The TON Foundation confirmed on Friday that bridge-v3.ton.org will cease all operations on September 1, 2026. After that date, no transfers in or out. No claims. No recovery. Assets left on the wrong chain stay there.
That gives holders roughly 100 days to act.
Who Needs to Move What
Two groups of users are affected. First: anyone holding Wrapped Toncoin on Ethereum or BNB Chain. These tokens must be bridged back to the TON network before the deadline. Second: anyone holding j-tokens (jUSDT, jUSDC, jDAI, jWBTC) in their TON wallet. These are bridge-issued equivalents of Ethereum assets and must be sent back to Ethereum.
The Foundation said all previously submitted transfers have been processed. For transactions that were executed but not yet claimed, network fees on both TON and EVM chains were covered and settled. All percentage-based transfer fees are now zero for the remaining withdrawal period.
The Bridge Handled 101 Million TON Over Four Years
The Toncoin Bridge launched in 2021 and facilitated over 101 million TON in cross-chain transfers with zero security breaches. At its peak, it served 35,000 Ethereum holders and 113,000 BNB Chain holders. It was the primary tool for accessing Toncoin on decentralized exchanges before TON built its own DeFi infrastructure.
The bridge became less critical after Telegram took direct control of the TON blockchain earlier this year and centralized exchanges added native TON trading pairs. The retirement was first announced in April 2025, when outbound bridging to Ethereum and BNB Chain was stopped. The September 2026 date marks the final shutdown of all remaining functionality.
June Is the Real Deadline, Not September
Bridge oracles will withdraw their staked TON in June 2026. They will continue processing transfers through September, but the removal of staked collateral reduces the security guarantees backing those transfers. Users who wait until August to act are trusting a bridge with less backing than the one that operated for four years without incident.
The Foundation is betting that TON’s native ecosystem is mature enough to replace the bridge entirely. TON dropped block times to 400 milliseconds with CatChain 2.0 earlier this year, and native DeFi protocols now handle most of the volume that previously went through the bridge. But bridges serve a different function than DEXs. They connect ecosystems. Shutting one down without a replacement isolates the chain.
What Happens to Forgotten Tokens
The uncomfortable question: how many of those 148,000 wallet holders are still active? Bridge users from 2022 and 2023 may have moved on, lost seed phrases, or simply forgotten they hold Wrapped TON on a chain they stopped using. The Foundation has waived fees to encourage recovery, but fee waivers do not help if the wallet owner is not paying attention.
There is no on-chain mechanism to force-return assets to their owners. After September 1, Wrapped TON on Ethereum becomes an unbacked token. Its value goes to zero. The underlying TON that backs it sits in the bridge contract with no way to redeem it. For anyone holding bridged assets, the time to act is now, not August. Checking your wallet approvals and outstanding positions across chains is the first step.
TON is the 22nd largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $4.9 billion. The bridge shutdown is not a crisis for the network. It is a cleanup operation. But for the individual holders who miss the deadline, it is a total loss. September 1 is the date on the announcement. June, when oracle stakes come out, is the date that matters.
