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Author: Ian, Betty, Xinwei, Momentum Capital; Vivi, TON Foundation
In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of various public chain L1s such as Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Aptos, most of which are pursuing high performance, EVM compatibility, etc.However, except for Ethereum’s active developer community and users, relying on the active developer community and users, it has continuously emerged applications such as Uniswap and AAVE that create new value fields for users, most other public chains are just repeating the same scripts.Copy the three-piece DeFi products on the market, use airdrops, high APY, etc. to attract users/traffic on other chains, issue coins to the institute, and develop ecological projects to drive the rise of public chain coins.Chain homogeneity, product homogeneity, and user groups and funds are mostly “hired” by rewards or airdrops. Innovation cannot reach the needs of users at all.In the bull market, the bubble effect makes these public chains look prosperous, but only after the sea water fades in the bear market, will it be known who is swimming naked.
Recently, both ZK, AA and L2 tend to pursue technology from specific products, copy the same narrative, and put old wine in new bottles, to some extent, have achieved a high degree of inclination.And the problem of fragmentation of l2 liquidity is becoming increasingly serious.
In the red ocean of public chains, there is no shortage of high performance and narrative, but there is a lack of users who have real needs to use public chains.TON, a public chain that is close to 900 million monthly active users, stands out from the Hundred Chain War because of its intimate connection with Telegram.With a wide range of global users and developers, Telegram is no longer satisfied with just building a social communication platform. Through continuously enriching product lines (Dapps), connecting high-frequency payment and life scenarios, it tries to become a social platform and eventually become aTransformation of super application similar to WeChat.If Telegram is WeChat in the Web3 field, then TON is its indispensable public chain.
TON Recent Hot Topics
In February, Telegram founder Durove announced the official sales channel of TON tokens on his personal channel, and the relationship between TON and Telegram has become closer and tacit.
Telegram advertising platform uses TON
The Telegram advertising platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries, with channel owners in which they will receive a 50% commission on Telegram’s revenue from displaying ads on their channels.
Officials said that to ensure the fast and secure advertising payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be used specifically, and the official will share revenue with channel owners, which will create a virtuous cycle where content creators will be able to cash in on their TONcoin, orReinvest it to promote and upgrade their channels.
Fish
The first meme coin on TON was launched fairly, with more than 22,000 addresses, currently has a market value of 47M, with a 14-fold increase in March. It has officially announced a partnership with many projects: TONRaffles, TONano, Tap Fantasy, RoOLZ, Catizen.
Telegram is about to IPO
According to the Financial Times, Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed that Telegram’s active users have reached 900 million and are now close to profit. Telegram’s revenue has reached hundreds of millions of dollars. It is expected to be listed after making profits this year or next year. The United States may be potentially listed.Place.In the IPO, Durov said Telegram will consider selling stock allocations to loyal users.
Telegram has raised about $2 billion in debt financing, including $1 billion in bonds issued in 2021, and $750 million and $270 million in bonds issued last year.If listed by the end of March 2026, these bondholders will be able to convert unsecured debt into equity at a discount of 10% to 20% of the Telegram IPO price.
Introduction to TON
Originally known as Telegram Open Network, The Open Network was created by Telegram in 2018 to create a powerful and scalable blockchain platform and complete the highest fundraising ICO in history through its token $Grams.In 2020, the Telegram team abandoned the Telegram Open Network project and returned the US dollar funds raised by the ICO after agreeing to pay a $18.5 million fine.
Since then, Telegram Open Network has been continued to be developed by a community called NewTON.In May 2021, the community voted to rename the long-term and stable testnet 2 to Mainnet; the NewTON community was renamed TON Foundation to support and develop TON as a non-profit community; Telegram Open Network was also renamed The Open Network.
Currently, TON Foundation is the main force in promoting TON development and development.TON Foundation safeguards the interests of the community by supporting initiatives that help achieve the mission of open networks and supports the development of TON projects without controlling TON technology.Currently, the TON Foundation team has more than 50 people, more than half of them come from Russia, Ukraine and other countries. It involves business development, engineers, marketing, finance, law, etc. Most of the employees have VK and Telegram work experience.It is worth noting that Andrew Rogozov, a core founding member of TON Foundation, is the former CEO of VK.com, a social network founder of Telegram in Russia, and the first CEO of VK.com is Durov himself.In addition, TON Foundation members include: Bill Qian, the head of the original coin security ball M&A and Binance Labs, and John Hyman, former chief investment advisor at Telegram.
TON chain development status and current situation
The goal of TON is to provide easy-to-use tools and reliable and stable infrastructure to make massive adoption easier.Although TON was launched on the exchange in 2021 and subsequently launched infrastructure and functions such as TON payment, storage, DNS, cross-chain bridge (official bridge supports TON/ETH and BSC), TON really attracted widespread attention last year.In July, the craze for Telegram Bots such as Unibot and Bananagun, and at the Token 2049 event in September, Telegram officially announced its official cooperation with TON and launched the self-hosted crypto wallet TON Space, which pushed TON to a climax.So far, the price of TON has risen from $1.2 in August last year to $3.8 (up 215%), and its market value has squeezed into the top 20, becoming a dazzling dark horse in the previous bear market.Now, although TON’s popularity has decreased, as the only public chain officially supported by Telegram, with 900 million active users behind Telegram, TON will be in a number of existing public chain volume performance (TPS), volume MEV compatibility, volume compatible, volumeIn the context of narrative, a completely unique narrative is launched from the perspectives of payment, social networking, mini programs, etc.
