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 Telegram's huge 900 million monthly active users to create a unique narrative in terms of payment, social networking, and mini-programs.
Without increasing user migration costs, using Telegram's 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 popularity of the TON chain among these users is still insufficient.
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 the TON Blockchain, which can be compared to the ERC-20 token 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 fully unleash the potential of TON.
Allow a large number of real users to directly own crypto wallets, and users can easily transfer cryptocurrencies like 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.
According to Defillama data, TON's TVL is currently 310 million US dollars, ranking 25th among all public chains.
Due to the joint and coordinated efforts of the TON Foundation, Telegram and its partners, the activity of the on-chain ecosystem has exploded in the past two months.
At the end of March, the TON Foundation announced that it would distribute 30 million $TON within 1 month for liquidity incentives. In April, Tether announced that USDT would be directly integrated into TON, allowing for minting and redemption.
The successive stimuli have rapidly increased the TVL of the TON chain, from 22 million US dollars at the beginning of March to 300 million US dollars now. In less than three months, the TVL has achieved a nearly 15-fold increase, and there is a momentum to maintain it further.
（Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON?price=true）
The ensuing blockchain activity has achieved significant growth in all indicators:
Daily transactions have increased by more than 50 times: since March 2024, the transaction volume has increased from 100,000 per day to 4 million to 9 million per day
Daily active wallets have increased 8 times: from 60,000 daily active in March 2024 to nearly 500,000 now
TON's daily fee averages 100,000 US dollars: half of TON's fees are burned.
（Source: https://app.artemis.xyz/project/ton）
According to data from ton.apps, there are currently 787 apps in the TON ecosystem, including development tools, games, NFTs, social, Launchpad, groups and other categories.
（Source: https://ton.app/）
In terms of TON ecological interaction, there are two main perspectives:
First, projects that have already achieved scale in DeFi can obtain additional rewards from the foundation's liquidity incentives;
Second, games and Meme projects with strong dissemination, such as Notcoin-like small games based on Telegram, which can easily obtain a large number of real users, and listing on a large exchange will make you rich.
Here are some opportunities for interaction.
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 Telegram's native centralized custodian wallet, which is somewhat similar to WeChat Wallet built into WeChat's 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 self-custodial wallet based on Telegram launched by the TON Foundation. It is also embedded in Telegram. Through the Ton Space in the Wallet, users can use the TON Space connection directly from the TON-based dApp.
The experience of using TON Space is similar to that of using other non-custodial EVM wallets. Existing accounts can be imported 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 TON chain has experienced explosive growth in the past two months, the asynchronous call design of TON chain has improved performance and scalability, but also increased the difficulty of development and maintenance for developers.
Therefore, unlike Ethereum Layer2, TON chain can not see large-scale migration of leading projects, and the diversity of DeFi ecology still has a lot of room for improvement.
（Source: https://defillama.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, and promotes the development of the TON ecosystem.
Early supported projects such as the game Tap Fantasy have currently 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: https://tonup.io/）
STON.fi
STON.fi is the largest DEX on TON, providing almost zero-fee, low-slippage trading services, and directly integrated with the TON wallet.
According to Deflama's data, 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, and its TVL has increased 20 times in 2 months.
（Source: https://app.ston.fi）
STON.fi has the most complete trading pairs. 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. Although the APY is only 2.76%, it is still a good financial management choice for coin holders who are optimistic about $TON in the long term.
（Source: https://tonstakers.com/）
Game
Compared to the relatively scarce DeFi ecosystem, TON is very strong in the game track. Mini apps based on Telegram are naturally suitable for small games with social attributes. Simple and easy games plus Telegram one-click forwarding can spread the game in the most effective way.
$Notcoin, which was recently launched on Binance Launchpool, is a small game on TON. Players mine $Notcoin by clicking on coins in Telegram.
The simple gameplay, team mechanism and real benefits made it spread like a virus, gaining more than 35 million users and 5 million daily active users.
Notcoin not only made good use of Telegram's huge mass base of encrypted users, but also allowed 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 under Pluto Studio. As an early development team and co-builder of the ecosystem, the Pluto team has received multiple financial and resource support 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 bring users a highly immersive interactive experience.
After only two months of launch, the number of Catizen players 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, allowing 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 the pledge amount exceeding 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 use the team's valuable experience in chain reform and rich experience in TON ecological 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 a long time.
Hyper
Hyper is the first metaverse project in the TON ecosystem that simulates real-life scenes. It is similar to Notcoin in type but has upgraded gameplay. A simple clicker cannot replace real people to play games.
Start the game by clicking on the bot, drag the character to receive coins according to the instructions, and you can get high scores by purchasing boxes and replenish the battery to receive coins.
The game also has a communication 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 participation in the entire 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 ecological interactions, the TOL ranking is a good guide.
（Source: https://blog.ton.org/these-are-the-best-projects-of-tol-season-1）
During the one-month first season, $TON worth more than three million US dollars was distributed. 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. The TVL of Tonstakers, which ranks first in the LSD category, has even surpassed Ston.fi.
（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 to issue $TON worth one million US dollars. The top-ranked projects are the key interactive objects.
Yescoin
In addition to Catizen, which ranks first, Yescoin, which ranks second, is the fastest growing game in TON recently. It is very similar to Notcoin, with a mode of collecting coins and doing tasks. You can collect tokens by sliding the screen on your phone.
This kind 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 casting process of the first TON20 inscription $nano, the large number of participating users and triggered network transactions brought huge traffic and transaction load to the TON network, resulting in short-term delays and congestion of the network.
（Source:https://tonano.io/）
Tonano's Marketplace has a trading volume of over one million US dollars, providing the necessary liquidity for TON20.
The cross-protocol asset bridge can realize the asset exchange between TON20 and other inscription protocols and Jetton tokens, making a broader inscription ecosystem possible.
Fanton
Fanton is based on TON, a game similar to a football manager, and star cards are issued on the TON chain in the form of NFT.
Currently, it 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: Fanton Twitter）
Squid
Squid is an inscription game built on TON. Users can buy squid eggs containing $TON in the market, hatch squids from squid eggs, produce more squid eggs and then sell them for profit.
The ecology of the TON chain is still in its early stages, especially the DeFi projects are relatively thin, but the value of TON cannot be simply measured by TVL. Relying on the real user group of the Telegram platform is a natural advantage that other public chains cannot match.
Mini App games focusing on mobile terminals are particularly easy to spread and make people fomo, refer to the WeChat game Sheep Sheep.
At the same time, for non-encrypted users using Telegram, TON can greatly reduce the user's learning cost and make it easier to break through the barriers between Web2 and Web3.
Under the stimulation and promotion of the TON Foundation, the TON ecosystem has a good development momentum and deserves long-term attention and participation.
In just one month after its launch, Yescoin has attracted over 18 million players globally. Partnering with TON, Yescoin hints at the launch of a potential token, $YES, with excitement building around possible listing on major exchanges.
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