💀 How does the TON Bridge era come to an end?

⚫️ A few days ago, TON Core announced the final stage of the token bridge shutdown. Users were asked to withdraw their wrapped assets by September 1, 2026: after that date, the bridge will stop processing transfers.

⚫️ At one point, this bridge was one of the first attempts to connect TON with the broader crypto market. Back in 2021, the NewTON team — which later became TON Foundation — introduced the TON-ETH Bridge. At the time, it served a very practical purpose: it helped move Toncoin to other networks to access more mature DeFi markets.

⚫️ The bridge continued to evolve. In April 2023, TON added support for transferring tokens from Ethereum into TON, including USDT, USDC, DAI, and WBTC. That is how jUSDT and other wrapped assets appeared on the network. For early DeFi on TON, this was a noticeable step: native USDT was still almost a year away, while the ecosystem already needed stablecoins.

⭐️ By the way, we covered the bridge back in its testnet days — in 2022, we tried bringing wrapped USDT into TON together with you and even published a short guide for our readers.

⚫️ Then the context changed. In April 2024, native USDT on TON was announced at TOKEN2049. After that, the rationale for wrapped stablecoins gradually started to fade: once the network had real USDT issued by Tether, holding jUSDT through an old bridge became less convenient and less necessary.

⚫️ That is why the bridge shutdown looks like a natural end to an older phase. It was useful while TON lacked direct integrations. Now, its main job has largely been done.

⚫️ So if you still have Wrapped Toncoin, jUSDT, jUSDC, jDAI, jWBTC, or any other j-tokens sitting somewhere, it is better not to postpone: they need to be withdrawn through bridge-v3.ton.org before September 1, 2026.

The time of TON’s old bridges is coming to an end.

@thedailyton