TON: Telegram becomes the only link for WeChat in the Web3 field

2024/03/20 22:19

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, Aptos, etc., most of which They are all pursuing high performance, EVM compatibility, etc. However, except for Ethereum, which has always maintained innovation by relying on its active developer community and users, and has continuously emerged applications such as Uniswap and AAVE that create new value areas for users, most other public chains are just repeating the same script - Copy the three-piece set of DeFi products on the market, use airdrops, high APY, etc. to attract users/traffic on other chains, issue coins to exchanges, and develop ecological projects to drive the rise of public chain coins. The chain and products are homogeneous. User groups and funds are mostly "employed" by rewards or airdrops, and innovation cannot meet the needs of users at all. In a bull market, the bubble effect makes these public chains seem prosperous. However, in a bear market, you only know who is swimming naked when the water recedes.

Recently, whether it is ZK, AA or L2, they all tend to pursue technology away from specific products, copying the same narrative, putting old wine in new bottles, and to a certain extent have achieved a high degree of involution. And the problem of l2 liquidity fragmentation is becoming increasingly serious.

In the red ocean of public chains, there is no lack of high performance and narrative, but there is a lack of users with real needs to use public chains. Backed by Telegram, the public chain TON, which has close to 900 million monthly active users, stands out from the battle among hundreds of chains because of its inextricable connection with Telegram. With a wide range of global users and developers, Telegram is no longer satisfied with being just a social communication platform. Through its continuously enriched product line (Dapp) and opening up links between payment and high-frequency life scenes, Telegram is trying to become a social platform and eventually become a Transformation into a super application similar to WeChat. If Telegram is the WeChat of Web3, then TON is its indispensable public chain.

TON recent hot spots

In February, Telegram founder Durove announced the TON token on his personal channel. As the official sales channel for coins, the relationship between TON and Telegram has become closer and tacit.

Telegram advertising platform uses TON

Telegram advertising platform will be officially opened to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries, and channel owners in these countries will Receive 50% commission from Telegram's revenue from displaying ads on its channels.

The official stated that in order to ensure the speed and security of advertising payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be used exclusively, and the official will share the revenue with channel owners, which will create a virtuous cycle in which content creators will Ability to cash out their TONcoin, or reinvest it into promoting and upgrading their channel.

Fish

The first meme coin on TON, fair Launched, it holds more than 22,000 addresses, and its current market value is 47M. It has increased by 14 times in March. It has officially announced partnerships with many projects: TONRaffles, TONano, Tap Fantasy, RoOLZ, Catizen.

Telegram is about to IPO

According to the British "Financial Times" report, Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed that Telegram has reached 900 million active users and is now close to profitability. Telegram's revenue has reached hundreds of millions of dollars. It is expected to go public after achieving profitability this year or next year. The United States may be its potential listing location. At the IPO, Durov said Telegram would consider selling stock allocations to loyal users.

Telegram has raised about $2 billion in debt financing, including a $1 billion bond issuance in 2021, as well as $750 million and $270 million in bonds issued last year. If it goes public before the end of March 2026, these bondholders will be able to convert senior unsecured debt into equity at a discount of 10% to 20% to Telegram’s IPO price.

Introduction to TON

The Open Netwotk (TON), formerly known as Telegram Open Network, was created by Telegram in 2018 to create a powerful and scalable blockchain platform and pass Its token $Grams completed the ICO with the highest amount of funds raised in history. Due to SEC charges that it conducted an unregistered securities offering, the Telegram team abandoned the Telegram Open Network project and returned the US dollar funds raised in the ICO after agreeing to pay a fine of $18.5 million to settle with the SEC in 2020.

Since then, Telegram Open Network has continued to be developed by a community called NewTON. In May 2021, the community voted to rename the long-term stable Testnet 2 to Mainnet; the NewTON community was renamed to the TON Foundation to support and develop TON as a non-profit community; the Telegram Open Network was also renamed to The Open Network.

Currently, the TON Foundation is the main force promoting the development and development of TON. The TON Foundation safeguards the interests of the community by supporting initiatives that contribute to the mission of the open network and supports the development of the TON project without controlling TON technology. Currently, the TON Foundation team has more than 50 people, more than half of whom are from Russia, Ukraine and other countries, involving business development, engineers, marketing, finance, law, etc. Most of the employees have work experience in VK and Telegram. It is worth noting that one of the core founding members of the TON Foundation, Andrew Rogozov, is the former CEO of VK.com, a social network founded by the founder of Telegram in Russia, and the first CEO of VK.com was Durov himself. In addition, TON Foundation members also include: Bill Qian, head of M&A and Binance Labs, and John Hyman, former chief investment adviser of Telegram.