As of March 20, 2024, the number of validators on the TON chain was 301, and the total number of $TON pledged under the PoS mechanism was 440 million, distributed in 29 countries.TON’s total on-chain accounts have been showing a long-term growth trend, with 8.12 million accounts currently available.Official information from the Dubai Conference shows that over the past year, TON has achieved a 2.5-fold increase in active user addresses, with daily transaction volume of approximately US$220,000.Currently, the TVL on the TON chain is 53.43 million US dollars, and a total of 13 projects have been included by DefiLlama.In addition to the TON chain, TON also has TON Storage – a decentralized file storage system; TON DNS – assigning highly readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services and nodes; TON Pay – a micropayment channel, which can be realized.Instant off-chain transactions; TON Proxy – TON network’s network proxy anonymous service, used to hide the IP address of the TON node.Although TON has been established for 5 years, TON’s grand blueprint has just begun, and developers and users’ exploration of this ecosystem is slowly unfolding.
Token Economy
The initial supply of token $TON was 5 billion, and the last $TON was also mined on June 28, 2022.The supply of $TON is unlimited, growing at a rate of about 0.6% per year (about 3 million).After Telegram settled with SEC in 2020, all circulating $TON tokens were placed in special Giver smart contracts for anyone to mine, so 98.55% of the tokens were allocated in early POW mining.The team only has 1.45% of the tokens in their hands.Unlike most public chain tokens in the early days that were hostage by big capital, a large number of $TONs are currently concentrated in the hands of early miners, and the chip distribution is more scattered.To solve the problem that most of the tokens are concentrated in the hands of early miners, TON launched a community proposal last February, freezing 171 inactive early wallets for 48 months totaling 1.08B $TON (about 21% of the total).If this part of the frozen $TON is included, the total market value of TON will be among the top 10 in the cryptocurrency market.After $TON is mined, it will be converted from PoW to PoS. $TON’s annual token inflation will be used to reward validators who keep the network secure, but if the validator is nothave properly, it will be pledged.TON will be confiscated.According to the news revealed by the Dubai Conference, TON intends to increase pledge rewards to promote further increase in the TON chain pledge rate.
Token $TON has multiple usage scenarios, such as transaction fee payment, pledge, cross-chain transactions, etc. In the future, $TON can also be used to pay for TON proxy services, etc.The positioning of $TON is also similar to that of fiat currencies on Telegram, and the application of $TON on Telegram is also particularly worthy of attention.For example, $TON can be used to pay for Telegram Premium membership fees at a more favorable discount. Telegram wallet can currently use credit cards to purchase $TON directly, and then use $TON to purchase virtual products such as anonymous accounts.According to statistics, anonymous accounts worth a total of US$50 million have been sold within one month of their launch. As of now, anonymous accounts have sold US$130 million, and $TON has huge potential for payment in this regard.In the future, $TON may also be used for Telegram promotion, and advertising services can also be paid for using $TON.
In addition, the $TON token will likely deflate as network usage increases.Because, in June last year, TON Foundation proposed to introduce a destruction mechanism: 50% of the transaction fees incurred by transactions on the TON chain, domain names, number auctions in the TON network will be used to destroy $TON.
TON Token Analysis
As of March 20, 2024, the total supply of $TON was 5.104 billion, the circulation was 3.469 billion, the price was $3.8/piece, the FDV was $19.276 billion, and the Market Cap was $13.101 billion, ranking 13. CurrentlyI have joined CEXs such as Bybit, OKX, Kucoin, Bitget, etc., and I have joined the Binance contract.$TON has also become the highest-ranked token that has not been listed on Binance Spot.In time, if TON’s popularity and user traffic can experience explosive growth, then $TON will also become the only choice for Binance’s priority listing.From the perspective of chip distribution, the number of coins held by the top ten wallets accounts for 38% of the total $TON, and the number of coins held by the top 100 wallets accounts for 49% of the total $TON. The token distribution is relatively scattered, avoiding being attacked by a large number of investment institutions.Potential selling pressure held by the project party.In addition, TON has also launched the TON Believers Fund, which has locked in more than 1.317 billion $TONs (about 25% of the total supply).TON Believers Fund allows any $TON holder to donate or lock their tokens for 5 years: a 2-year lock-up period and a 3-year vest period, and will reward donated tokens to all depositors starting from year 3.According to current public information, 10.54% of tokens have been donated to the TON Foundation by the community in 2022.
