Original author: Joyce

Recently, the overall market sentiment has been very pessimistic, especially in the altcoin market. In the unstable situation of the entire Bitcoin market, altcoins have plummeted, and there are numerous projects that have been cut in half.

However, in this bleak market situation, the performance of the Ton ecosystem has been very stable. TON has risen by 23% in the past thirty days, and the total value locked (TVL) of the entire Ton ecosystem has also skyrocketed since March this year, increasing by more than 6 times in just four months. Projects within the ecosystem, such as Notcoin, have seen significant increases in both price and user volume. Is the summer of the Ton ecosystem coming?

New Highlights of the Ton Ecosystem

Backed by Telegram's 9 billion active users, this is the biggest feature of the Ton ecosystem. However, it has always been criticized that there is not a very close connection between Ton and Telegram, and the Telegram platform system has not given much empowerment to Ton, making Ton still "air."

However, it seems that everything has fundamentally changed since the beginning of this year.

From March to now, the TVL of the Ton ecosystem has grown from less than $23 million to the current $145 million, an increase of more than 6 times. At the same time, the price of TON has also risen by about 3 times during this period, remaining very strong in the past month's bear market. What are the positive factors behind all of this?

Source: DefiLlama

1) Using TON to settle the Telegram platform's advertising system

Unlike social platforms such as Facebook and WeChat, Telegram, despite having a massive user base, has always adhered to its commitment to user privacy and does not rely on user data for targeted advertising.

Therefore, Telegram does not have a precise user advertising platform, which has abandoned the mainstream advertising profit model of other social media giants. This has also led to Telegram not achieving a true balance of profit and loss for many years.

It was not until the past two years that Telegram launched an advertising platform that does not rely on precise user tag systems and also introduced a subscription service, which has become Telegram's main profit model.

At the end of February this year, founder Durov stated in his Telegram channel that the Telegram advertising platform (with a monthly browsing volume of over 10 trillion times) would officially open to all advertising clients in nearly a hundred countries in March, with channel owners receiving 50% of all advertising revenue, all settled in TON.

Translation: Next month, channel owners on Telegram can start making money from their work. Telegram's broadcast channels generate 10 trillion views per month. Currently, only 10% of these views are commercialized through Telegram advertising, which is a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind.

In March, the Telegram advertising platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. The channel owners in these countries will start receiving 50% of any revenue generated from showing ads on their channels.

To ensure fast and secure advertising payments and withdrawals, we will use the TON blockchain specifically. Similar to how we handle Telegram usernames on Fragment, we will use TON to sell ads and share revenue with channel owners. This will create a virtuous cycle, allowing content creators to cash out their TON or reinvest it in promoting and upgrading their channels.

For TON, it must be said that this is a major leap 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, not much different from other general public chains. Moreover, because the developers and user base of the Ton public chain are far fewer than those of other popular public chains, the consumption of TON is very inconspicuous. Although it can be used to purchase virtual goods such as anonymous accounts on Telegram, the total transaction volume is not very imaginative.

Using TON as the sole settlement asset for the Telegram advertising platform is a big move for empowering Ton, equivalent to directly empowering Ton with Telegram's nine billion user base, truly achieving deep integration between the Ton ecosystem and the Telegram platform, and suddenly opening up the ceiling for the Ton ecosystem and TON price.

At the same time, to avoid the Telegram team from accumulating more and more TON due to this move, leading to centralization risks for TON, Durov subsequently stated that in the future, more than 10% of TON held by the team 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, this is equivalent to the Telegram platform continuously repurchasing TON with advertising revenue, while seeking other long-term holders or institutions. This not only avoids excessive centralization of TON but also reduces the circulation through lock-up, naturally creating a great positive effect.

2) Launch of Ton space

Ton space was launched in September 2023. Before this, the built-in wallet Wallet in Telegram was KYC-compliant and could only be used for payments. However, Ton space allows users to manage their private keys themselves, similar to a regular crypto wallet.

After using Ton space, users can seamlessly connect their Telegram accounts with various DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and other services within the Ton ecosystem, directly logging into applications in the Ton ecosystem from their Telegram accounts to participate.

Imagine being able to directly buy and sell tokens/NFTs, borrow, or participate in GameFi projects within Telegram for its nine billion active users. For them, the barrier to participating in Web3 has indeed been significantly lowered.

Of course, for the Ton ecosystem, this is also a big move, as no other public chain has such a large user pool as Ton, backed by Telegram.

3) Platform's strong promotion of mini applications

After opening up payment channels, Telegram began to strongly promote mini applications, similar to WeChat mini programs, based on the Telegram platform and usable without installation.

For example, the recently popular Notcoin is a platform-embedded mini program where users can directly participate in activities such as "Click to Earn" tokens within Telegram. The built-in Web3 wallet greatly reduces the barrier for user participation. With the official traffic support from Telegram, the total user base has exceeded 40 million in just a few months.