TON chain development and current situation

TON's goal is to provide easy-to-use tools and reliable and stable infrastructure to make massive adoption easier. Although TON has been listed on the exchange in 2021 and subsequently launched TON payment, storage, DNS, cross-chain bridge and other infrastructure and functions (the official bridge supports TON/ETH and BSC), it was last year that TON really attracted widespread attention In July, there was a craze for Telegram Bots such as Unibot and Bananagun. During the Token 2049 event in September, Telegram officially announced its official cooperation with TON and launched the self-hosted encryption 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 (an increase of 215%), and its market value has entered the top 20, becoming a bright dark horse in the previous bear market. Now, although the popularity of TON has decreased, as the only public chain officially supported by Telegram, backed by 900 million active users behind Telegram, TON will have the best performance (TPS), volume MEV compatibility, and volume on a number of existing public chains. In the context of the narrative, a completely unique narrative unfolds from the perspectives of payment, social networking, and mini programs.

As of March 20, 2024, the number of validators on the TON chain is 301, and the total number of $TON pledged under the PoS mechanism is 440 million, distributed in 29 countries. The total number of accounts on TON's chain has shown a long-term growth trend, and there are currently 8.12 million accounts. Official information from the Dubai conference shows that in the past year, TON has achieved a 2.5-fold increase in active user addresses, with a daily transaction volume of approximately US$220,000. The current TVL on the TON chain is US$53.43 million, and a total of 13 projects have been included in DefiLlama. In addition to the TON chain, TON also has TON Storage - a decentralized file storage system; TON DNS - assigns readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services and nodes; TON Pay - a micro-payment channel that can Instant off-chain transactions; TON Proxy - the network proxy anonymous service of the TON network, 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 are slowly exploring this ecosystem.

Token Economy

The initial supply of the token $TON is 5 billion until June 28, 2022, when the last $TON is mined. The supply of $TON is uncapped and grows at approximately 0.6% per year (approximately 3 million coins). After Telegram settled with the SEC in 2020, all tradable $TON tokens were placed in special Giver smart contracts for anyone to mine. Therefore, 98.55% of the tokens were allocated in early POW mining. The team only holds 1.45% of the tokens. Unlike in the early days when most public chain tokens were held hostage by large capital, currently a large amount of $TON is concentrated in the hands of early miners, and the distribution of chips is more dispersed. In order to solve the problem that most tokens are concentrated in the hands of early miners, TON launched a community proposal in February last year to freeze 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 capitalization of TON will rank among the top 10 in the cryptocurrency market. After $TON is mined, it is converted from PoW to PoS. $TON's annual token inflation of 0.6% (approximately 3 million coins) will be used to reward validators who maintain network security. However, if the validator misbehaves, their pledged $ TON will be slashed. According to information revealed at the Dubai Conference, TON intends to increase staking rewards to promote further increases in the TON chain’s staking rate.

The token $TON has multiple usage scenarios, such as transaction fee payment, staking, cross-chain transactions, etc. on the TON chain. In the future, $TON can also be used to pay for TON agency services, etc. The positioning of $TON is also similar to the legal currency on Telegram, and the application of $TON on Telegram is particularly worthy of attention. For example, $TON can be used to pay for Telegram Premium membership fees at a more favorable discount. The Telegram wallet can currently directly use a credit card to purchase $TON, and then use $TON to purchase virtual goods such as anonymous accounts. According to statistics, all anonymous accounts worth a total of 50 million US dollars have been sold within one month of going online. So far, anonymous accounts have sold 130 million US dollars. $TON has huge payment potential in this area. In the future, $TON may also be used for Telegram promotion, and advertising services can also be paid for using $TON.

In addition, $TON tokens will be possible Will deflate as network usage increases. Because, in June last year, the TON Foundation proposed the introduction of a destruction mechanism: 50% of the transaction fees generated by transactions on the TON chain, domain names, number auctions, etc. in the TON network will be used to destroy $TON.