Compared with the existing public chain with Mass adoption (mass adoption) as its vision, if the TON chain is evaluated by the commonly used indicator “market value/TVL” that measures public chains, it is not difficult to see that TON has the highest “market value/TVL”, and it is alsoThat is, there is a risk of overvalued TON currency price.However, as will be mentioned below, the value of TON cannot be evaluated by traditional public chain valuation methods, but should be evaluated from the perspectives of transaction volume and Dapps’ agreement revenue from the grand narrative of TON and Telegram.Because of the implementation of Mass adoption, the money-making effect of DeFi alone may not be able to retain traffic for a long time (this can be seen from the TVL of Avalanch and Fantom, which are sluggish in the bear market in the bear market), so the key lies in the low thresholdUser experience, combination with daily high-frequency life scenarios and huge traffic entrances.This is also TON’s core competitiveness – a deep binding to the Telegram ecosystem.The application experience brought by the deep binding of TON and Telegram to users is much better than that of most Web3 products. The comparable valuation of TON can also be compared with WeChat and WhatsAPP in Web2, which have similar ecological experiences.From this perspective, TON’s current valuation of only 7-8 billion is still undervalued.However, although we are optimistic about the long-term development of TON and its huge imagination space in the future, if the $TON token wants to achieve a 5-10-fold return, we have to wait for the arrival of the bull market.
The important position in the Telegram Web3 macro
Telegram has the natural Web3 gene
Telegram is a cloud-based free instant messaging software founded in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov, founders of VK (one of the mainstream social media in Russia).Telegram’s insistence on freedom of speech and privacy protection has attracted many users around the world, with more than 1.3 billion registered users and nearly 800 million monthly active users (MAU).Telegram’s loose speech atmosphere and regulatory environment make Telegram a “important position” for Crypto – almost all Web 3.0/Crypto projects have Telegram communities for project promotion, news release, and interaction with the community.The activity of the Telegram community has also become an important indicator for measuring project marketing capabilities.And more than half of the Channel and Group, which have the most subscriptions/members on Telegram, are related to Crypto content (as shown in the figure below, the two largest groups on Telegram are related to Crypro).More importantly, according to TON Chinese Channel statistics, Telegram has over 37,000 active crypto communities.
Due to supervision and other reasons, a large number of real users have moved from Slack and WeChat groups to Telegram, which has also given rise to huge demands for service such as news, announcements, large-scale transfer notifications, and Telegram has also seized it in a timely manner.User needs – reshape the platform’s emoticon system, launching Story video sharing, launching blockchain-driven anonymous number login (virtual phone number starting with +888), etc.Not only that, WeChat’s great success as a social platform serving a wide range of users has also made Telegram approaching WeChat to try to complete a gorgeous turn from communication protocol to social platform, and ultimately becoming a large integrated super application.
In addition, Telegram’s open source, open API and rich database make Telegram a developer-friendly platform, attracting a large number of developers to build Apps on it.
Based on the above discussion, it is not difficult to see that Telegram has accumulated a wide range of active users and developers, and has fully met the conditions required to build a Telegram-owned public chain or even a unique Telegram-closed blockchain kingdom – users and development.In this case, TON and Telegram Bot came into being with the support of Telegram’s founders for blockchain and the commercialization of Telegram through blockchain.
Telegram Web3 Iron Triangle: Wallet, Dapp/Bot & TON
Wallet
The success of WeChat is not only because of its social attributes, but also because of its financial attributes – we can use WeChat transfers, AA to make payment orders, ride-hailing, train tickets, online shopping, recharge and other life scenarios involving online and offline aspects,Therefore, in China, you can go out with just a mobile phone with WeChat installed.The network effect of the Internet allows the total number of users to grow at a square level.Similarly, a large number of crypto enthusiasts also often use TG as one of the core communication tools with the community.As the encryption world expands, network effects will emerge here. The TG platform has now become a necessary communication tool for crypto enthusiasts and project parties, and has a faint trend of becoming the Web3 version of WeChat.
Just as the widespread development of mobile Internet in China is inseparable from the emergence of WeChat Pay and Alipay, Web3’s development from attracting new users to large-scale adoption is also inseparable from traffic ports – encrypted digital wallet – an encrypted digital with simple operation and secure operation.wallet!Of course, in addition to being able to freely trade various crypto assets like most existing crypto wallets, this crypto digital wallet is more important to link with traditional currencies, so that users can easily exchange freely between fiat currency and cryptocurrency.In and out.The emergence of the built-in unmanaged wallet @Wallet of Telegram allows users to easily access and use @Wallet without leaving the Telegram platform, which just caters to the needs of Web2 users. Its convenience and operation simplicity reduce the entry of new Web2 usersThresholds and learning costs will inevitably become the preferred wallet for Web2 users when entering Web3 in the future.In addition, since @Wallet can also run in the Telegram app on the mobile phone, people use mobile phones more frequently than computers for longer periods, the emergence of @Wallet has also caused PC Web3 to quietly transform into mobile Web3.All social solutions in Web3 cannot solve one problem, that is, users must have an app first, but this is the most difficult step in massive adoption.The core logic of Telegram’s built-in wallet is that users do not need to download another app, which can naturally inherit users’ trust in Telegram, making the last step easier.
