Original author: Lydia Wu
Introduction: Decoupling of the Classical Public Chain Concept
The figures on DefiLlama and CoinMarketCap seem to conclusively show that TON is a giant and unpopular public chain - the total market capitalization has long been among the top 20, but the 24-hour trading volume is always outside the 100th; the TVL is only 53 M under the new high, ranking It is not among the top 50 public chains; the MC/TVL valuation has reached an astonishing 293, which is 33 times that of Ethereum.
Source: DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap
The past few months have witnessed the decoupling of the public chain concept defined by Ethereum by Rollup and modularity. The narrative of the chain has been weak. The market has accepted Blast’s chain name, and has also realized that AO is using the name of the network to operate a public chain. The truth.
This change has accelerated the release of TON’s potential in its “less than orthodox” position. The markets understanding of TON begins with the classical public chain narrative that no longer frames it in terms of TVL. The number of daily/monthly active users that is closer to the user side may also be taken into consideration.
Telegram founder Durove recently told the Financial Times that Telegrams monthly active users have exceeded 900 million, its valuation exceeds US$30 billion, and it is considering an IPO. Compared with Metas 3 billion monthly active users and 1.3 trillion market capitalization, Telegrams valuation is only 1/40. Moreover, Telegram’s user groups are concentrated in Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East. They have obvious characteristics of retail investors and strong demand for peer-to-peer payments. They are an ideal group to be converted to Web3. With the growth of Telegram itself, if TON can attract 30% of Telegram users within 3-5 years, it may be able to effectively support its valuation.
Source: DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap, Nansen, Token Terminal
Web3 creation new paradigm: content packaging and value transfer based on Telegram
Distribution model split, Telegram opens Web2 incremental market
Last years articlearticle, I sorted out the three stages of the Web3 creator economy. The 1.0 stage conforms to the simplest blockchain + logic and adopts the centralized content creation + Web3 distribution model (mainly in the form of NFT). This model is still the current mainstream, but NFT has begun to be used more as a pre-token speculation tool rather than a creative carrier.
Since this year, the process of experiencing the TON ecosystem has made me gradually realize that the content/rights/governance encapsulation function of NFT may be more naturally replaced by the channel-advertising-payment system based on the same attention-based traffic path. The popular Friend.tech is an intermediate form of this idea - packaging group chats into assets, but the content is difficult to expand and the economic model lacks sustainability.
Compared with many NFT and SocialFi projects that are still struggling to find application scenarios for assets, the TON ecosystem based on Telegram has built a product experience and value network that is more friendly to Web2 developers/creators and users - in existing social networks On the one hand, the Web3 distribution model is further split into Web2 business form + middleware wallet + Web3 settlement. On the one hand, it lowers the understanding and operation threshold for creators and users, and on the other hand, it also enriches the source of income for creators (advertising sharing).
Source: Lydia @Mint Ventures
From content to services, Trading Bot helps Web3 stock conversion
Web2s Supper App WeChat has achieved ecological expansion from content to services by launching service accounts and mini programs. Telegram has also followed a similar idea and consolidated its position as a mobile traffic portal by launching corporate accounts and service Bots. Among them, Trading Bots are popular among crypto users.
The Trading Bot track has grown rapidly since 2023 and is one of the few products with real demand and cash flow in the bear market. After the bear turned bull, the money-attracting effect of the Bot track was further amplified. The daily revenue of top protocols such as Banana Gun and Unibot exceeded 200,000 US dollars. Currently, except for a few deployed on web pages and Discord, most Trading Bots interact through Telegram.
Source: https://dune.com/whale_hunter/dex-trading-bot-wars
At this stage, Trading Bot trading has little to do with TON. It mainly relies on Telegrams Bot module to connect to Ethereum and Solana. However, the popularity of Bot has greatly contributed to the market education and user mental cultivation of the TON ecosystem. When crypto users become accustomed to new interaction methods like Bot, the psychological friction of experiencing other non-transaction products in the TON ecosystem will be significantly reduced. Supplemented by a complete on-chain identity system and payment module, TON can theoretically build an autonomous Consistent content packaging and value transfer system.
Exploration of the Market Model: TON’s Bot Universe and Mini App Store
At present, many products in the TON ecosystem look like simple Telegram Bot entrances + H 5 web pages, coupled with Telegram groups that jump on the screen, making people feel like they are in a lively and chaotic market.
In the meme project Notcoin, all players do is keep clicking on the gold coins on the screen in exchange for points. They can also join the team of celebrities (such as Telegram founder Durove), or send red envelopes to friends to attract traffic. With its brainless gameplay and viral spread, Notcoin gained 5 million players within a week. The current number of players exceeds 26 million, and X (Twitter) followers are 1 million. In the pre-market trading shortly after it went online, the current highest transaction volume was a transaction to purchase 100 million points for 1100 TON (approximately 4521 U).
As the darling of crypto celebrities, Farcaster’s Frames feature launched in January 2024 was hailed as an “amazing innovation.” However, the performance of this function on mobile terminals with higher traffic distribution density is not satisfactory - although users can perform a few Swap and Mint operations, if it is the turn of more complex interactions, even the simplest mini-games, to Completing it in a small box that takes up less than one-third of the mobile phone screen is also a big challenge for vision.
What is rarely mentioned in comparison is that the combination of Telegram and TON has actually completed an almost seamless jump from chat box to semi-native application. The speed of calling up the application through Bot is even faster than the WeChat applet.
