Author: Joyce
Recently, the overall market sentiment has been very bearish, especially in the altcoin market. With the entire Bitcoin market being unstable, altcoins have plummeted, and there are numerous projects that have been severely affected.
However, in this bleak market, the Ton ecosystem has remained stable. Over the past thirty days, TON has risen by 23%, and the TVL of the entire Ton ecosystem has skyrocketed by over 6 times in just four months, starting from March this year. Projects within the ecosystem, such as Notcoin, have seen significant increases in both price and user base. Is the summer coming for the Ton ecosystem?
New highlights in the Ton ecosystem
Backed by Telegram’s 9 billion active users, the Ton ecosystem’s most notable feature is its association with Telegram. However, until recently, there has been a lack of a strong connection between Ton and Telegram, with the Telegram platform not providing much support to Ton. Ton has been seen as “air.”
But starting from March, the TVL of the Ton ecosystem has grown from less than $23 million to the current $145 million, increasing by over 6 times. During the same period, the price of TON has also surged by about 3 times, remaining steadfast even during the recent bear market. What are the positive factors behind these developments?
1) Using TON for the Telegram ad platform
Unlike Facebook, WeChat, and other social platforms, Telegram doesn’t rely on user data for targeted advertising. Therefore, Telegram did not have a precise user advertising platform, unlike other social media giants. This has led to Telegram not achieving a true balance of profit and loss for many years.
It was only recently that Telegram launched an ad platform that does not rely on precise user targeting systems, alongside a paid subscription service. In February, the founder, Durov, announced that the Telegram ad platform (with over 1 trillion monthly views) would officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred countries in March. Channel owners will receive 50% of all ad revenue, with all ad fees being settled in TON.
Next month, channel owners on Telegram can start earning money from their work. Broadcast channels on Telegram generate 1 trillion views each month. Currently, only 10% of these views are monetized through Telegram ads, designed with privacy in mind. In March, the Telegram ad platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. Channel owners in these countries will begin receiving 50% of any revenue from ads displayed in their channels.
To ensure quick and secure ad payments and withdrawals, we will exclusively use the TON blockchain. Similar to our approach to handling Telegram usernames on Fragment, we will use TON to sell ads and share revenue with channel owners. This will create a virtuous cycle, where content creators can cash out their TON or reinvest it in promoting and upgrading their channels.
For TON, this is a major step from “air” to “value.”
Before this, TON was only used for on-chain smart contract transactions, staking, cross-chain transactions, and other on-chain service fees, and was not much different from other general public chains. The consumption of TON was very inconspicuous due to the fact that the developers and user base of the Ton public chain were far less than other popular public chains. Although it could be used to purchase virtual goods like anonymous accounts on Telegram, the total transaction volume did not have much room for growth.
Using TON as the sole settlement asset for the Telegram ad platform is a major empowering move for Ton, effectively giving Ton the nine billion users of Telegram and truly realizing the deep integration of the Ton ecosystem and the Telegram platform. This has opened up a whole new realm for the Ton ecosystem and the price of TON.
To avoid the Telegram team acquiring more and more TON due to this move, Durov stated that in the future, more than 10% of TON in the team’s possession will be sold at a discounted price to long-term holders, with these sold TON having a lock-up period of 1-4 years.
For TON, it is equivalent to Telegram using ad revenue to continue repurchasing TON while seeking other long-term investors or institutions. This not only avoids TON becoming too centralized, but also reduces the circulation of TON through lockups. This is definitely a significant positive development.
2) Launch of Ton Space
Ton Space was launched in September 2023. Prior to this, the built-in Wallet within Telegram was KYC-compliant and could only be used for payments. However, Ton Space allows users to manage their own private keys, similar to a regular crypto wallet.
After using Ton Space, users can seamlessly connect their Telegram account with apps in the Ton ecosystem, logging into Ton ecosystem apps directly from their Telegram account to participate in various DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and other services.
Imagine being able to directly buy and sell tokens/NFTs, borrow, or participate in GameFi projects within Telegram, just like being able to directly shop on Pinduoduo or JD in WeChat. For the nine billion active users on Telegram, the barrier to entry for participating in Web3 has indeed been significantly lowered.
Of course, this is also a major move for the Ton ecosystem, as there is no other public chain that has the backing of a large user base like Ton does with Telegram.
3) Platform promoting mini-applications
After opening up payment channels, Telegram has begun promoting mini-applications that are based on the Telegram platform and can be used without installation, similar to WeChat mini-programs.
For example, the highly popular Notcoin is an embedded mini-application within the platform. Users can directly participate in activities such as “Click to Earn” tokens within Telegram, and the integrated Web3 wallet greatly reduces the barriers to user participation. With the official support of Telegram’s traffic, Notcoin’s total user base exceeded 40 million in just a few months.