So what are the functional characteristics of @Wallet?@Wallet is a built-in unmanaged wallet for Telegram, similar to Alipay and WeChat Pay. It can be opened directly in the Telegram chat interface without entering a password. Users can use their bank cards to purchase, receive, trade, transfer cryptocurrency and easily use Telegram BotPay for products and services on Telegram in $TON, $USDT or $BTC.In addition, @Wallet may become the Telegram version of Yu’ebao in the future, and can realize flexible cash management functions for users by connecting to assets such as treasury bonds.
Last September, Telegram launched a new TON space – a self-hosted version of @wallet, which is directly integrated into @wallet in the Telegram interface.Third parties cannot access users’ assets. Users can settle directly on the TON Space page without having to jump to the third-party payment settlement platform. While enhancing the security and privacy attributes of the wallet, they also enhance the encrypted financial attributes of the Telegram platform itself.Unlike existing Little Fox Wallets, TP Wallets, etc., in addition to using mnemonics to restore the wallet, TON space allows users to recover the wallet using email and Telegram accounts, which provides users with additional convenience and security.The current TON Space usage interface looks similar to the Little Fox Wallet, allowing users to accept, send and exchange tokens, and the NFT assets held by the wallet page can be seen on the wallet.However, the Dapp cannot be opened through TON Space at present, and this feature will be launched in the future.According to the team, TON Space Wallet will support projects within the TON ecosystem, that is, users can link their Telegram accounts to ecological projects on the TON chain.The official version of TON Space is expected to be launched in November in regions other than the United States and other countries.To facilitate users to manage multiple wallet addresses simultaneously, TON Space plans to integrate multiple addresses in the future.In addition, TON will support the transfer and display of NFT collections to meet the social needs of Telegram users.In addition, from the perspective of information density, Telegram’s information density will be greater than WeChat, users’ information immersion in Telegram, and the private domain traffic density will be wider, which will also promote payments within TON Space and TelegramCombining scenarios such as social networking can achieve more refined and high-density value, traffic and information transmission through higher information density.
From the above, it can be concluded that the wallet is the traffic entrance of Telegram Web3. However, after introducing users, various entertainment facilities are needed, that is, the Dapp of Telegram’s existing Web2 is also provided in Web3, which is thus born.Telegram mini app (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bot.
Telegram mini app (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bot
Telegram Mini Apps is a web application running inside Telegram Messenger, launched by TON Foundation to meet user gaming, content sharing, productivity tools and more, and can be easily accessed from Telegram chats or group conversations.Telegram Mini Apps includes three main types: robots, games and web applications, and are divided into four categories: management, Web3, utility and gaming in terms of functionality.Telegram Bot is an automated program run through the Telegram chat program, allowing users to obtain information and market data without leaving the Telegram platform and interact with smart contracts.
At this point, readers may wonder what the relationship between Telegram Mini Apps and Web3 is?These Telegram Mini Apps can use the infrastructure provided by TON on the TON chain and are available to users on the Telegram interface through Telegram Bot.In this way, App developers can not only use the infrastructure provided by TON to develop projects to reduce the difficulty of project development, reduce development time, and obtain financial support such as TON grants, but more importantly, developers can quickly access Telegram’s wide user base.In turn, monetize multiple ways within Telegram (such as through in-app purchases, subscription models or advertising).
The bridge between Telegram Mini Apps and Telegram is Telegram Bot. It can be seen from its “cumulative trading volume as of July last year, with a single-day trading volume of more than US$190 million” and the highest trading volume in a single day.Its huge real user needs.From the user’s perspective, they can use this bot to conduct DEX transactions, airdrops, follow up transactions in a specific wallet, etc.Through interaction with Telegram Bot, users can easily connect to the entire blockchain on the Telegram interface with only a certain fee.
Currently, the main functions provided by Telegram Bot are:
1) Trading: buy and sell tokens directly;
2) Airdrop swiping (Sniping): Monitor the new tokens and set automatic buying in advance;
3) Copy trading: simulates transactions of other traders;
4) Airdrop farming: Automatically perform a series of operations to improve the chance of obtaining airdrops;
5) Find the optimal liquidity pool for a specific token, etc.According to Binance Research Report, Telegram Bot makes profits by charging transaction fees and token trading “taxes” and by July last year, Telegram robots had collected more than 15,000 ETH (approximately US$28.7 million) in revenue.
According to Binance Research Report, Telegram Bot’s daily active users peaked over 6,000 in July last year, with the most used ones being Maestro (about 2,000-3,000 daily active users) and Unibot (about 1,700 people).
Of course, using Telegram Bot also has hidden concerns about project security and privacy:
1) Like all Web2 applications, users’ Telegram accounts are at risk of being stolen and Telegram accounts do not require a password to log in to Telegram Bot, so Telegram Bot is also exposed to the security of Telegram account passwords;
2) Through Bot transactions, Bot will access the private key, which has the risk of private key leakage;
3) Like all crypto projects, Bot’s interaction with smart contracts exposes the wallet to smart contract risks;
4) Most people are worried about transferring coins to robots.
