TONCO review: concentrated liquidity V3 on TON in 2026

TONCO is the first — and so far only — DEX on TON with V3-style concentrated liquidity. In spirit it is what Uniswap V3 was for Ethereum in 2021: instead of liquidity smeared across the whole price curve, a provider chooses a narrow range where capital works at multiple times the productivity. In execution it is a native TON adaptation: pools as separate contracts, positions as NFTs, dynamic fees via the Algebra mechanism. This review is plain and hype-free — what is inside, how it works, where TONCO genuinely beats STON.fi and DeDust, and who should be opening positions there as an LP or trader.

TL;DR — what matters

• TONCO = first CLAMM (Concentrated Liquidity AMM) on TON. Mainnet shipped November 2024, built by the Algebra Labs team.
• Capital efficiency up to 95%. On a narrow range one dollar does the work of 50 to 100 in a classic x*y=k.
• Three fee tiers. 0.05% / 0.30% / 1% — each with its own tick spacing (10 / 60 / 200).
• Algebra dynamic fee. Base rate scales up automatically during volatility shocks — a built-in LP hedge.
• Positions are NFTs (TEP-62). Every open position lives as an NFT in your wallet; transferable, tradeable, future collateral candidate.
• No native token yet. The team confirms this officially. Airdrop talk is speculation, but historically projects like this reward early activity.
• Audits and open-source. Algebra heritage gives strong code confidence, but not every module is publicly attested — we tag it as partial.

What TONCO is and where it came from

TONCO was built by the Algebra Labs team — the same crew behind the Algebra engine on EVM chains. Algebra is a well-known Uniswap V3 fork that layered dynamic fees and a plugin system on top of the base mechanic. On EVM it powers dozens of DEXs (QuickSwap V3, Camelot, THENA and more). In November 2024 the team shipped its CLAMM on TON mainnet under the TONCO brand.

This is not a copy-paste port from Solidity to FunC — TON’s execution model is fundamentally different. Contracts are asynchronous, jettons are not ERC-20, pool state lives by other rules. The team rewrote V3 math against async messages and jetton wallets. The result is a working CLAMM read through standard getters, with TON Connect support and integration into major aggregators (TONCO already feeds quotes into swap.coffee).

Concentrated liquidity — explained simply

The fastest way to grasp the difference is a bar analogy.

Classic AMM (x*y=k). The bartender pours at any price — from $0.001 to $1,000,000 a pint. It is formally safe (never runs out), but in reality customers come around $5 to $7. Most of the bartender’s stock sits idle on the tails of the distribution.

Concentrated liquidity. The bartender says: “I am open between $5.50 and $6.50.” All capital sits inside. While price is in range, fees flow on every trade. If price drifts above $6.50 — the bartender ends up holding only one of the two assets and stops collecting fees until price returns.

What it buys you. On a TON-USDT pair that typically trades in a $5 to $8 corridor, an LP on STON.fi or DeDust holds capital distributed from zero to infinity — while actual trading happens in a tight band. On TONCO the same LP can set a $5 to $8 range and earn multiples more fees on the same capital. The realised multiplier sits around 30x to 80x depending on range width.

The price for this is attention. If TON breaks above $8 or below $5, the position stops earning until it gets moved.

Ticks and ranges — the mechanics

To make math computable on-chain without infinite values, price in a CLAMM is discretised. Points on the price axis are called ticks. Each next tick multiplies price by $1.0001$. So tick 0 is price 1, tick 1 is 1.0001, tick 100 is 1.01, and so on. Logarithmic scale — convenient for both small and large prices.

Not all ticks are available: pools pick a tick spacing. If spacing is 60, you can only open positions at ticks divisible by 60: …, 0, 60, 120, 180, … On TONCO spacing is tied to the fee tier:

• 0.05% → spacing 10. Densest grid. Used for stable-stable pairs (USDT-USDC) — price stays in a narrow corridor around 1, you need precise range tuning.
• 0.30% → spacing 60. Standard for main volatile pairs: TON-USDT, TON-NOT, TON-stTON in active mode.
• 1.00% → spacing 200. Thin pools and exotics where volatility is high and a narrow range makes no sense.

