The open network ($TON) has confirmed that the Toncoin and Token Bridge at bridge-v3.ton.org will permanently cease all operations on September 1, 2026, drawing the curtain on an infrastructure that was behind the blockchain’s early days of cross-chain connectivity.
This was stated in the announcement, which was published on the website $TON Telegram channel status, that all previously submitted user transfers have been processed, and for transfers that have been made but not yet claimed, the required network fees on both the $TON and EVM chains were covered, and these transfers were completed.
As a further concession to users, all percentage-based transfer fees have been waived for the remainder of the withdrawal period.
What should Toncoin and Token Bridge users do before the deadline?
$TON‘s message states that users hold Wrapped Toncoin in an Ethereum or $BNB Smart Chain wallet should bridge it back to the $TON network before September 1, 2026.
It asked users who had wrapped Toncoin in Ethereum whether $BNB Smart Chain wallets to bridge it $TON holders.
Also users who have j-tokens on their $TON wallets, including jUSDT, jUSDC, jDAI, jWBTC, and other bridge-issued equivalents, must bridge these assets back to Ethereum.
As part of the final operational steps, bridge oracles will withdraw their deployment $TON in June 2026, although they will continue to process transfers until the final cut-off date.
Why is the bridge being decommissioned?
The shutdown has been a long time coming, like $TON officially announced in April 2025 that it retired its old Toncoin bridge. It stated that the maturation of its own ecosystem was the reason for closing the bridge.
As of May 10, 2025, users could no longer bridge Toncoin $TON to Ethereum or $BNB Smart chain; however, incoming bridge and prior transfer claims were retained pending a future date for the announcement of its own sunset event. That announcement has now arrived.
When the bridge was launched, and the Ethereum version went live in August 2021 and the $BNB The Smart Chain version that followed in October of the same year, Toncoin was not yet listed on centralized exchanges and there was no proprietary decentralized financial infrastructure on the network.
For a time, the bridge was the only viable route for users looking to trade Toncoin, with funds routed through platforms such as Uniswap and PancakeSwap. Token Bridge v3, which enabled j-token transfers, was launched in April 2023.
The decision to decommission the infrastructure followed the successful deprecation of jUSDT, the Tether-wrapped stablecoin issued through the bridge. The rise of native USDt on $TONin addition to a thriving DEX ecosystem, had made the bridge’s original function redundant.
What has the bridge achieved and what will take its place?
Since the company first announced it was decommissioning the bridge last year, it had processed 31,893 transfers and moved more than 101 million. $TON tokens, all without a single successful hack or exploit and with every transfer accounted for and claimable.
At its peak, Wrapped Toncoin on Ethereum had amassed 35,694 holders and recorded more than 460,000 transactions; on $BNB Smart Chain reached 113,495 holders and more than 2.6 million transactions.
$TON is already integrated with LayerZero, Stargate, Symbiosis and Rhino.fi, platforms that offer native asset transfers without the wrap-token mode, among other security and platform features.
Built on LayerZero’s omnichain messaging protocol, Stargate supports transfers across more than 80 chains with unified liquidity pools and near-instant settlement. The transition, $TON says it improves user security by decommissioning legacy infrastructure and encourages the adoption of modern, scalable cross-chain tools.
However, LayerZero has recently come under fire for the role it played in the Kelp DAO exploit which took place in April. That incident sparked some protocols leaving the platform in favor of rival platform Chainlink.