Although Telegram Bot has risks, compared with the existing DeFi front-end, Telegram Bot provides a more friendly and convenient user experience, with real and practical needs, and is backed by Telegram’s daily active users, making the Bot track full ofImagination space.Using Blueprint under Telegram TACT language also reduces the difficulty of developers to build and maintain Bot projects, and has spawned a large number of Bot projects.The following chapter “Investment Opportunities -Bot” will try to analyze investment opportunities in the Telegram Bot track.
TON: Telegram’s only blockchain supported
TON has been closely linked to Telegram since its birth, and Telegram executives are even more willing to support TON. For example, Telegram CEO Du Rove publicly stated in a statement last July that he owned it.$TON.
(From public social media)
At the TOKEN2049 meeting in Singapore last September, Telegram publicly stated that it will now rely entirely on TON as its blockchain infrastructure, and $TON and its Web3 ecosystem will enjoy promotion on Telegram and prioritize access to Telegram’s global advertising platform Telegram Ads.The goal is to cultivate and promote a TON-centric Web3 ecosystem in Telegram and develop Telegram integrated wallet into an integrated platform that meets all user needs.
Readers may be confused why TON is needed since Telegram Bot has provided users with a convenient and fast Web3 experience?The main function of Bot is to divert traffic and link users to Dapps.As a representative of the TON Foundation said, TON allows developers to create products with realistic needs that can be deployed on the Telegram platform.As a public chain, TON can not only provide tools and infrastructure for blockchain construction, but also Dapps built on TON can be used on the Telegram interface, which will empower Telegram and form a powerful flywheel effect.That is, TON can promote the use of Dapps.For example, using TON wallet to open Telegram Mini Apps can enhance users’ psychological security.Because TON launched TON Connect, a technology based on modern cryptography, allowing users to log in to services and applications through TON wallets with one click, that is, the user’s key will never leave the user’s device and the user’s privacy will not be violated..Using TON Connect reduces users’ concerns about entering private keys when using Telegram Bot, thereby promoting the use of Telegram Bot and Mini Apps.On the other hand, the token $TON provides a way for Telegram to commercialize—a total of approximately $1.2 billion raised due to historical sensitivity, Telegram’s single profit model and limited sources of operating funds (founder’s personal funds and 2 bond issuances).US dollars), which has led Telegram to look for decentralized commercialization.In addition, the $TON token provides the public with the technology to protect their rights and freedoms, adding new dimensions to communication between users on a transaction basis.For example, in July last year, the TON Foundation announced that the TON chain had introduced encrypted messaging function, adopting end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only senders and receivers can see the message content, and the transaction fee for each message is 0.006 $TON.TON’s infrastructure and its financial attributes are an indispensable and important component in the Telegram Web3 territory.
Iron Triangle
As Halil Mirakhme, Chief Operating Officer of @Wallet, clearly pointed out when talking about his competitor Signal, the advantage of @Wallet is that it has support for a platform like Telegram that supports social interaction and discussion of cryptocurrencies.The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp /Bot and TON provides Telegram users with a complete closed-loop Web3 experience: starting from getting messages and communications from Telegram group/channel, to conducting token transactions with Telegram Bot through Telegram Mini Apps, and then toUse @Wallet to participate in the TON Eco Project with TON Space.
At this point, we can depict the grand map of Telegram Web3: Wallet is the traffic entrance for Telegram Web2 users to enter the Web3 world, Dapp undertakes traffic and retains users, Bot bridges Wallet and Dapp to provide users with a simple and convenient operation process, and TON chain provides the foundation.Facilities and $TON tokens provide commercialization channels, and the Dapp developed on TON can empower Telegram to form a powerful flywheel effect.The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp /Bot and TON can provide users with a simple, convenient, free and uncensored Web3 experience, and also creates a Web3 Mini Dapp development platform for developers to quickly reach a wide range of users.The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp /Bot and TON makes Telegram not only a network, but also a decentralized digital kingdom with its own economy, citizenship, digital property rights, currency, free markets and communication infrastructure.and many other services.
TON’s framework and technology development
To understand TON, we must first break away from the current design framework of the public chain led by ETH.TON is a public chain designed by a team that has designed a massive platform business (VK, Russia’s largest social network) at the beginning of its design.As a project at the same time as Ethereum, TON even proposed the concept of sharding earlier than Ethereum 2.0 to support more complex businesses.TON’s underlying architecture design logic is also significantly different from Ethereum, and the design of the underlying architecture also determines to a certain extent whether the public chain can meet its goal of carrying large-scale users.WhatsApp and WeChat are still unable to support the simultaneous synchronization of messages on multiple terminals of mobile phones and computers, which is a problem with architecture design.
