TON Strategy's May staking haul tops 3.3 million TON as network upgrades take effect

TON Strategy, a Nasdaq-listed company building its treasury around The Open Network's native Toncoin token, generated an estimated 3.3 million TON in staking rewards and backed a series of recent network upgrades.

The company said its preliminary gross staking yield reached roughly 1.48% in May, up from 1.39% the month prior. Based on its reported 226.8 million staked TON holdings at the end of May, that implies roughly 3.3 million (TON) worth over $5.6 million in staking rewards for the month.

In a Monday release, TON Strategy also voiced its support for a slate of TON governance proposals that took effect last week. The upgrades focus on improving "network performance, throughput and scalability" while leaving staking rewards mostly unchanged.

Changes included smart contract execution improvements, block synchronization enhancements, and increased validation capacity for higher transaction throughput.

"These network upgrades represent another important step as TON continues to develop for high-volume consumer applications tied to the Telegram ecosystem," CEO Kevin Wilson said in a statement.

The company's TONX shares were up roughly 1.3% on Monday to $3.15, bringing the stock's year-to-date gain to aabout 31%. Meanwhile, TON was trading near $.172 and has remained mostly flat year-to-date.

TON Strategy, formerly Verb Technology, adopted its TON-focused strategy in August last year and has become one of the network's largest holders and validators.

'Make TON great again'

The update comes on the heels of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov pushing an overhaul of the TON ecosystem under his "Make TON Great Again" initiative.

Earlier this month, Durov announced that TON's native cryptocurrency would be renamed to Gram, reviving the branding originally outlined in Telegram's first white paper.

The rebrand is just one step in a series of other big changes, including fee reductions, network upgrades, and plans for Telegram to assume a larger role as a steward of the ecosystem. Durov has described it as a return to the project's roots while pushing adoption of The Open Network across Telegram's global user base.