By: Lydia Wu, Research Fellow, Mint Ventures

Introduction: Decoupling of the Classical Public Chain Concept

The figures on DefiLlama and CoinMarketCap seem to show conclusively that TON is a "giant and unpopular public chain" - its total market value has long been among the top 20, but its 24-hour trading volume is always outside the top 100; its TVL is only 53M, which is below the new high, and it is not among the top 50 public chains; its MC/TVL valuation has reached an astonishing 293, which is 33 times that of Ethereum.

Source: DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap

The past few months have witnessed the decoupling of the concept of public chain defined by Ethereum by Rollup and modularization. The narrative of chain legitimacy has weakened. The market has accepted that Blast is a chain in name only, and has also realized that AO is actually a public chain in the name of the network.

This change has accelerated the release of TON's potential under its "unorthodox" position. The market's understanding of TON begins with no longer framing it in the traditional public chain narrative of TVL. The daily/monthly active users, which are closer to the user side, may also be taken into consideration.

Recently, Telegram founder Durove told the Financial Times that Telegram's monthly active users have exceeded 900 million, with a valuation of more than 30 billion US dollars, and is considering an IPO. Compared with Meta's 3 billion monthly active users and 1.3 trillion market value, Telegram's valuation is only 1/40. In addition, Telegram's user base is concentrated in Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East. The characteristics of retail investors are more obvious, and the demand for peer-to-peer payments is strong. They are an ideal group to be converted to Web3. With the growth of Telegram itself, if TON can introduce 30% of Telegram users in 3-5 years as expected, it may effectively support its valuation.

Source: DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap, Nansen, Token Terminal

A new paradigm for Web3 creation: content packaging and value transfer based on Telegram

Distribution model split, Telegram opens up the Web2 incremental market

In an article last year, I sorted out the three stages of Web3 creator economy, among which the 1.0 stage conforms to the simplest "blockchain +" logic, adopting the centralized content creation + Web3 distribution model (mainly in the form of NFT). This model is still the mainstream at present, but NFT has begun to be more of a speculative tool for Pre-token rather than a creative carrier.

Since the beginning of this year, my experience with the TON ecosystem has made me gradually realize that, based on the same attention-based traffic path, the content/equity/governance packaging function of NFT may be more naturally replaced by the "channel-advertising-payment" system. The popular Friend.tech is an intermediate form of this idea - packaging group chats into assets, but the content is difficult to expand and the economic model lacks sustainability.

Compared to many NFT and SocialFi projects that are still struggling to find application scenarios for assets, the TON ecosystem based on Telegram has built a product experience and value network that is more friendly to Web2 developers/creators and users. On existing social networks, the Web3 distribution model is further split into Web2 business form + middleware wallet + Web3 settlement. On the one hand, it lowers the understanding and operation threshold for creators and users, and on the other hand, it enriches the creators' income sources (advertising sharing).

Source: Lydia @Mint Ventures

From content to services, Trading Bot helps Web3 stock conversion

WeChat, the supper app of Web2, has achieved ecological expansion from content to services by launching service accounts and mini-programs. Telegram has also followed a similar approach, consolidating its position as a mobile traffic portal by launching corporate accounts and service bots, among which Trading Bot is very popular among crypto users.

The Trading Bot track has developed rapidly since 2023 and is one of the few products with real demand and cash flow in the bear market. After the bear market turned bullish, the money-making effect of the Bot track was further amplified, and the daily revenue of the leading protocols such as Banana Gun and Unibot exceeded 200,000 US dollars. At present, except for a very small number of deployments on web pages and Discord, most Trading Bots interact through Telegram.

Source: https://dune.com/whale_hunter/dex-trading-bot-wars

At this stage, Trading Bot trading has little to do with TON. It mainly uses Telegram’s Bot module to access Ethereum and Solana. However, the popularity of Bot has greatly contributed to the market education and user mental cultivation of the TON ecosystem. When crypto users become accustomed to new interaction methods like Bot, the psychological friction of experiencing other non-transaction products in the TON ecosystem will be significantly reduced. Supplemented by a complete on-chain identity system and payment module, TON can theoretically build a Self-consistent content packaging and value transfer system.

Exploration of the bazaar model: TON’s Bot universe and Mini App store

Currently, many products in the TON ecosystem look like simple Telegram Bot portals + H5 web pages, coupled with Telegram groups that jump and swipe across the screen, making people feel like they are in a bustling and chaotic bazaar.

In the meme project Notcoin, all players have to do is keep clicking on the coins on the screen to exchange for points. They can also join the team of celebrities (such as Telegram founder Durove) or "send red envelopes" to friends to attract traffic. With its mindless gameplay and viral spread, Notcoin has won 5 million players in a week. Currently, the number of players exceeds 26 million, and X (Twitter) has 1 million followers. In the pre-market trading not long after it went online, the current highest transaction amount is a transaction of purchasing 100 million points with 1100TON (about 4521U).

As a favorite of crypto celebrities, Farcaster's Frames feature launched in January 2024 was hailed as an "amazing innovation." However, this feature does not perform well on mobile devices with higher traffic density. Although users can perform some Swap and Mint operations, if it comes to more complex interactions, even the simplest mini-games, it is a big challenge for vision to complete them in a small box that occupies less than one-third of the mobile phone screen.

What is rarely mentioned is that the combination of Telegram and TON has actually already completed an almost seamless jump from the chat box to the semi-native application. The speed of calling out the application through the Bot is even faster than that of the WeChat applet.