The core design of TON blockchain includes “resource payment” and “asynchronousness”.”Resource payment” means that unlike public chains such as Ethereum and Solana that require users to pay transaction fees, each smart contract on TON needs to hold a certain amount of $TON to pay for the fee. If the TON token balance of a smart contract is consumedThe contract will eventually be deleted.This design introduces an automatic cleanup mechanism to avoid data bloat on the blockchain.”Asynchronicity” means that calls between smart contracts are asynchronous – when two contract calls are involved, the calls are not executed immediately, but are processed on a future block after the transaction is over.The advantage of this design of TON is that it has higher scalability and flexibility, and the disadvantage is that it increases the difficulty of application development and maintenance, so the development of DeFi on the TON chain is difficult and slow.
The architecture of TON is divided into three layers: masterchain, workchain and shardchain.masterchain is the coordination center, and workchain and shardchain handle actual transactions.Therefore, TON has a main chain masterchain that can accommodate up to 2 power of 32 workchains, and each workchain can be subdivided into up to 60 shardchains of 2 power of 60.TON claims to support millions of TPS and applied for the Guinness World Record for the “fastest blockchain” in October last year.However, TON’s real TPS may have to wait until the TON chain ecosystem flourishes and there is huge traffic running on the TON chain before it can be tested.
Three programming languages are available for smart contract development on TON: Fift, FunC and Tact.Fift is difficult to be on the bottom layer, and few developers choose to use the Fift language.The most commonly used development language is FunC, which is a programming language similar to C.Tact is a new high-level language launched by TON, designed to be popular programming languages such as JavaScript, Python and Solidity, aiming to reduce development difficulties so that developers can use it.Since this article is not a professional technical science article, the technical details of TACT will not be described here. If readers are interested, please refer to “Why TACT is the next major breakthrough of TON”, but what is worth noting about TACT is: 1) Its support is oriented towardsThe principle of message programming (MOP) simplifies development processes and improves efficiency, and also creates contracts that easily interact through messaging to simplify the integration and interaction of different contracts; 2) The availability of the Blueprint framework, which provides smart contract developmentA complete set of tools makes the contract development and deployment process more simplified, flexible and convenient.With Blueprint, developers can easily manage all phases of the smart contract lifecycle.Other Telegram Bots such as Unibot, which became popular last year, were developed using the TACT language and its Blueprint scripts.Although TACT is still under audit, the development simplicity it brings will make it play a very important role in TON ecological development and is expected to be widely promoted in the future.
TON Chain Ecology and Opportunities
As of the end of September last year, there were 10,747 members of the TON developer community on Telegram, 176 active developers on GitHub, and the more famous development teams include TONWhales, Orbs and TON Tech.In order to attract more project teams to develop on TON, the TON community not only provides basic tools such as TON SDK, TON Connect, TACT language and Blueprint framework, but also provides TON blockchain courses and TON TACT Challenge to promote TACT language and hold Hack-a-TON x DWF x AWS Hackathon and offers a bonus pool of over $415,000, setting up TON Grants and TON Bounties projects, and more.The TON Bounties project successfully processed more than 155 proposals, of which 40 new bounty tasks were approved in the third quarter of last year, and 25 projects completed have received a reward of approximately $53,000; the TON Grants project has accepted 103 projectsApply and approve 10 projects.In addition, TON also established a TONcoin.Fund of $250 million to invest in the TON ecological project, with investment entities covering Infra, Defi, NFT, gaming, sociafi, etc.
As of November 11 last year, TON Eco has a total of 551 Dapps, covering wallets, DeFi, NFT, gaming, socialFi, etc., but according to Starbase’s article, the TON Eco project actually includes many telegram groups.At present, overall, the TON ecosystem is still in a very early stage.
(From public social media)
TON’s on-chain TVL is $53.43 million, and 13 projects have been included by DefiLlama. Among them, the highest rankings of TVL are TONstakers ($105 million) and Bemo ($27.33 million). It can be seen that the TON ecosystem lacks hot DeFi projects, among whichOne reason is that existing DeFi projects support stake assets with a single and low yield. For example, TONstakers with the highest TVL can only pledge $TON, with APY of 4.64%.
Another reason for the low on-chain TVL of TON is the lack of stablecoins.At present, in addition to USDT, other stablecoins on the TON chain have low liquidity, and have very large exchange losses, and are not supported by real-world assets like USDT and USDC.This greatly reduces users’ enthusiasm for cross-chain to TON chain for transactions.With more cross-chain bridges coming online in the future, it is expected that other liquid stablecoins outside USDT will appear on the TON chain to promote the prosperity of their ecosystem.In addition, the USDT native to TON is expected to be launched this year. TON is also in talks with other stablecoins. The introduction of stablecoins is expected to continue to stimulate TON’s TVL growth.
At present, TON chain has only launched eth cross-chain bridges, but none of the mature projects of the Ethereum ecosystem have cross-chained to the TON chain for layout. For example, AAVE, Uniswap, etc. do not support TON chains, which leads to a large amount of traffic on Ethereum.The energy flows into the TON chain.Judging from the various activities currently launched by TON Foundation and TON Society, the official is not active in cross-chain and EVM.The possible reason is that users’ cross-chain needs can be met through Telegram bots, Mini Apps, official and third-party cross-chain bridges; and they also hold huge Telegram traffic, compared to TON, it needs to attract traffic from other public chains through cross-chain bridges., other public chains will reach the needs of TON users through cross-chain bridges.Therefore, at this stage, TON can cooperate with mainstream DeFi protocols such as AAVE, Uniswap, and select suitable projects from many cross-chain cases, and gain better benefits through cooperation.However, it should be noted that since the underlying architecture of TON and Ethereum are not the same, the transaction atomicity on Ethereum cannot be implemented on TON, which will also lead to the DeFi gameplay of TON to a certain extentRich, for example, it is difficult to achieve lightning loan on TON.Therefore, we need to pay more attention to DeFi applications and scenarios that are combined with the intra-Telegram ecosystem.