TON Token Analysis

As of March 20, 2024, the total supply of $TON is 5.104 billion, and the circulating supply is 3.469 billion. The currency price is $3.8/coin, the FDV is $19.276 billion, and the Market Cap is $13.101 billion, ranking 13th. It is currently listed on CEXs such as Bybit, OKX, Kucoin, and Bitget, and has been listed on Binance Contract. $TON has also become the highest-ranked token not currently listed on Binance’s spot. Over time, if TON’s popularity and user traffic can grow explosively, then $TON will become Binance’s first choice for currency listing. From the perspective of chip distribution, the number of tokens held by the top ten wallets accounts for 38% of the total $TON, and the number of tokens held by the top 100 wallets accounts for 49% of the total $TON. The distribution of tokens is relatively dispersed, which avoids being used by a large number of investment institutions. and the potential selling pressure that exists due to the project party’s holdings. And TON also launched the TON Believers Fund, with a total of more than 1.317 billion $TON locked (about 25% of the total supply). The TON Believers Fund allows any $TON holder to donate or lock their tokens for 5 years: a 2-year lock-in period and a 3-year vesting period, with donated tokens awarded to all depositors starting in year 3. According to current public information, 10.54% of tokens have been donated to the TON Foundation by the community in 2022.

With existing Mass adoption (large-scale Compared with public chains that adopt) as the vision, if the TON chain is evaluated based on the commonly used indicator "market value/TVL" to measure public chains, it is not difficult to see that TON has the highest "market value/TVL", which means that the TON currency price is at risk of overestimation. . However, as will be described below, the value of TON cannot be evaluated using traditional public chain valuation methods. Instead, TON should be evaluated from the perspective of transaction volume and protocol revenue from Dapps in the grand narrative of the combination of TON and Telegram. Because of the realization 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 sluggish TVL of public chains such as Avalanch and Fantom in the bear market), so the key lies in low threshold Usage experience, integration with daily high-frequency life scenes and huge traffic entrance. And this is also TON’s core competitiveness—its deep integration with the Telegram ecosystem. The deep binding between TON and Telegram brings users a far better application experience than most Web3 products. The comparable valuation of TON can also be benchmarked against 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 future imagination, $TON tokens must wait for the arrival of a big bull market if they want to achieve 5-10 times returns.

Telegram Web3’s important position in the grand scheme of things
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Telegram has inherent Web3 genes
Telegram is a free cloud-based instant messaging software founded in 2013 by the founder of VK (one of Russia’s mainstream social media) Founded by Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Telegram’s insistence on free speech and privacy protection has attracted many users around the world. It has more than 1.3 billion registered users and nearly 800 million monthly active users (MAU). Telegram's relaxed speech atmosphere and regulatory environment have made Telegram an "important position" for Crypto - almost all Web 3.0/Crypto projects have Telegram communities for project announcements, news announcements, and community interaction. The activity of the Telegram community has also become an important indicator to measure the project's marketing capabilities. And more than half of the Channels and Groups with the largest number of subscribers/members on Telegram are related to Crypto content (as shown in the figure below, the two largest Groups on Telegram are both related to Crypro). More importantly, Telegram has more than 37,000 active crypto communities, according to TON Chinese channel statistics.
Due to regulatory and other reasons, a large number of real users migrated from Slack and WeChat groups to Telegram, which also gave birth to the elimination of group chats In addition to the huge demand for services such as news, announcements, and large-value transfer notifications, Telegram has also seized user needs in a timely manner - reshaping the platform's emoticon system, launching Story video sharing, and launching blockchain-driven anonymous numbers. Login function (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 led Telegram to move closer to WeChat in an attempt to complete its transformation from a communication protocol to a social platform, and eventually become a large-scale 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 is fully equipped to build a Telegram own public chain or even a unique Telegram closed-loop blockchain kingdom. conditions - users and developers. Under this circumstance, coupled with the support of the founder of Telegram for the blockchain and the commercialization of Telegram through the blockchain, TON and Telegram Bot came into being.

Telegram Web3 territory iron triangle: Wallet, Dapp/Bot & TON

Wallet

The success of WeChat is not only due to Its social attributes are not only due to its financial attributes - we can use WeChat to transfer money, pay bills with AA, call a taxi, grab train tickets, online shopping, recharge and other life scenes involving online and offline aspects, so in China there is only one device. You can go out with your mobile phone using WeChat. The network effect of the Internet has allowed the total number of users to grow at a square level. Similarly, a large number of encryption enthusiasts also commonly use TG as one of the core communication tools with the community. As the encryption world expands, network effects will occur here. The TG platform has now become an essential communication tool for encryption enthusiasts and project parties, and there is a faint trend of becoming a Web3 version of WeChat.

