to do it:

1. Check TVL composition to tell real value from volatility: More than 1/3 of TON's TVL comes from Toncoin liquid staking protocols (such as Tonstakers). This portion of TVL fluctuates with Toncoin's price, and does not represent new capital entering the ecosystem. To measure real incremental capital, focus on stablecoins (USDT) and actual assets locked in DEX pools.

2. Track stablecoin inflows: This is the key metric to judge the true capital scale of TON. By mid-2025, the circulating supply of USDT on TON has grown from 120 million at the start of the year to 480 million. Build a dedicated dashboard to track changes in USDT supply over time.

3. Check DEX daily trading volume: The daily trading volume of TON's top DEXs (STON.fi, DeDust) usually stays below 5 million USD. A sudden spike in this metric signals increased capital activity on the chain.

Completion criteria: You can clearly answer whether TON's TVL growth comes from Toncoin price appreciation, or from new stablecoin inflows.

Prerequisite: Locate the TON DeFi dashboard on Dune, or use the ton.dex_pools and ton.latest_balances data tables.

Common failure causes: TON's TVL hit an all-time high of 770 million USD in July 2024, then dropped back to around 400 million USD amid Toncoin price declines and events including the arrest of Telegram's founder. Judging trends solely based on single point-in-time data will easily lead to misinterpretation.

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3. Verify capital flows: Trace from Messages to Jetton

What to do: TON's asynchronous architecture means one single transaction will generate multiple Messages. You cannot judge capital flows only by transaction counts, and need to trace "who transferred how much to whom" at the Message layer.

How to do it: On Dune, use Netflow to track capital inflows and outflows for specific addresses or tokens:

1. Query native TON transfers: Extract the value field from the ton.messages table, and exclude records with opcode=260734629 (these are attached fee messages for Jetton transfers, to avoid double counting).

2. Query Jetton transfers: Pull data from the ton.jetton_events table, which stores pre-decoded token transfer records.

3. Calculate net flow: Expand each transfer into two records (forward and reverse), then sum the inflow and outflow for each address, and subtract total outflow from total inflow to get the net flow. Addresses with consistently positive net flow are the destinations of ongoing capital inflow.

Completion criteria: You can use custom SQL or pre-built dashboards to calculate the 7-day net inflow/outflow of a target token (such as USDT).

Prerequisite: Get familiar with the structure of TON's data tables (ton.messages and ton.jetton_events).

Common failure causes: Ignoring the direction field. One message can be stored as two separate "in" and "out" records in the ton.messages table. You need to distinguish use cases when running queries, and usually direction='in' is the more commonly used filter.

Next step to take:

Spend 15 minutes today to do this: Open Dune, find dashboards related to "TON USDT Supply" or "TON DeFi TVL". Record the current USDT circulating supply and DEX daily trading volume, then compare this set of data with the numbers from 7 days ago, to check if stablecoins are in net inflow or net outflow. If both USDT supply and DEX trading volume are rising, it confirms that real new capital is entering the TON ecosystem.