TON completed its Catchain 2.0 mainnet upgrade on April 9, 2026. The network’s official X account, @ton_blockchain, said TON is now 6x faster, with activation completed at around 7:00 a.m. UTC. After a three-stage testing process and validator voting, the upgrade is now live and moves the chain into what TON describes as sub-second finality.
Block time target falls to 200–400 milliseconds
According to the official description, Catchain 2.0 is not a simple parameter adjustment. It is a deeper overhaul of TON’s pBFT-like Catchain consensus design, including network-layer acceleration and a Rust node rebuild. Before the upgrade, TON mainnet block time was about 2.5 seconds, while finality took around 10 seconds. After activation, the target block time drops to 200–400 milliseconds, with finality reduced to roughly 1 second.
That change shortens waiting time across on-chain activity. Payments, transfers, DEX swaps, and Telegram Mini Apps interactions are expected to feel much closer to a Web2-style user experience.
Fixed per-block rewards push inflation higher
The upgrade also changes TON’s tokenomics. The source material says per-block rewards remain unchanged at 1.7 TON for the masterchain and 1.0 TON for the basechain. But with block production accelerating by 6x, token issuance rises as well.
As a result, TON’s annual inflation rate is expected to increase from about 0.6% to around 3.6%. At the same time, validators can package more blocks within the same period, which lifts staking returns. That raises the appeal of staking for Toncoin holders.
Fee burn stays in place as offset mechanism
TON is keeping its burn model intact. The network will continue to burn 50% of transaction fees, a mechanism aimed at offsetting part of the added issuance tied to faster block production. The official view is that if higher speed drives more DeFi, gaming, and payment activity on-chain, fee revenue and token burns may also increase.
Three-stage rollout completed, developers asked to adjust
The activation followed a cautious three-stage strategy and required support from validators representing at least 75% of staked weight. To reduce operational risk during the upgrade, several major exchanges, including Binance, announced temporary suspensions of TON deposits and withdrawals in advance.
TON mainnet is now running under the new configuration. The team has asked ecosystem developers and application operators, especially services that rely on real-time behavior or use streaming APIs, to review the integration guide and adapt to the new block timing.