Telegram launched the Bot feature in June 2015, which “cannot customize the interface style” and “the client does not communicate directly with the server”. The Trading Bot built based on this feature is not an independent application, but a proxy interface, so the response speed is limited and it is difficult to interact with multiple things in parallel.

In April 2022, Telegram launched Mini App, which allows developers to fully control the user interface and "directly communicate between the client and the server". Mini App provides more friendly interaction and stronger composability, and can seamlessly connect to infrastructure such as wallets, suitable for a variety of Web3 product deployments, and can even replace all mobile web pages.

After the launch of Mini App, Bot did not withdraw from the stage of history, but played the role of a "message room", connecting multiple Mini Apps as the first entry point for user interaction.

Source: TON x Fans | TON Fans

Source: Lydia

At this stage, it is not difficult to deploy a Bot and Mini App. Users can quickly set up their own Bot through Q&A in the Telegram @BotFather channel, or experience the virtual ordering experience of the Mini App after the setup is completed in @DurgerKingBot.

Differentiated on-chain experience: the highlight of TON ecosystem

Lightweight games

In an era of overcapacity in public chains, the experience of playing a game on Ethereum L2, Solana, or BSC will not be much different. However, for a game with strong social attributes (such as chess or other party games), the experience of sharing a team with one click on Telegram or waiting for random matching with strangers on the Internet will be very different.

Tap Fantasy was originally an MMORPG game on Facebook. After entering Web3, it attracted more than 700,000 players on the BSC and Solana chains. In August 2023, as the first IDO project of TonUP, the first Launchpad of the TON ecosystem, Tap Fantasy's token $MC sold out in half an hour. In November 2023, Tap Fantasy officially launched a new version based on TON, issued by Pluto, a Web3 game incubator. The number of players of the new version exceeded 600,000 in 3 months, and there were more than 16,000 players on the chain. Due to the well-functioning in-game economy, the exchange rate of the token $MC relative to TON rose from 0.2 to 1.

Catizen, a new game incubated by Pluto, is a metaverse cat-raising game that combines AI. It was launched on March 7, 2024 for a deleted file test, and accumulated more than 160,000 players and 13,000 on-chain users in five days. Catizen also cooperated with $FISH, a top meme in the TON ecosystem, and will airdrop to $FISH holders after the test.

Source: Tap Fantasy TON version dashboard

Source: Catizen dashboard

Social Posts and Memes

As a new asset issuance method that emerged in this cycle, the overflow of BTC inscription ecology to multiple chains is an experimental trend. TON's inscription ecology development also integrates the Telegram front-end and built-in wallet, improving the convenience of interaction while achieving two goals with one stone for scientists.

  • $NANO: The first TON20 inscription, bringing 20 million interactions and 36,000 independent minting addresses to the TON ecosystem

  • $GRAM: Named after the native token of Telegram Open Network that was stopped by the SEC, it is the first time to use the Telegram applet front-end to perform deployment, minting and transfer

  • $TONOT: broke the record held by $NANO with 61,000 independent minting addresses and 57,000 holders. It supports the conversion between inscriptions, NFTs and tokens. The product plan also includes in-game currency, DID and staking mining, etc.

Meme-type assets had long been relatively deserted on the "unpopular public chain" TON, and crypto users had always lacked a window to understand TON until Notcoin came out.

  • $NOT: Notcoin will soon airdrop $NOT tokens in late March or early April. Pre-market trading is taking place on Getgems, the NFT trading market of the TON ecosystem.

  • $REDO: The concept comes from the hand-drawn drawings of Telegram founder Durov during a protest. It is the meme with the highest market value in the TON ecosystem.

  • $FISH: Ton Fish is the first social meme in the TON ecosystem, with more than 18,000 current holders

  • $TPET: Ton Fish Ecological Meme, the fair launch will last until March 26th, and will be used as the main token of the game Ton Pet: Tik Ton. $FISH and NFT holders will have the opportunity to receive airdrops

Multi-chain Liquidity Launchpad

XTON is the first launchpad in the TON ecosystem to introduce multi-chain liquidity. The team members are from the TON Foundation. XTON will complete the mainnet launch and token sale in Q1 and launch the first project in Q2. In line with XTON's vision, the TON ecosystem will have the opportunity to complete the bilateral traffic connection between the Web2 social giant and the Web3 EVM world.

Conclusion: Towards a connected future

Since March, stimulated by the news that Telegram announced the use of TON to process advertising revenue, Binance launched U-based contracts, and Telegram sought an IPO, the TON coin price, which had been silent for a long time, quickly completed a double jump, and the on-chain activity has also increased significantly.

Source: https://www.tonstat.com/

Looking through TON's roadmap since 2018, from the launch of Telegram to the community taking over, from the launch of the first cross-chain bridge to the gradual improvement of infrastructure, the resilience and vitality of the TON ecosystem are impressive. In 2024, TON will focus on stablecoins, cross-chain bridges and the Asian market. We look forward to seeing TON become a truly open network that interconnects different regions, different ecosystems, and different applications. Everyone in it may also be able to glimpse the ancient future that blockchain has long promised.

*All data in this article is as of March 13, 2024

References

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC5G2581M8s&ab_channel=TOKEN2049

  2. https://decrypt.co/220711/telegram-game-notcoin-launches-pre-market-trading-ahead-airdrop

  3. https://medium.com/@tonx_fans/tg-mini-app-dev-3aff329bf05a

  4. https://ton.org/en/roadmap

  5. https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_16072.html