Just as the widespread development of mobile Internet in China is inseparable from the emergence of WeChat Pay and Alipay, the development of Web3 from attracting new users to large-scale adoption is also inseparable from the traffic port-encrypted digital wallet-a Simple and secure encrypted digital wallet! Of course, in addition to being able to freely trade various encrypted assets like most existing encrypted wallets, this encrypted digital wallet is more importantly linked to traditional currencies so that users can easily exchange and convert between legal tender and cryptocurrency. In and out. The emergence of Telegram's built-in non-custodial wallet @Wallet 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 simplicity of operation reduce the number of new Web2 users. With its entry barriers and learning costs, it will definitely become the preferred wallet for Web2 users when entering Web3 in the future. In addition, because @Wallet can also run in the Telegram app on mobile phones, people use mobile phones more frequently and for longer periods of time than computers. Therefore, the emergence of @Wallet has also quietly transformed PC Web3 into mobile Web3. All Web3 social solutions cannot solve one problem, that is, users must have an App first, but this is precisely 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. It can naturally inherit the user's trust in Telegram, making the last step easier.

So what features does @Wallet have? ? @Wallet is Telegram's built-in non-custodial wallet, similar to Alipay and WeChat Pay. It can be opened directly in the Telegram chat interface without entering a password. Users can use bank cards to purchase, receive, trade, transfer cryptocurrencies and easily directly through Telegram Bot Pay for products and services on Telegram in $TON, $USDT or $BTC. In addition, @Wallet may later become the Telegram version of Yu'e Bao, providing users with flexible cash management functions by accessing assets such as treasury bonds.

In September last year, Telegram launched TON space - a self-hosted version of @wallet. TON Space 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 jumping to a third-party payment and settlement platform. This not only enhances the security and privacy attributes of the wallet, but also enhances the encrypted financial attributes of the Telegram platform itself. Unlike the existing Little Fox Wallet, TP Wallet, etc., in addition to using mnemonic words to restore the wallet, TON space allows users to use email and Telegram accounts to restore the wallet, which provides users with additional convenience and security. The current user interface of TON Space looks similar to the Little Fox Wallet, allowing users to receive, send and exchange tokens, and the NFT assets held by the wallet can be seen on the wallet page. However, Dapp cannot be opened through TON Space at present, and this function will be launched in the future. According to the team, the 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. It is expected that the official version of TON Space will be launched in regions other than the United States and other countries in November. In order to facilitate users to manage multiple wallet addresses at the same time, TON Space plans to integrate multiple addresses in the future. In addition, TON will support the transfer and display of NFT collectibles to meet the social needs of Telegram users. In addition, from the perspective of information density, Telegram’s information density will be greater than that of WeChat, users’ information immersion in Telegram will also be higher, and private domain traffic density will be wider, which will also promote payments within TON Space and Telegram , social networking and other scenarios are combined to achieve more refined and high-density transmission of value, traffic and information through higher information density.

It can be concluded from the above that the wallet is the traffic entrance port of Telegram Web3. However, after bringing in users, various entertainment facilities need to be provided, that is, Telegram’s existing Web2 Dapps will also be used as Web3 ones. Provided in various ways, Telegram mini app (tApp Center) and Telegram Bot were born.

Telegram mini app (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bot

Telegram Mini Apps are web applications running inside Telegram Messenger, launched by TON Foundation. Designed to meet user needs for gaming, content sharing, productivity tools, etc., they can be easily accessed from Telegram chats or group conversations. Telegram Mini Apps include 3 main types of robots, games and network applications, and are functionally divided into 4 categories: management, Web3, utilities and games. Telegram Bot is an automated program that runs through the Telegram chat program, allowing users to obtain information, market data, etc., and interact with smart contracts without leaving the Telegram platform.

At this point, readers may be confused about Telegram Mini Apps What does it have to do with Web3? These Telegram Mini Apps can be built on the TON chain using the infrastructure provided by TON, 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 extensive user base. This enables multiple ways of monetization within Telegram (such as through in-app purchases, subscription models, or advertising).