When the LP opens a position they pick a lower and upper tick — the range bounds. Capital is distributed inside. All ticks between them get “activated” and while price is in range, the position earns fees in proportion to its liquidity at the current tick.

Algebra dynamic fee

In classic CLAMMs (Uniswap V3) the fee is fixed — you pick the 0.05% or 0.30% pool and trade at that rate forever. Algebra adds a surcharge on top: during sharp volatility the base rate scales automatically. The idea is simple — when markets storm, LPs lose more to IL, so they need higher fees to compensate; and the trader pays it anyway because the alternative (worse rate on a less liquid DEX) is even worse.

The surcharge can rise meaningfully above the base rate during shocks. In calm conditions the fee equals the tier’s base rate. Fee split: 80% to LPs / 20% to protocol.

For a trader this means in volatile moments you should check effective price through an aggregator on TONCO — sometimes the dynamic surcharge makes another DEX cheaper despite a worse base rate. For LPs this is a clear plus — compensation for working in the storm.

How to open a position: step by step

1. Connect a wallet via TON Connect. Works with Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet, Tonhub, Wallet in Telegram.
2. Pick a pair and a fee tier. TON-USDT at 0.30% is the most intuitive starting point for most users.
3. Set the range. Either type min/max prices manually or pick a preset (narrow / wide / full). Narrow means more fees but a real risk of going out of range.
4. Specify one asset’s amount. The other is computed automatically — the ratio depends on current price and the chosen range.
5. Confirm the mint. You get an NFT in your wallet — that is your position.
6. Collect fees. A separate claim transaction — fees accrue inside the NFT itself.
7. Close the position (optional). Burning the NFT returns both assets in the current ratio at close time.

Important: if the market exits the range, the position ends up entirely in one asset (whichever cheapened). That is not a loss by itself, but it stops earning. Two options: wait for price to return, or burn the NFT and open a new position around the new price.

Impermanent loss on a concentrated position

This is where confusion runs deepest. People say “IL is worse on CLAMM”. It is — and it is not. Depends on how you measure.

Absolute IL. On a narrow range you are effectively levered: effective liquidity is much higher than the same capital across a full range. If price moves outside — you lock in IL scaled to that leverage. Worse than a vanilla AMM on the same dollar amount.

IL per unit of fee earned. Here CLAMM almost always wins. 50x-100x capital efficiency means you earn multiples more in fees — and in the typical scenario (price does not run far past the range) the fees-minus-IL balance is solidly positive.

The real risk is out-of-range. When price exits the range you stop earning fees, but IL keeps acting. That asymmetry is the bad direction. So range width is a trade-off: tighter means more fees and faster out-of-range; wider means fewer fees but rarer out-of-range. Market-makers typically place the range around $\pm 5%$ to $15%$ of current price and reopen positions on big moves.

TONCO vs STON.fi vs DeDust — who is it for

Short and honest:

Active trader (swaps). On top pairs (TON-USDT) TONCO often delivers a better rate because liquidity is concentrated in the active band. On long-tail jettons TONCO barely participates — go to DeDust or STON.fi. Pro tip: always check via swap.coffee — the aggregator already routes through TONCO.

Passive LP (“set and forget”). STON.fi or DeDust. Classic x*y=k, no range management, farming incentives, lower APR but zero attention required.

Stable-pair market-maker. TONCO at the 0.05% tier. On USDT-USDC or TON-stTON, concentrated liquidity multiplies your fee yield because these pairs physically cannot drift far from peg.

Advanced LP willing to rebalance. TONCO at the 0.30% TON-USDT pool with a narrow range. This is where fees-on-capital are highest — at the cost of attention.

