LAS VEGAS, May 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TON Strategy Company ("TON Strategy" or the "Company") (NASDAQ:TONX), a digital asset treasury company dedicated to holding Toncoin ($TON), today highlighted recent upgrades to The Open Network ("TON") and the associated impact on network performance and staking economics.

In April, TON deployed its Catchain 2.0 consensus upgrade, reducing block times from approximately 2.5 seconds to approximately 400 milliseconds and increasing throughput by an estimated 10x. In practice, the upgrade allows the network to process transactions faster and support more activity at scale. Transaction finality also improved meaningfully, with settlement times reduced from approximately 10 seconds to approximately 1 second.

Taken together, these changes improve the network's ability to support faster, real-time applications across payments, decentralized finance, gaming, agentic AI, and Telegram-based ecosystems.

Separately, the network implemented a reduction in transaction fees of approximately 6x, lowering average costs to roughly $0.0005 per transaction under a fixed-fee model designed to support higher transaction volumes. TON Strategy supported this change through its governance participation, reflecting its view that lower fees are important to long-term network adoption, even where they may modestly reduce validator fee-based income.

From an economic standpoint, the upgrades also improved validator efficiency in the near term, as TON Strategy's gross staking rewards increased by more than 3.5x in April compared to March.* Through its staking infrastructure and service provider relationships, TON Strategy was well positioned to capture this increase during April.

Kevin Wilson, CEO of TON Strategy, stated: "I'm thrilled to be joining TONX at such a pivotal moment for The Open Network. While we provide U.S. public market exposure to Toncoin, our value-add to investors and the ecosystem extends well beyond that through staking activities. TONX is a meaningful participant in the network's infrastructure layer, with over 220 million TON staked to help secure, validate, and scale the protocol. We view ourselves not simply as holders of the asset, but as active contributors to the network's long-term development and resilience."

"Performance matters for emerging use cases on TON such as agentic AI. Lower transaction fees and sub-second finality can make TON more economically attractive for developers building AI agents through the Telegram front end."

The Company continues to evaluate how it allocates capital across staking and related infrastructure in order to support the network while driving long-term value on a per-share basis.

*April gross staking rewards are preliminary, unaudited and subject to adjustment.

About TON Strategy Company

TON Strategy Company (NASDAQ:TONX) is focused on the accumulation of $TON – the native cryptocurrency of Telegram's billion-user platform – for long-term investment, whether acquired through deployment of proceeds from capital raising activity, staking rewards or via open market purchases. The Company aims to steadily expand its $TON holdings, stake $TON, and support the development of a tokenized economy inside Telegram.

In addition, the Company continues to operate legacy business units, including MARKET.live, a multi-vendor livestream shopping platform, and LyveCom, an AI-powered social commerce innovator that enables brands and merchants to deliver omnichannel livestream shopping experiences across websites, apps, and social platforms.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We intend such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"). All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release should be considered forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding: our business and growth strategy; the expected benefit of the TON blockchain and Toncoin ecosystem; market growth; and benefit to shareholders. Certain staking-related metrics referenced in this press release, including April gross staking rewards, are preliminary, unaudited and subject to adjustment. Without limiting the foregoing, in some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "aim," "anticipate," "believe," "can," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "goal," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "target," "will," "would" or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words.

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: our incursion of significant net losses and uncertainty whether we will achieve or maintain profitable operations; our ability to grow and compete in the future, and to execute our business strategy; our decision to implement a cryptocurrency treasury strategy, whereby we acquire Toncoin, the native cryptocurrency of The Open Network ("TON") blockchain and our dependence on TON and Toncoin as a result of this strategy; our ability to maintain and expand our customer base and to convince our customers to increase the use of our services and/or platform; our financial results and the market price of our common stock may be affected by the price of Toncoin, and our Toncoin holdings will be less liquid than cash and cash equivalents; changes in the broader digital asset regulatory landscape and as it relates to TON and Toncoin and our failure to comply with applicable regulatory requirements and risks related to any actions we may take to prevent or correct such failure; the availability of opportunities to stake Toncoin; our ability to maintain and expand our customer base and to convince our customers to increase the use of our services and/or platform; the competitive market in which we operate; our ability to increase the number of our strategic relationships or grow the revenues received from our current strategic relationships; our ability to develop existing services or acceptable new services that keep pace with technological developments; our ability to successfully launch new product platforms, including MARKET.live, the rate of adoption of these platforms and the revenue generated from these platforms; our ability to deliver our services, as we depend on third party providers; our ability to attract and retain qualified management personnel; our susceptibility to cybersecurity incidents and other disruptions, particularly as it relates to our holdings of Toncoin; our ability to maintain compliance with the listing requirements of the Nasdaq Capital Market; the impact of, and our ability to operate our business and effectively manage our growth under evolving and uncertain global economic, political, and social trends, including legislation banning or otherwise hampering the digital asset landscape, inflation, rising interest rates, and recessionary concerns; and other important factors discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, as any such factors may be updated from time to time in our other filings with the SEC, which is accessible on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov and our Investor Relations page on our website at www.tonstrat.com/shareholders.

Although we believe that our plans, intentions, expectations, strategies and prospects as reflected in or suggested by those forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that the plans, intentions, expectations or strategies will be attained or achieved. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

Investor Relations and Media Contact:

Gateway Group, Inc.

949-574-3860

TONX@gateway-grp.com