The bridge between Telegram Mini Apps and Telegram is Telegram Bot, which can be seen from its "cumulative transaction volume as of July last year has exceeded 190 million U.S. dollars, with the highest single-day transaction volume reaching 10 million U.S. dollars." The popularity of the Telegram Bot track and its huge real user demand. From a user's perspective, they can use this Bot to conduct DEX transactions, earn airdrops, follow up on transactions from a specific wallet, etc. By interacting with Telegram Bot, users can easily connect to the entire blockchain on the Telegram interface by paying a certain fee.

Currently, the main functions provided by Telegram Bot are:

1) Trading: directly buying and selling tokens;

2) Airdrop and Sniping ): Monitor the new status of tokens and set up automatic buying in advance;

3) Copy trading: Simulate the transactions of other traders;

4) Airdrop ( Airdrop farming): Automatically perform a series of operations to increase the chance of obtaining airdrops;

5) Find the optimal liquidity pool for a specific token, etc. According to Binance Research, Telegram Bot makes money by charging transaction fees and “taxes” on token sales. By July last year, Telegram Bot had collected more than 15,000 ETH (approximately $28.7 million) in revenue.

According to the Binance Research Report, the number of daily active users of Telegram Bot peaked at more than 6,000 in July last year. The most used ones are Maestro (about 2,000-3,000 daily active users) and Unibot (approximately 1,700 people).

Of course, there are also hidden concerns about project security and privacy when using Telegram Bot:

1) Like all Web2 applications, the user's Telegram account is at risk of being stolen, and a Telegram account does not require a password to log in to the Telegram Bot. Therefore, the Telegram Bot is also exposed to the security risk of the Telegram account password;

2) Through Bot transactions, Bot The private key will be accessed and there is a risk of private key leakage;

3) Like all crypto projects, the interaction between Bot and smart contracts exposes the wallet to smart contract risks;

4) Most people are worried about transferring money to bots.

Although Telegram Bot has risks, compared with the existing DeFi front-end, Telegram Bot provides a more friendly and convenient user experience, has real practical and large demand, and is backed by Telegram’s 800 million daily users. Users make the Bot track full of imagination. Using Blueprint in the Telegram TACT language has also reduced the difficulty for developers to build and maintain Bot projects, spawning the emergence of a large number of Bot projects. The following "Investment Opportunities -Bot" chapter will try to analyze the investment opportunities in the Telegram Bot track.

TON: The only blockchain supported by Telegram

TON has been inextricably linked to Telegram since its inception, and Telegram executives are more It does not hesitate to support TON. For example, Telegram CEO Du Rove publicly stated in a statement in July last year that he holds $TON.

(from public social media)

At the Singapore TOKEN2049 conference in September last year, Telegram even publicly stated that it would now completely rely on TON as a Its blockchain infrastructure, $TON and its Web3 ecosystem will enjoy promotion on Telegram and priority access to Telegram Ads, Telegram’s global advertising platform. The goal is to cultivate and promote a TON-centric Web3 ecosystem in Telegram and develop the Telegram integrated wallet into an all-in-one platform that meets all user needs.

Readers may be confused. Since Telegram Bot already provides users with a convenient and fast Web3 experience, why do they need TON? The main role of Bot is to guide traffic and link users with Dapps. As a TON Foundation representative said, TON allows developers to create products with real-world 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 Dapps built on TON can also be used on the Telegram interface, which will empower Telegram and form a powerful flywheel effect. In other words, TON can promote the use of Dapps. For example, using a TON wallet to open Telegram Mini Apps can enhance users’ psychological safety. Because TON has launched TON Connect, a technology based on modern cryptography that allows users to log in to services and applications with one click through the TON wallet, which means that the user’s key will never leave the user’s device and the user’s privacy will not be violated. . Using TON Connect can reduce users' worries about entering private keys when using Telegram Bot, thereby promoting the usage of Telegram Bot and Mini Apps. On the other hand, the token $TON provides Telegram with a path to commercialization - due to historical sensitivity, Telegram's single profit model and limited sources of operating funds (the founder's personal funds and 2 bond issuances raised a total of approximately $1.2 billion US dollars), causing Telegram to turn to looking for decentralized commercialization methods. In addition, the $TON token provides the public with technology to protect their rights and freedoms, adding a new dimension to communication between users on the basis of transactions. For example, in July last year, the TON Foundation announced the introduction of encrypted messaging functionality on the TON chain, using end-to-end encryption to ensure that only the sender and receiver can see the message content, and the transaction fee for each message sent is 0.006 $TON. TON's infrastructure and its financial properties are indispensable and important components of Telegram's Web3 landscape.

