In my opinion, TON has a lot of potential indeed. The fact is a network which is reliable enough to harbor USDT and also is closely linked to Telegram makes it perfect for people who wants to send and receive assets quickly from their phones. Nowadays, Telegram is the biggest app which continuously presents the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystem to millions only people who would had never have the chance to hold Stablecoins in the first place.
Though, the new public also needs to have some basic education and be careful on what to expect from this new projects and how to spot scams... it is just a matter of time.before some bad people try to capitalize on the popularity of this new coin in order to steal as much money as possible from new investors.
I am not sure whether TON is the new Solana, if it is trying to be the next one,.then it is certainly going in the right direction.
It took different path compared to solana, TON more focused in growing the dapps within their telegram ecosystem, probably trying to inflate the valuation of telegram as well as making the blockchain bigger in term of market cap.
while solana just become popular on a whim, it's more suited to call TON as competitor to SOL rather than the next SOL because SOL isn't going anywhere.
The meme coin ecosystem in TON though, just seem so bland compared to SOL, nothing worth putting attention into, will proably get better, but I don't think TON will steal the meme hypes from base and solana anytime soon.
Only in case if Durov will really invest a lot in ton and it's marketing. Anyway, project looks promising
Telegram does seem to support some projects in their ecosystem (as they should do honestly) but expect the TGE event to be uglier than not coin because market is at the worst condition possible, so many project will delay TGE due to this alone.
but if Durov is the only driving factor that could make project successful, then it will not be a long lasting hype, eventually people will grow tired of all the project he supported.