Telegram launched the Bot function in June 2015 that cannot customize the interface style and the client does not communicate directly with the server. The Trading Bot built based on this function is not an independent application, but an agent interface, so the response speed is limited and it is difficult to conduct multiple interactions in parallel.
In April 2022, Telegram launched Mini App, allowing developers to fully control the user interface and the client communicates directly with the server. Mini App provides more friendly interaction and stronger composability, and can seamlessly connect with infrastructure such as wallets. It is suitable for the deployment of various Web3 products and can even replace all mobile web pages.
After the launch of Mini App, Bot did not withdraw from the stage of history. Instead, it played the role of a transmission room and served as the first entrance for user interaction to connect multiple Mini Apps in series.
Source: TON x Fans - TON Heart Powder
Source: Lydia
It is not difficult to deploy a Bot and Mini App at this stage. Users can quickly set up their own Bot through QA on the Telegram @BotFather channel, and can also experience the virtual ordering experience of the Mini App after the setup is completed on @DurgerKingBot.
Differentiated on-chain experience: TON ecological highlight
Lightweight gaming
In an era of overcapacity of public chains, whether a game is played on Ethereum L2, Solana or BSC, the experience will not be much different. For a game with strong social attributes (such as chess and card games or other party games), the experience of sharing a team with one click on Telegram or waiting for random matches with strangers on the Internet will be very different.
Tap Fantasy was originally an MMORPG game on Facebook. After entering Web3, it attracted more than 700,000 players on the BSC and Solana chains. In August 2023, as the first IDO project of TonUP, the first Launchpad of the TON ecosystem, Tap Fantasy’s token $MC was sold out within half an hour. In November 2023, Tap Fantasy officially launched a new version based on TON, published by Pluto, a Web3 game incubation company. The number of players in the new version exceeded 600,000 in 3 months, and the number of players on the chain exceeded 16,000. The exchange rate of the token $MC against TON increased from 0.2 to 1 due to a well-functioning in-game economy.
The new game Catizen incubated by Pluto is a metaverse cat-raising game that combines AI. It was launched for deletion testing on March 7, 2024, and accumulated more than 160,000 players and 13,000 on-chain users in five days. Catizen has also cooperated with $FISH, the leading meme in the TON ecosystem, and will airdrop it to $FISH holders after the test.
Source: Tap Fantasy TON version dashboard
Source: Catizen dashboard
Social Inscriptions and Memes
As a new asset issuance method that emerged in this cycle, the overflow of BTC inscription ecology to multiple chains is an experimental trend. TONs inscription ecological development also integrates the Telegram front-end and built-in wallet, which not only improves the convenience of interaction, but also kills two birds with one stone by preventing scientists.
$NANO: The first TON 20 inscription, bringing 20 million interactions and 36,000 independent minting addresses to the TON ecosystem
$GRAM: Named after the native Token of Telegram Open Network that was stopped by the SEC. For the first time, the Telegram applet front-end was used to perform deployment, casting and transfer.
$TONOT: broke the record held by $NANO with 61,000 independent minting addresses and 57,000 holders. It supports the conversion between inscriptions and NFT-Tokens. Product planning also includes in-game currency, DID, and pledge mining.
Meme-like assets have been relatively barren on the unpopular public chain TON for a long time, and crypto users have always lacked a window to understand TON until Notcoin emerged from the circle.
$NOT: Notcoin will airdrop $NOT tokens at the end of March or early April, and pre-market trading is being conducted on Getgems, the NFT trading market of the TON ecosystem.
$REDO: The concept comes from the hand drawings of Telegram founder Durov when he participated in the protests. It is the Meme with the highest market value in the TON ecosystem.
$FISH: Ton Fish is the first social meme in the TON ecosystem, with more than 18,000 current holders
$TPET: Ton Fish ecological Meme, fair launch will last until March 26, and will serve as the main token of the game Ton Pet: Tik Ton. $FISH and NFT holders have the opportunity to receive airdrops
Multi-chain Liquidity Launchpad
XTON is the first Launchpad in the TON ecosystem to introduce multi-chain liquidity, and the team members are from the TON Foundation. XTON will complete the mainnet launch and token sale in Q1, and launch the first project in Q2. In line with XTONs vision, the TON ecosystem will have the opportunity to complete the bilateral traffic connection between the Web2 social giant and the Web3 EVM world.
Conclusion: Towards an interconnected future
Since March, stimulated by news such as Telegram’s announcement to use TON to handle advertising revenue, Binance’s launch of U-based contracts, and Telegram’s pursuit of an IPO, the price of the long-dormant TON currency has quickly completed a two-level jump, and the activity on the chain has also increased significantly.
Source: https://www.tonstat.com/
Looking through TON’s roadmap since 2018, from the launch of Telegram to the community takeover, from the launch of the first cross-chain bridge to the gradually improving infrastructure, the resilience and vitality of the TON ecosystem are impressive. In 2024, TON will focus on stablecoins, cross-chain bridges and the Asian market. We look forward to seeing TON become a truly open network for interconnection between different regions, different ecologies, and different applications. Each of us in it may It will also provide a glimpse into the ancient future that blockchain has long promised.
*All data in this article are as of March 13, 2024
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC5G2581M8s&ab_channel=TOKEN2049
https://decrypt.co/220711/telegram-game-notcoin-launches-pre-market-trading-ahead-airdrop
https://medium.com/@tonx_fans/tg-mini-app-dev-3a ff 329 bf 05 a https://ton.org/en/roadmap