TON's framework and technology development

To understand TON, we must first break away from the current public consensus led by ETH. Chain design frame. TON is a public chain designed from the beginning with the goal of large-scale application by a team that has worked on a giant platform business (VK, the largest social network in Russia). As a project at the same time as Ethereum, TON proposed the concept of sharding even earlier than Ethereum 2.0 to support more complex businesses. The design logic of TON's underlying architecture is also significantly different from that of Ethereum. The design of the underlying architecture also determines to a certain extent whether the public chain can meet its goal of hosting large-scale users. Until now, WhatsApp and WeChat have not been able to support the simultaneous synchronization of messages on multiple terminals on mobile phones and computers. This is a problem of architectural design.

The core design of the TON blockchain includes "resource payment" and "asynchrony". "Resource payment" means that unlike public chains such as Ethereum and Solana, which require users to pay transaction fees, each smart contract on TON needs to hold a certain amount of $TON to pay the fee. If the TON token balance of a smart contract is consumed exhaustion, the contract will eventually be deleted. This design introduces an automatic cleaning mechanism to avoid data expansion 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 some future block after the transaction ends. The advantage of TON's design is higher scalability and flexibility, but the disadvantage is that it increases the difficulty of application development and maintenance, making the development of DeFi on the TON chain difficult and slow.

TON’s architecture is divided into three layers: masterchain, workchain and shardchain. The masterchain is the coordination center, and the workchain and shardchain handle the actual transactions. Therefore, TON has a main chain masterchain, which can accommodate up to 2^32 workchains, and each workchain can be subdivided into up to 2^60 shardchains. TON claims to be able to support one million TPS and applied for the Guinness World Record for “Fastest Blockchain” last October. However, the actual TPS of TON may not be tested until the TON chain ecology prospers and huge traffic starts running on the TON chain.

There are three types of programming available for smart contract development on TON Languages: Fift, FunC and Tact. Fift is relatively low-level and difficult, and few developers choose to use the Fift language. The most commonly used development language at present is FunC, which is a programming language similar to C. Tact is a new high-level language launched by TON. It is designed to be similar to popular programming languages such as JavaScript, Python and Solidity. It aims to reduce the difficulty of development and make it accessible to a wide range of developers. Since this article is not a professional technical popularization article, the technical details of TACT will not be elaborated here. Readers who are interested can refer to "Why TACT is the next major breakthrough for TON", but what is noteworthy about TACT is: 1) Its support is for The principle of Message Programming (MOP) simplifies the development process and improves efficiency, and can also create contracts that easily interact through message passing to simplify the integration and interaction of different contracts; 2) The availability of the Blueprint framework, which provides smart contract development A complete set of tools has been developed to make the contract development and deployment process more simplified, flexible and convenient. With Blueprint, developers can easily manage all stages of the smart contract lifecycle. Other Telegram Bots such as Unibot, which exploded last year, were developed using the TACT language and its Blueprint script. Although TACT is still under audit, the ease of development it brings will allow it to play a very important role in TON ecological development, and it is expected to be promoted on a large scale 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 and 176 active developers on GitHub. It is a relatively well-known development team. There are 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- The a-TON x DWF x AWS Hackathon also provides a prize pool of more than $415,000, the establishment of TON Grants projects and TON Bounties projects, etc. The TON Bounties project has successfully processed more than 155 proposals, of which 40 new bounty tasks were approved in the third quarter of last year, and 25 completed projects have received approximately $53,000 in awards; the TON Grants project has accepted 103 projects Applied and approved 10 projects. In addition, TON has also established a $250 million TONcoin.Fund to invest in TON ecological projects, with investment entities covering Infra, Defi, NFT, gaming, sociofi, etc.

As of November 11 last year, there were 551 Dapps in the TON ecosystem, covering wallets, DeFi, NFT, gaming, socialFi, etc. , but according to the Starbase article, the TON ecological project actually includes many Telegram groups. 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 are included in DefiLlama. Among them, the highest TVL rankings are TONstakers ($105 million) and Bemo ($27.33 million) USD), it can be seen that the TON ecosystem lacks popular DeFi projects. One of the reasons is that existing DeFi projects support a single stake asset and have a low yield. For example, TONstakers with the highest TVL can currently only stake $TON, with an APY of 4.64%. .