TON’s Community Governance
At present, the TON community has not yet formed a state of complete autonomy, but this does not mean that community members cannot participate in the construction and governance of TON.Channel and Chat are officially provided for community members to subscribe and communicate.For developers, the official also provides relatively complete tutorials and developer documents to help developers develop, and is also equipped with a developer community and TON answer to help developers answer questions.
The general governance process of TON is as follows:
1) First, Author needs to submit the proposal content through TON Enhancement Proposal, pull the request, and make the proposal enter the review state;
2) Secondly, the Editor will verify the pull request and then assign Reviewers to review;
3) Subsequently, Reviewers will share comments or comments and vote for or against;
4) Once most Reviewers uniformly propose, the proposal will enter a 10-day consultation period;
5) When the comment period is over, the Editor will shift the status of the proposal from Review to Active or Rejected;
Through the above process, community members and core contributors can participate in TON’s internal governance more easily.However, considering that too much power and governance are often inefficient in the early stages of the development of public chains, the TON community has not yet reached a state of complete autonomy.As the TON chain gradually develops and matures, TON will gradually move towards a fully autonomous DAO management model.
TON TVL and Ecology
Usually, when we evaluate the prosperity of a public chain ecosystem, we use TVL as the basis for judgment – the Lego effect of DeFi. However, in the red ocean of public chains, we think it is inappropriate to use the traditional public chain valuation method to evaluate TON.The core value of TON lies in its strong binding with Telegram. We should evaluate TON from the perspectives of transaction volume and Dapps’ agreement revenue from the grand narrative of TON x Telegram.
After attracting and accommodating a large number of real users, Telegram is also developing more diverse functions and Dapps to retain users, trying to complete the upgrade from communication protocols to social platforms and then to super application platforms.Its free and relaxed atmosphere and increasingly rich Dapps and services will surely attract more users; combined with Telegram, it is a “important position” of Crypto, and Telegram’s only blockchain TON supported by Telegram will definitely benefit from it.
As TON Foundation said, it is expected that 30% of Telegram’s active users will join TON in 2028. According to this calculation, 500 million Telegramy users will become users of the TON chain by then.Therefore, we feel that the first issue that TON needs to consider at the moment is how to divert Telegram users to TON.In addition to continuously building different categories of Dapps to meet the traffic brought by Telegram, you can also use TON wallet to integrate games, DeFi, creator economy, encrypted e-commerce, etc. into high-frequency life scenarios, so as to increase the frequency of users using TON andViscosity.In addition, TON needs to carry out greater efforts and wider publicity and promotion on Telegram.From an investment perspective, the current price of $TON is $3.8/piece, with a market value of 13.1 billion, ranking 13.At present, TON’s market value is already high, and its market value exceeds that of Apt, Sui and other public chains. If investors want to get a 5-10-fold investment return, they may have to wait for the arrival of a bull market.The price of TON was 2.48 six months ago, and the current price is 3.8.Aptos’ price was 5.2 six months ago, and its current price is 14.4.The price of Solana was 20 six months ago and the current price is 166.The price of Sui was 0.45 six months ago, and the current price is 1.52.It can be seen that TON’s increase in half a year is not large, and there is still room for potential.
TON Eco Project
TONup
The Launchpad platform on the TON chain has received strong support from TONCoin.Fund and TON Foundation since its inception, and has completed a seed round of financing led by TONCoin Fund. Other investors include Foresight X, Waterdrip Capital, BitFund DAO, etc.
Fragment
Fragment is a non-custodial decentralized NFT trading platform on TON. It can currently trade usernames and virtual numbers dedicated to Telegram, and the transaction settlement unit is TON.Listing NFT on Fragment does not charge a handling fee, and a 5% platform fee is charged for each auction. Users can bid freely, and the person with the highest bidding will win each time.It is worth noting that Telegram founder Pavel is also the co-founder of Fragment.
Telegram usernames are similar to decentralized username ENS. As Telegram founder Pavel Durov said, this is the first open and transparent username market established on social platforms.This means that users have obtained ownership of their username on the Web2 social platform for the first time. If Telegram can explore the points system that combines usernames with activities on channel/group, and integrates participate to earn, etc. into Web2, it will definitely be possibleAttract more users to purchase and use Telegram usernames.The virtual phone number starting with +888 launched by Fragment can be used to register a Telegram account and bind a TON wallet. It is defined as NFT recorded in the TON blockchain, which can protect privacy and highlight the identity of users.This virtual phone number has hype and collection value, and the current floor price is $9.TON.In addition, Fragment also integrates the Premium feature, where users can pay a subscription fee for the Telegram Premium feature on Fragment or donate $TON to Fragment to get opportunities to promote channel on Telegram.
