1. Public chain positioning
As the cornerstone of the crypto ecosystem, public chains have always been the focus of the core narrative. Whether it is a first-layer or second-layer public chain, while pursuing high performance, it is more important to have real active users and rich application scenarios.
As the only public chain officially supported by Telegram, TON (The Open Network) relies on Telegrams huge 900 million monthly active users to create a unique narrative in many aspects such as payment, social networking and mini-programs.
Without increasing user migration costs, by leveraging Telegrams existing social network, TON can reconstruct the Web2 business model in a Web3 way.
Although Telegram is already an important base for crypto users, the TON chain is still not popular enough among these users.
Many Alpha Telegram groups require NFTs as tickets, but these NFTs are not based on TON’s Jetton; trading robots such as Unibot and Banana Gun have made Telegram more widely used among crypto users, but a large number of transactions actually still occur on Base or Solana rather than TON.
(Note: Jetton is a token on TON Blockchain, which can be compared to ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. For details, please refer to the official document: https://docs.ton.org/develop/dapps/asset-processing/jettons)
The TON team and the TON Foundation are actively working to break down existing barriers and unleash the full potential of TON.
By allowing a large number of real users to directly own crypto wallets, users can transfer cryptocurrencies as easily as sending WeChat red envelopes. Coupled with Mini Apps similar to WeChat applets, TON is expected to bring the holy grail of true Mass Adoption to the crypto industry.
2. Ecological Status
According to Defillama data, TON’s TVL is currently US$310 million, ranking 25th among all public chains.
Thanks to the joint and coordinated efforts of the TON Foundation, Telegram, and their partners, on-chain ecosystem activity has exploded in the last two months.
At the end of March, the TON Foundation announced that it would distribute 30 million $TON within one month as liquidity incentives. In April, Tether announced that USDT would be directly integrated into TON, allowing minting and redemption.
Successive stimulus has led to a rapid increase in the TVL of the TON chain, from US$22 million at the beginning of March to US$300 million now. In less than three months, TVL has increased by nearly 15 times and is showing signs of further growth.
（Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON?price=true）
The resulting blockchain activity has seen significant growth across all metrics:
Daily transaction volume has increased more than 50 times: from 100,000 transactions per day to 4-9 million transactions per day since March 2024
Daily active wallets increased 8 times: from 60,000 daily active users in March 2024 to nearly 500,000 today
The number of wallets activated on-chain has increased 4x: from 1.5 million addresses to 6.2 million
TONs daily fees average $100,000: half of TONs fees are burned
（Source: https://app.artemis.xyz/project/ton）
According to data from ton.apps, the TON ecosystem currently has a total of 787 apps, including development tools, games, NFTs, social, Launchpad, groups and other categories.
（Source: https://ton.app/）
3. Interaction Direction
In terms of TON ecosystem interaction, there are two main perspectives:
First, DeFi projects that have already reached scale can receive additional rewards from the foundation’s liquidity incentives;
The second type is games and meme projects with strong spreadability. For example, small games like Notcoin based on Telegram can easily attract a large number of real users, and being listed on a large exchange will make you extremely rich.
Some opportunities for interaction are described below.
wallet
The first step to participate in the TON ecosystem is to use a wallet. Currently, there are 43 wallets that support the TON chain.
（Source: https://ton.app/）
Wallet
Wallet is Telegrams native centralized custodian wallet, similar to WeChat Wallet, which is built into WeChats settings. Users can directly use Wallet to exchange tokens. Wallet supports users to deposit funds through P2P or bank cards.
(Wallet and TON Space)
TON Space
TON Space is a Telegram-based self-hosted wallet launched by the TON Foundation. It is also embedded in Telegram and opened through Ton Space in Wallet. Users can use TON Space to connect directly from TON-based dApps.
The experience of using TON Space is similar to that of using other non-custodial EVM wallets. You can import existing accounts from other non-custodial wallets such as Tonkeeper. The difference is that in addition to the mnemonic private key, the wallet can also be restored through email and Telegram account.