Another reason for the low TVL on the TON chain is the lack of stablecoins. Currently, in addition to USDT, the other stablecoins on the TON chain, oUSDT, oUSDC, jUSDT and jUSDC, have low liquidity and very large exchange losses. Unlike USDT and USDC, their valuations are not supported by real-world assets and are audited. This greatly reduces the enthusiasm of users to conduct transactions across chains to the TON chain. As more cross-chain bridges are launched in the future, it is expected that other liquid stablecoins besides USDT will appear on the TON chain to promote the prosperity of its ecosystem. In addition, the native USDT on TON is expected to be launched this year, and TON is currently negotiating with other stablecoins. The introduction of stablecoins is expected to continue to stimulate TON’s TVL growth.

Currently, the TON chain has only launched an eth cross-chain bridge, but no projects with mature Ethereum ecology have crossed the chain to the TON chain for layout. For example, AAVE, Uniswap, etc. do not support the TON chain, which leads to A large amount of traffic on Ethereum failed to flow into the TON chain. Judging from the various activities currently launched by the TON Foundation and TON Society, officials are 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 it holds huge Telegram traffic, compared to TON, which needs to attract traffic from other public chains through cross-chain bridges. , other public chains will have more urgent needs to reach TON users through cross-chain bridges. Therefore, at this stage, TON can cooperate with mainstream DeFi protocols such as AAVE and Uniswap, as well as select suitable projects from many cross-chain cases, and strive for better benefits in the cooperation. However, it should be noted that since the underlying architecture of TON is different from that of Ethereum, the atomicity of transactions on Ethereum cannot be achieved on TON, which will also lead to TON’s DeFi gameplay to a certain extent. Rich, for example, it is difficult to implement flash loans on TON. Therefore, we need to pay more attention to DeFi applications and scenarios that are integrated with Telegram’s internal ecosystem.

TON’s community governance

Currently, the TON community has not yet formed a state of complete autonomy, but this does not mean It does not mean that community members cannot participate in the construction and governance of TON. Officially, Channel and Chat are provided for community members to subscribe and communicate. For developers, the official also provides relatively complete tutorials and developer documents to help developers develop. It also has a developer community and TON answer to help developers answer questions.

The general governance process of TON is as follows:

1) First, the Author needs to submit the proposal content through TON Enhancement Proposal and pull the request, so that the proposal enters the review status;

2) Secondly, the Editor will verify the pull request and then assign Reviewers for review;

3) Subsequently, the Reviewers will share opinions or comments and vote for or against;

4) Once the majority of Reviewers agree on the proposal, the proposal will enter a 10-day comment period;

5) When the comment period ends, the Editor will change the status of the proposal from Review to Active or Rejected;

Through the above process, community members and core contributors can more easily participate in TON's internal governance. However, considering that in the early stages of the development of public chains, too much decentralization of power and governance is often inefficient, therefore, the TON community has not yet reached a state of complete autonomy at this stage. 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 ecology, we use TVL as the basis for judgment - the Lego effect of DeFi. However, in the Red Ocean of public chains, we feel It is inappropriate to use traditional public chain valuation methods to evaluate TON. The core value of TON lies in its strong binding to Telegram. We should evaluate TON from the perspective of the grand narrative of TON x Telegram and from the perspective of transaction volume and Dapps’ protocol revenue.

After attracting and accommodating a large number of real users, the rapidly changing Telegram is also developing richer functions and Dapps to retain users, trying to complete the upgrade from communication protocol to social platform to super application platform . Its free and relaxed atmosphere and increasingly abundant Dapps and services are bound to attract more users; adding Telegram is an "important position" for Crypto, and TON, the only blockchain supported by Telegram, will surely benefit from it.

As stated by the TON Foundation, it hopes to have 30% of Telegram’s active users join TON in 2028. Based on this calculation, 500 million Telegram users will become users of the TON chain by then. Therefore, we feel that the primary issue that TON needs to consider at present is how to attract Telegram users to TON. In addition to constantly building different types of Dapps to meet the traffic introduced by Telegram, TON wallet can also be used to integrate games, DeFi, creator economy, encrypted e-commerce, etc. into high-frequency life scenarios, thereby increasing the frequency and frequency of users using TON. viscosity. In addition, TON needs to be promoted more vigorously and broadly on Telegram. From an investment perspective, the current price of $TON is $3.8/coin, with a market value of 13.1 billion, ranking 13th. At present, TON's market value is already relatively high, exceeding that of public chains such as Apt and Sui. Investors who want to obtain a 5-10 times return on investment may need to wait for the arrival of a bull market. The price of TON was 2.48 half a year ago and the current price is 3.8. Aptos was priced at 5.2 half a year ago and is now at 14.4. Solana was priced at 20 half a year ago and is currently at 166. Sui was priced at 0.45 half a year ago and is currently at 1.52. It can be seen that TON's growth rate within half a year is not large, and there is still room for potential.