Currently, a large number of Web3 mini-program applications similar to Notcoin have emerged on the Telegram platform, and it seems that by participating in various games directly through the Telegram platform, users can avoid the need for intermediaries, such as gold farming studios, that were previously driving the GameFi craze. In addition, there have been a series of other deep collaborations between Telegram and the Ton ecosystem. It seems that starting from the second half of 2023, Telegram has truly set its sights on entering the Web3 industry and has initiated deep binding cooperation with Ton.
In light of these developments, both the TON price and the TVL have shown breakthrough growth. For the Telegram platform, this has also realized a highly profitable model beyond advertising and paid subscriptions.
Clearly, this is a win-win situation.
Inventory of Ton ecosystem projects
In Ton.app, there are currently 874 projects. Although this data is not impressive compared to the ecosystems of Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and other public chains, and currently, only Notcoin is available on the top-tier platforms, the number of Ton ecosystem projects has grown by nearly 60% in the past eight months. The overall TVL of the ecosystem has increased by several times, demonstrating the strong growth momentum of the Ton ecosystem.
Let’s take a brief look at some of the projects that are highly popular within the Ton ecosystem:
Notcoin
In the first quarter of this year, the Telegram developer community and the Ton Foundation jointly released a report on Telegram’s ecosystem apps, with Notcoin being highlighted as a key showcase. As a “click to earn” game, Notcoin is the most popular Web3 application in the Telegram Apps Center and is currently the most well-known project in the Ton ecosystem. Within just a few months, its user base has surpassed 40 million. Although its token, NOT, has not formed a closed-loop application ecosystem within the game, being criticized as a Memecoin, its price has skyrocketed after being listed on BN.
Catizen
Catizen is the largest game application platform in the Telegram ecosystem, with a total user base of over 20 million, over 500,000 paying users, over 1.25 million on-chain users, and has ranked first in the Ton Open League for consecutive seasons.
Hamster Kombat
Hamster Kombat is also a play-to-earn game that has recently become extremely popular due to the anticipated Airdrop. According to official data, its active user base has already exceeded 150 million, with a 50% increase from last week, and it currently ranks third in popularity in the Telegram Apps Center.
Gatto|Game
Gatto is a pet-raising game that was a key showcase in the Ton Foundation’s report for the first quarter of 2024. According to the report, as of January 2024, Gatto had a DAU of 30,000, with over 1 million pets created and a monthly income of $35,000.
Gamee
Gamee is a social gaming platform owned by Animoca Brands and is one of the highly popular game ecosystems on Telegram. Despite a recent price plunge due to a hacking incident in early 2024, Gamee’s popularity within the Telegram ecosystem remains high.
PocketFi
PocketFi is a Telegram trading bot that supports cross-chain transactions and has attracted users through a “click to earn” model. After just three months of launching, the user base has exceeded 1.4 million, and the app’s popularity within the Telegram Apps Center is also impressive.
Blum
Blum is a DEX within the Telegram ecosystem that provides spot and simple derivatives trading; however, its related functions have not yet been launched. Currently, it can only be used for mining points through mini-games, and the user base has already exceeded 10 million. Blum was created by former BN executives and has been selected for the Binance Labs accelerator program.
Yescoin
As the name suggests, Yescoin is a clone of Notcoin and is currently very popular. Its user base has already exceeded 18 million, with the number of subscribers to the official Telegram channel surpassing 6 million, showing very impressive growth.
DeDust, Ston.fi
DeDust and Ston.fi are both DEXs within the Telegram ecosystem and are among the top apps in the Apps Center. In DeFiLlama, they are ranked first and second in TVL, with a combined TVL of $634 million, making them the flagship projects of the entire Ton ecosystem. The official Telegram channel for Ston.fi has over 680,000 followers, making it even more popular than DeDust.
Uxlink
Uxlink is the largest social infrastructure project in the Telegram ecosystem, based on social interaction within Telegram, and currently has over 10 million registered users. Uxlink has already received investment from prominent institutions such as ZhenFund, Sequoia Capital, and GGV, and the future development of this SocialFi project with such a large user base is worth looking forward to.
Conclusion
From the perspective of TON price, TVL growth, and the prosperity of ecosystem projects, the Ton ecosystem is indeed a standout in the current bleak market. However, beneath the facade of prosperity, there are some issues that cannot be ignored.
For example, in terms of the number of developers, Ton’s ecosystem has only 39 full-time developers (Developer report data), with a total of 175 developers, far fewer than the 2,392 and 7,864 of Ethereum and the 436 and 1,615 of Solana, respectively, which are much higher than those of the Ton ecosystem.
Furthermore, the frequent account theft issues on the Telegram platform have become more rampant after the introduction of the integrated Web3 wallet, with phishing links and other issues. This is undoubtedly one of the urgent problems that need to be addressed in the process of integrating Telegram with Web3, especially for newcomers in Web3 with weaker security awareness. In addition, given that the Ton public chain has not been online for long and has not experienced too many security incidents, the security of the entire ecosystem is a major test for future development.
Of course, both the issue of developers and security can be gradually iterated and optimized in the future development of the ecosystem. After all, the development of the entire Web3 industry is a process of flying while repairing.