DeFi
Although the TVL of the TON chain has experienced explosive growth in the past two months, the asynchronous call design of the TON chain has improved performance and scalability, but it has also increased the difficulty of development and maintenance for developers.
Therefore, unlike Ethereum Layer 2, which can see large-scale migration of leading projects, the TON chain still has a lot of room for improvement in the diversity of the DeFi ecosystem.
（Source: https://defillam a.com/chain/TON）
TonUP
TonUP is a LaunchPad based on the TON chain, which helps potential projects on TON to issue assets and raise funds, thus promoting the development of the TON ecosystem.
Early supported projects such as the game Tap Fantasy have now gained more than 730,000 users. TonUP has received official support from the TON Foundation and TONCoin.Fund, and has received financing from well-known investment institutions such as Foresight X.
（Source: http://tonup.io/）
STON.fi
STON.fi is the largest DEX on TON, providing almost zero-fee, low-slippage trading services and direct integration with the TON wallet.
According to data from Defillama, excluding LSD projects that are not included in the public chain TVL, STON.fi ranks first in the TON ecosystem with a TVL of US$222 million, accounting for 71.4% of the total TVL. It is the biggest beneficiary of the TON liquidity incentive plan, with its TVL increasing 20 times in 2 months.
（Source: http s://app.ston.fi）
STON.fi has the most complete trading pairs. Currently, before the end of the liquidity incentive activity in June, trading or providing liquidity in the designated trading pool can obtain additional income, with an APY of more than 200%.
At the same time, STON.fi provides 10,000 $STON tokens, and depositing $STON can get an airdrop of up to 10% of the deposit amount.
Tonstakers
TON is a POS blockchain. Tonstakers is the first LSD-type liquidity staking platform in the TON ecosystem, developed by TOP Labs and built into Tonkeeper. Similar to Lido, users can stake $TON to obtain $stTON, which can be redeemed back to $TON after the staking period ends.
Currently, more than 50,000 users have pledged $TON worth 220 million US dollars. Although the APY is only 2.76%, it is still a good financial management option for users who are optimistic about $TON in the long term.
（Source: https://to nstakers.com/）
Game
Compared to the relatively scarce DeFi ecosystem, TON is very strong in the gaming sector. Mini apps based on Telegram are naturally suitable for small games with social attributes. Simple and easy games plus one-click forwarding on Telegram can spread the game in the most effective way.
$Notcoin, which was recently launched on Binance Launchpool, is a mini-game on TON where players mine $Notcoin by clicking on coins in Telegram.
The simple gameplay, team mechanism and real benefits made it spread like a virus, attracting more than 35 million users and 5 million daily active users.
Notcoin not only makes good use of Telegrams huge mass base of encrypted users, but also allows many people to experience digital currency for the first time in a simple way, fully demonstrating the application potential of the TON chain.
Catizen
Catizen is the second Telegram Bot product of Pluto Studio. As an early development team and co-builder of the ecosystem, the Pluto team has received multiple financial and resource supports from the TON Foundation.
In August 2023, the team launched its first Telegram Bot-based mini-game Tap Fantasy in the TON ecosystem, which currently has 730,000 users worldwide.
Catizen is a cat-themed game that combines GameFi, AI, and the metaverse to give users a highly immersive interactive experience.
After only two months of launch, the number of Catizen player users has exceeded 10 million, bringing 695,000 users to the TON chain.
(Source: https://x.com/CatizenAI/status/1795059958146605532)
Catizen players can participate in the game by raising cat characters and obtain token rewards through in-game activities.
The game provides a mining mechanism that allows players to earn $wCATI tokens in the form of cat paws by completing tasks and activities.
In addition to the game itself, Catizen also serves as a Launchpool for new issuance. The first round of Launchpool, which just ended at the beginning of the month, issued 840 million $wCATI, with more than 24,000 users participating and a pledged amount of more than 39 million US dollars.