TON Ecological 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 led by TONCoin Fund Financing, 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 Telegram-specific usernames and virtual numbers. The settlement unit is TON. There is no handling fee for listing NFT on Fragment, and a 5% platform fee is charged for each auction. Users can bid freely, and the highest bidder wins each time. It is worth noting that Pavel, the founder of Telegram, is also the co-founder of Fragment.

Telegram username is similar to the decentralized username ENS. As Telegram founder Pavel Durov said, this is the first open and transparent username market established on a social platform. This means that users have gained ownership of their usernames on the Web2 social platform for the first time. If Telegram can explore a points system that combines usernames with activities on channels/groups, and integrate participant to earn into Web2, it will definitely be possible. Attract more users to buy 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 an NFT and is recorded in the TON blockchain, which can protect privacy and highlight the user's identity and personality. This virtual phone number has hype and collectible value, and the current floor price is 9$TON. In addition, Fragment also integrates Premium functions. Users can pay the subscription fee for Telegram Premium functions on Fragment or donate $TON to Fragment to gain the opportunity to promote channels on Telegram.

Bot Track

As mentioned in the "Telegram mini app (tApp Center) and Telegram Bot" section above, Telegram Bot provides users with The Telegram interface can easily connect to the entire crypto world for simple operations. There is a lot of real demand, and it has been widely penetrated into many fields such as transactions, DeFi, cross-chain, airdrops, etc. However, currently Telegram bot is still in the blue ocean market, and many are suitable for new applications. Application scenarios such as the paid combination of Bot and Telegram, the combination of Bot and Ethsign, etc. have not yet been developed. It is expected that Telegram Bots will be integrated with other storytelling and applications, and will also transform into Telegram mini app in the future to provide users with a better Web3 experience.

Judging from Dex’s 24-hour trading volume, Unibot and Banana account for the majority of the transaction volume on the Telegram Bot track, accounting for 50% and 41% respectively. They are still in the project competition stage for market share. In addition, according to CertiK research and analysis, nearly 40% of Telegram Bot projects are suspected to be dormant, may be fraudulent, or face the risk of being unable to recover from a sharp sell-off. One of the possible reasons for this is that Bot projects are built directly using the TACT language and Blueprint provided by TON. The development process is relatively simple and it is easy to copy successful projects on the market. However, these projects do not have the ability to continue to attract users after they are launched. Therefore, investors should also pay attention to its risks when paying attention to Bot track projects.

LootBot

Lootbot focuses on automating airdrop interactions, being able to filter out the most beneficial airdrop opportunities while implementing strong security measures to protect users Safe from hackers and fraudulent activities. Currently ZkSync, Layerzero, Linea, Base, Taiko and Polygon chains are supported. The first 15 transactions on Lootbot are free, after which users are advised to purchase its Premium version for $30/month. At present, Lootbot has received $148,000 in subscription fees. $LOOT holders can choose to burn $LOOT to mint $xLOOT to obtain income. Currently, a total of 1.98 million loot has been destroyed.

WagieBot

WagieBot provides users with the ability to conduct due diligence and interact with any liquidity pool on Ethereum, Binance Chain, and Arbitrum on Telegram and Discord. Users only need to paste a contract and WagieBot will automatically obtain the maximum liquidity pool and all necessary information for the token and complete anti-rug checks. WagieBot's interaction speed is dozens of times faster than Dex, and it also integrates GMX to allow users to trade with up to 50x 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

Reference materials

1. A brief history of TON development https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/44875

2. Brief history of TON development https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/43776

3.TON’s technical features, network structure, and 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 TON Big breakthrough 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 encrypted “WeChat wallet” https://www.theblockbeats.info/news/45428

8. After Maestrobot, the Telegram Bot project has been 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. Understanding Unibot in one article (UNIBOT) https://www.gate.io/zh/learn/articles/understanding-unibot-in-one-article/759

17. Interpretation of Binance Research Telegram Bots Report: 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 ecology report: trends and opportunities, how to find an entry point in the TON ecology? 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 Telegram’s username auction platform Fragment https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/17620