Routers and integrations. TONCO already feeds quotes into swap.coffee. If you swap via the aggregator, you are already using TONCO liquidity without ever opening its UI.

Live pools and activity

Through mid-2026 the deepest TONCO pools are TON/USDT (running both in the 0.05% and 0.30% tiers), TON/stTON and TON/NOT. Exact TVL is read on-chain via getPoolStateAndConfiguration or aggregated on DefiLlama — we deliberately do not hard-code numbers in this article because they move daily. Live snapshots usually sit on the tonco.io site under the Analytics tab, or via GeckoTerminal by pool address.

TONCO volumes still trail STON.fi and DeDust meaningfully — normal for a fresh CLAMM that asks more of its LPs. But “concentration per unit of liquidity” is materially higher here, and the project is already a real edge for serious market-makers.

Security and audits

What is known:

• Team background. Algebra Labs is an infrastructure team with multi-year EVM history. The Algebra engine powers dozens of DEXs and no major exploit has hit the engine itself across years of production.
• Architecture. Contracts split into router, factory, pools (each a separate contract), NFT position collection. Standard V3 partitioning that minimises blast radius on any single bug.
• Mainnet since November 2024. A year and a half live with no publicly known exploit.

Why we tag as partial:

• Not every module carries a publicly attested audit with an open report.
• Open-source coverage is partial — parts of the infrastructure (frontend, indexer) live in private team repos.

None of this is a reason to skip TONCO — it is a reason not to hold a disproportionate share of your DeFi capital in any single protocol. Standard rule: no single DEX more than 20–30% of the funds you are willing to risk.

V4 plugins and roadmap

The team has officially announced V4 plugins — infrastructure that bolts extra functionality on top of the base pool:

• Limit orders — on-chain orders auto-executed when a tick is crossed. Not live yet; plugin in development.
• Trading discounts / fee rebates — programmes for active traders.
• KYC plugins — for institutional pools that need regulation.

Architecturally this lets TONCO grow from “just a CLAMM” into a fuller ecosystem. Today (May 2026) most plugins are not active yet — we judge by what works, not by promises.

When TONCO is the right choice

Scenarios where TONCO objectively beats STON.fi/DeDust:

1. Large-size TON-USDT swap in a calm market. Narrow liquidity around current price means less slippage.
2. Stable-pair market-making. USDT-USDC or TON-stTON in the 0.05% pool with a $\pm 0.5%$ range — a dream setup for an LP who can do the math.
3. Strategies around the dynamic fee. TONCO earns more in fees during shocks thanks to the Algebra surcharge — a clear plus for an active LP.
4. Using the position as an NFT. Down the line (when CLAMM-collateral lending arrives) the NFT position becomes pledgeable. Experimental for now.

Where TONCO does not make sense:

• Long-tail jettons with little activity — depth simply is not there.
• Passive farming with no desire to manage a position.
• Very small swaps ($10–$50) — fee plus gas eats the edge over STON.fi.

Bottom line

TONCO is the first genuinely “engineer-grade” DEX on TON: concentrated liquidity, dynamic fees, positions as NFTs. For an advanced LP and an active trader it opens a class of strategies that are physically impossible on STON.fi and DeDust. The price is attention — you need to understand ticks, ranges, and out-of-range risk.

For everyone else TONCO works invisibly through swap.coffee: the aggregator already uses its pools in routing, and any swap landing on a better rate may be passing through TONCO. That is arguably the strongest proof that the project is now a real part of TON DeFi — it is being priced into routes that previously only considered STON.fi and DeDust.

In the DEX comparison catalogue TONCO sits alongside STON.fi and DeDust — but it solves different problems for a different audience. If you have never tried concentrated liquidity, this is the lowest-entropy way to try it on TON: the interface follows the V3 idiom, documentation is thorough, mainnet has run a year and a half with no loud incidents.