Currently, with the official traffic support, Telegram's platform has seen a large number of Web3 mini applications similar to Notcoin emerge. Compared to the previous GameFi craze driven by gold farming studios, participating in and profiting from games through the Telegram platform seems to eliminate the need for gold farming studios and is directly driven by Telegram to attract a massive user base.

In addition, there are 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 determined its strategy to enter Web3 and has initiated deep binding cooperation with Ton.

Under this series of actions, both TON price and TVL have shown breakthrough growth. For the Telegram platform, it has also achieved a high-profit model apart from advertising and subscription fees.

It is clear that this is a win-win situation.

Inventory of Ton Ecosystem Projects

In Ton.app, there are currently 874 projects. Although this number is not significant compared to the ecosystems of public chains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon, and only Notcoin is currently listed on the top-tier platform, the number of Ton ecosystem projects has grown by nearly 60% in the past eight months, and the overall TVL has achieved a several-fold increase, demonstrating the strong growth momentum of the Ton ecosystem.

Let's take a brief look at some of the projects with high popularity in 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 ecosystem apps, with Notcoin being presented as a key showcase.

Notcoin, as a "click to earn" game, is the most popular Web3 application in the Telegram Apps Center and is currently the most well-known project in the Ton ecosystem. In just a few months, its user base has exceeded 40 million. Despite its token NOT not forming a closed loop in the gaming ecosystem and being criticized as a Memecoin, it has experienced a significant surge after being listed on BN.

Catizen

Catizen is the largest gaming application platform in the Telegram ecosystem, with a total user base exceeding 20 million, over 500,000 paying users, and over 1.25 million on-chain users, consistently ranking first in the Ton Open League for several seasons.

Hamster Kombat

Hamster Kombat is also a play-to-earn game that has recently gained popularity due to high expectations for its airdrop. According to official data, its active user base has exceeded 150 million, with a 50% increase from last week, currently ranking third in popularity in the Telegram Apps Center.

Gatto|Game

Gatto is a pet-raising game and was a key showcased ecosystem project in the Ton Foundation's report for the first quarter of 2024. According to the report, as of January 2024, Gatto's daily active users (DAU) have reached 30,000, with over 1 million pets created and a monthly income of $35,000.

Gamee

Gamee is a social gaming platform under Animoca Brands and is one of the highly popular gaming ecosystems on Telegram. Although its token price experienced a sharp decline due to a hacking incident at the beginning of 2024, Gamee's popularity in the Telegram ecosystem remains high.

PocketFi

PocketFi is a Telegram trading bot that supports cross-chain transactions and attracts users through "click to earn" methods. With its simple operation and strong real-time feedback, it has attracted over 1.4 million users in just three months after its launch and has achieved good popularity in the Telegram Apps Center.

Blum

Blum is a DEX in the Telegram ecosystem that offers spot and simple derivative trading. However, its related functions have not been launched yet, and it can only mine points through mini-games. Its user base has already exceeded tens of millions.

It is worth noting that Blum was created by former executives of BN and has been selected for the Binance Labs accelerator.

Yescoin

As the name suggests, it is a replica of Notcoin and is currently very popular. Its user base has exceeded 18 million, and the number of subscribers to its official Telegram channel has surpassed 6 million, with a remarkably rapid growth rate.

DeDust, Ston.fi

DeDust and Ston.fi are both DEX in the Telegram ecosystem and are among the most popular apps in the Apps Center rankings, in addition to various "click to earn" games.

In DeFiLlama, their TVL ranks first and second at $320 million and $260 million, respectively, making them the flagship projects of the entire Ton ecosystem with a combined TVL of $634 million.

The official Telegram channel of Ston.fi has attracted 680,000 followers, surpassing DeDust in popularity.

Uxlink

Uxlink is the largest social infrastructure project in the Telegram ecosystem, rapidly proliferating based on familiar social connections within Telegram. The publicly disclosed registration data has already exceeded 10 million, making it a social infrastructure project with over 10 million users in the SocialFi track.

Uxlink has already received investment favor from firms such as ZhenFund, Sequoia Capital, and GGV, and although it has not yet been launched on major platforms, the future development of such a large-scale SocialFi project 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 presence in the current bleak market. However, beneath the prosperous appearance, there are also some issues that cannot be ignored.

For example, in terms of the number of developers, the Ton ecosystem has only 39 full-time developers (Developer report data), with a total of 175 developers, far fewer than Ethereum's 2392 and 7864, and Solana's 436 and 1615, which are much higher than those of the Ton ecosystem.

In addition, the frequent account theft issues on the Telegram platform have become more rampant after the introduction of the built-in Web3 wallet, phishing links, and other security threats. This is undoubtedly one of the urgent issues that need to be addressed in the process of Telegram's Web3 progress, especially for newcomers with weak security awareness. Furthermore, considering that the Ton public chain has not been online for long and has not experienced many security incidents, the overall security of the ecosystem is a major test for future development.

Of course, both developer and security issues can be gradually iterated and optimized in the future development of the ecosystem. After all, the development of the entire Web3 industry is also a process of flying and maintaining.

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