In the next stage, Catizen will be transformed into a Telegram game platform. It has signed contracts with 18 popular WeChat mini-games. It will leverage the team’s valuable experience in chain reform and rich experience in TON ecosystem deployment to gradually launch these games on the Catizen game platform and initiate Launchpool.
Considering Catizen’s unique positioning, experienced team, and on-chain performance, it is worth tracking and participating in for the long term.
Hyper
Hyper is the first metaverse project in the TON ecosystem that simulates real-life human scenes. It is similar in type to Notcoin but has an upgraded gameplay. A simple clicker cannot replace real people in playing games.
Start the game by clicking on the bot, drag the character to collect coins according to the instructions, and purchase boxes to get high scores and replenish the battery to collect coins.
The game also has a promotion strategy of inviting friends to get gold coins. With Notcoin’s proofing, more exquisite graphics and improved gaming experience, this upgraded version of Notcoin also has great potential.
The Open League (TOL)
TOL is a competition for TON ecosystem projects and users. It aims to increase user engagement across the ecosystem, help projects expand their user base, and develop more attractive and functional products for a large audience on Telegram. Users will also be rewarded for participating.
Therefore, when participating in TON ecosystem interactions, the TOL rankings are a good guide.
（Source: https://blog.ton.org/these-are-the-best-projects-of-tol-season-1）
More than three million USD worth of $TON was distributed in the first quarter, which lasted for one month. Ston.fi and DeDust, which ranked first and second in the DeFi category, are now the top two DEXs in terms of TVL on TON. Tonstakers, which ranked first in the LSD category, has even surpassed Ston.fi in terms of TVL.
（Source: https://blog.ton.org/tol-season-2-results-just-landed ）
In the second season, Catizen ranked first and NFT trading platform Getgems ranked second. The pre-airdrop market provided by Getgems was the main trading market for Notcoin points before.
（Source: https://ton.org/en/open-league?filterBy=forProjects ）
The third season is currently underway, and it is expected that $TON worth one million US dollars will be distributed. The top-ranked projects will be the key interaction targets.
Yescoin
In addition to Catizen, which ranks first, Yescoin, which ranks second, is the fastest growing game on TON recently. It is very similar to Notcoin, with a mode of collecting coins and completing tasks. You can collect tokens by sliding the screen on your phone.
This type of simple and brainless game is actually very addictive, and high-quality imitations will have many followers.
Tonano
Tonano is the inscription project of the TON chain. During the minting process of the first TON 20 inscription $nano, the large number of participating users and triggered network transactions brought huge traffic and transaction load to the TON network, resulting in brief delays and congestion of the network.
(Source: http://tonano.io/)
Tonano’s Marketplace has over a million dollars in trading volume, providing the necessary liquidity for TON 20.
The cross-protocol asset bridge enables asset swaps between TON 20 and other inscription protocols and Jetton tokens, making a broader inscription ecosystem possible.
Fanton
Fanton is a game similar to Football Manager based on TON, in which star cards are issued on the TON chain in the form of NFTs.
It currently has more than 400,000 registered users and has received investments from TONcoin.Fund, First Stage Labs and Tonstarter. Considering the upcoming European Cup, it is likely to become the next hot spot.
（Source: Fant on Twitter）
Squid
Squid is an inscription game built on TON where users can buy squid eggs containing $TON in the market, hatch squids from the squid eggs, produce more squid eggs and then sell them for profit.
IV. Conclusion
The ecosystem of the TON chain is still in its early stages, especially DeFi projects are relatively weak. However, the value of TON cannot be simply measured by TVL. Relying on the real user base of the Telegram platform, it is a natural advantage that other public chains cannot match.
Mini App games that focus on mobile devices are particularly easy to spread and attract people to watch. For example, you can refer to the WeChat game Sheep.
At the same time, for non-encrypted users using Telegram, TON can greatly reduce the users learning cost and make it easier to break through the barriers between Web2 and Web3.
Stimulated and promoted by the TON Foundation, the TON ecosystem has shown good development momentum and deserves long-term attention and participation.
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