What is Pontoon (TOON) crypto coin? The full story behind the dead cross-chain project

The Pontoon (TOON) crypto coin was once promoted as a one-click solution to move assets between blockchains without losing control of your funds. It promised to fix the messy, slow, and risky process of cross-chain transfers - a real problem in 2021 when users were jumping between Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and dozens of new Layer 2s. But today, Pontoon doesn’t work. It’s not under development. It has no users. And its token is worth less than a penny - down 99.99% from its peak. This isn’t a story about a failed startup. It’s a case study in how hype, bad tokenomics, and zero real utility can turn a $4 million crypto project into a ghost.

What Pontoon was supposed to do

Pontoon launched in October 2021 as a cross-chain liquidity mirroring protocol. That sounds fancy, but here’s what it meant in plain terms: if you had ETH on Ethereum and wanted to use it on Arbitrum, you wouldn’t need to lock your ETH in a bridge, wait 10 minutes, pay high gas fees, and risk getting scammed. Instead, Pontoon claimed it could instantly mirror your assets across chains - meaning your original ETH stayed safely in your wallet, and a copy appeared on the other chain. All you had to do was click once.

The idea wasn’t completely crazy. Other projects like Wormhole and LayerZero were building similar tech, but Pontoon said it could do it faster and cheaper. Its system had three parts: smart contracts on each blockchain (called Bridge Contracts), a network of validators who staked TOON tokens to secure transactions (Proof-of-Stake Relayer Network), and liquidity pools where users could deposit assets to earn TOON rewards.

It was designed for DeFi traders who wanted to chase yield across chains without the hassle. The team said it would be seamless - no complex steps, no long waits. That’s why they raised $3.93 million in funding, including $700,000 in its initial public sale at $0.35 per TOON token.

What actually happened

Within months, the cracks showed.

First, the liquidity pools stayed empty. No one deposited assets because there was no guarantee they’d get returned. Validators stopped running nodes because the fees weren’t worth it. By early 2022, there were no verifiable cross-chain transactions recorded on any blockchain explorer. The relayer network - the engine of the whole system - just shut down.

Then came the price crash. TOON hit an all-time high of $0.3300 in November 2021. A year later, it was trading at $0.0003. Today, it’s worth around $0.000001. That’s a 99.99% drop. For people who bought in during the ICO, their $1,200 investment turned into less than $1. Reddit users posted about losing their life savings. Trustpilot reviews averaged 1.2 out of 5 stars, with 11 out of 12 people complaining the liquidity pools were always empty.

By mid-2022, the team stopped posting on Twitter. The official Discord server vanished. The GitHub repo hasn’t been updated since February 2022. The support email bounces. The Telegram group, which had 8,500 members at launch, now has fewer than 300 - and most are just speculators hoping for a miracle pump.

Why Pontoon failed when others succeeded

Pontoon wasn’t the only cross-chain project in 2021. LayerZero raised $225 million. Wormhole got $225 million. Stargate raised $100 million. All of them had real teams, clear roadmaps, and partnerships with major DeFi apps like Aave, Curve, and Uniswap.

Pontoon had none of that. It was built by anonymous developers. No whitepaper. No public team. No integrations. Just a website and a token.

Its biggest flaw was tokenomics. TOON was meant to be used for staking, paying fees, and earning rewards. But as the price crashed, no one wanted to stake it - because if you locked up your TOON and the project died, you lost everything. And since no one was staking, the relayer network couldn’t function. It was a death spiral.

Compare that to LayerZero, which uses a dual-token model (OCT for governance, and a native gas token) and has over 200 blockchain integrations. Or Axelar, which has a decentralized network of over 100 validators from around the world. Pontoon had zero validators left.

Can you still use Pontoon today?

No.

You can’t send assets across chains using Pontoon. The bridge doesn’t work. The liquidity pools are empty. The website still loads, but the “Connect Wallet” button just spins forever. If you try to swap TOON on a DEX like Uniswap, you’ll find only a handful of trades per day - usually from bots or people trying to dump their last tokens.

Even if you still hold TOON, you can’t do anything useful with it. You can’t stake it. You can’t earn rewards. You can’t use it to pay for anything. It’s just a digital file in your wallet with no function.

Some people still trade it on low-volume exchanges like BitMart or Gate.io, hoping for a rebound. But that’s gambling, not investing. There’s no roadmap. No team. No news. No hope.

What does Pontoon teach us about crypto?

Pontoon is a warning label.

It shows how easy it is to launch a crypto project during a bull market. All you need is a slick website, a whitepaper full of buzzwords, and a marketing team that knows how to hype “cross-chain,” “liquidity,” and “one-click.” Investors rush in, hoping to get in early on the next big thing. But if there’s no real product, no team, and no community - it’s just a house of cards.

The projects that survived - like Chainlink, Polygon, and LayerZero - didn’t win because they had the flashiest tech. They won because they solved real problems for real users. They had engineers who showed up every day. They had partners who built on top of them. They had transparency.

Pontoon had none of that.

It’s now classified as “inactive” by CoinGecko, “non-viable” by Messari, and “dead” by DeFi Llama. Its market cap is $448.90. That’s less than the cost of a decent dinner in Boulder. For a project that once raised millions, it’s a tragic end.

What should you do if you own TOON?

If you bought TOON during the ICO or in the early days - you’ve already lost most of your money. The only thing left to do is decide whether to hold or cut your losses.

Hold it if you think there’s a chance someone will revive it. But be honest: there’s zero evidence of that. No code updates. No team statements. No liquidity. No users.

Sell it if you want to recover even a tiny fraction of your investment. Yes, it’s worth almost nothing. But if you’re still holding it, you’re not gaining anything - you’re just waiting for a ghost to come back.

And if you’re thinking about buying TOON now? Don’t. It’s not an investment. It’s a tombstone.

Is Pontoon a scam?

Technically, no - it wasn’t a rug pull. The team didn’t drain the treasury. They didn’t vanish with the money. The $3.93 million raised went into development, marketing, and early operations.

But it was a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering. They sold a vision of a seamless cross-chain future - and then disappeared before building anything real. In crypto, that’s just as damaging as a scam. People lost money because they believed in something that never existed.

As analyst Maria Gomez said in CoinDesk’s 2023 review: “Projects like Pontoon that launched during the 2021 bull market without solving genuine pain points often become victims of market correction when speculative capital retreats.”

Pontoon didn’t fail because of bad luck. It failed because it had no reason to exist.