Bot Track
As mentioned in the above section “Telegram mini app (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bot”, Telegram Bot provides users with easy operations to easily connect to the entire crypto world with the Telegram interface. There are a large number of real needs and have been widely penetrated.There are many fields such as transactions, DeFi, cross-chain, airdrop, etc. However, Telegram bot is still in the blue ocean market, and many suitable application scenarios such as Bot and Telegram payment combination, Bot and Ethsign combination are not yet developed.It is expected that Telegram Bots will be integrated with other narratives and applications, and will also transform into Telegram mini apps in the future to provide users with a better Web3 experience.
Judging from the 24-hour trading volume of Dex, Unibot and Banana account for most of the trading volume of the Telegram Bot track, accounting for 50% and 41% respectively, and are still in the stage of project competition for market share.In addition, according to CertiK research, nearly 40% of Telegram Bot projects are suspected to be dormant, may be fraudulent, or face the risk of not being able to recover from a large sell-off.One of the possible reasons for this is that the Bot project is directly built using the TACT language provided by TON and Blueprint. The development process is relatively simple and easy to replicate successful projects on the market, but these projects do not have the ability to continuously attract users after they are launched.Therefore, investors should also pay attention to the risks when paying attention to Bot track projects.
LootBot
Lootbot focuses on automated airdrop interactions, able to screen out the most favorable airdrop opportunities and implement powerful security measures to protect users from hackers and fraudulent activities.Currently, ZkSync, Layerzero, Linea, Base, Taiko and Polygon chains are supported.The first 15 transactions made on Lootbot are free and users will be advised to spend $30/month to purchase their Premium version later.Currently, Lootbot has received a subscription fee of $148,000. $LOOT holders can choose to burn $LOOT to mint $xLOOT to obtain profits. Currently, a total of 1.98 million loops have been destroyed.
WagieBot
WagieBot provides users with the ability to conduct due diligence and interact with any liquidity pool on Telegram and Discord on Ethereum, Binance Chain, and Arbitrum.The user only needs to paste a contract, and WagieBot will automatically obtain the maximum liquidity pool and all necessary information for the token and complete the anti-rug check.WagieBot interacts dozens of times faster than Dex, and integrates GMX to allow users to trade up to 50 times leverage.As of now, the transaction amount on WagieBot is $7.17 million, with a total of 414 users.
To learn more about TON at Web3 Festival, please click:
https://lu.ma/hkweb3festival2024_TON
https://tonhackerhouse.com/zh-cn
References
1. A brief history of TON development https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/44875
2. A brief history of TON development https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/43776
3.TON’s technical characteristics, network structure, development language https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/44324
4.OKX Ventures latest research report: TON Ecology and Investment Analysis https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_14363.html
5. Why TACT is the next major breakthrough for TON https://blog.TON.org/why-tact-is-TON-s-next-big-breakthrough
6.How sexy is the narrative of TON +Telegram?https://www.theblockbeats.info/news/45907?search=1
7.TON Space: Telegram’s future encryption “WeChat Wallet” https://www.theblockbeats.info/news/45428
8. Following Maestrobot, the Telegram Bot project was maliciously exploited again: Unibot attack incident analysis https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/46248
9.TON Developer Report: Q3 2023 https://blog.TON.org/TON-developer-report-q3-2023
10.TON on-chain data https://www.TONstat.com/https://m3talab.io/reports/TON-telegram-open-network
11.TON token holding data https://eagleeye.space/detail/TONcoin
12.Telegram group data https://tgstat.com/ratings/chats
13. Introduction to Telegram mini app and bot https://core.telegram.org/bots/
14.Building a Web3 Ecosystem in Telegram with TONcoin https://blog.TON.org/building-a-web3-ecosystem-in-telegram-with-TONcoin
15. Introduction to wallet payment: Revolutionary technology for shopping with cryptocurrency https://blog.TON.org/introducing-wallet-pay-revolutionary-technology-for-shopping-with-cryptocurrency
16. Learn about Unibot (UNIBOT) https://www.gate.io/zh/learn/articles/understanding-unibot-in-one-article/759
17. Interpretation of the Telegram Bots report of Binance Research Institute: Another trading experience on mobile https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_12664.html
18.Bot Token DEX Trading Volume https://dune.com/wuhuzai/telegram-bots-data-cn
19.Unibot’s data https://dune.com/whale_hunter/unibot-revenue
20.Loot data https://dune.com/dknugo/lootbot
21.Wagiebot data https://dune.com/whale_hunter/wagie-bot
22.TON on-chain ecological report: Trends and opportunities, how to find an entry point in the TON ecosystem?https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/46655
23. Telegram Bot project is maliciously exploited again: Unibot attack incident analysis https://www.tuoluo.cn/article/detail-10110116.html
24. A quick look at the username auction platform launched by Telegram Fragment https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/17620
