In the context of soaring chaos values, it is crucial to perceive cycles more clearly and explore future narrative trends. As innovation narrative catchers, investment institutions have always been relatively ahead of the curve. In light of this, OKX has specially planned the "Crypto Evolution Theory" column, inviting mainstream crypto investment institutions worldwide to systematically output discussions on current market cycles, new narrative directions, and popular segmented tracks, sparking ideas.
The following is the content of the fifth issue, where OKX Ventures, LongHash Ventures, and ANAGRAM jointly explore the future development of Web3 social and consumer tracks, hoping their insights and thoughts will inspire you.
About OKX Ventures
OKX Ventures is the investment arm of OKX, a leading crypto asset trading platform and Web3 technology company, with an initial capital commitment of $100 million. It focuses on exploring the best blockchain projects globally, supporting cutting-edge blockchain technology innovation, promoting the healthy development of the global blockchain industry, and investing in long-term structural value. By committing to entrepreneurs who support the blockchain industry, OKX Ventures helps build innovative companies and brings global resources and historical experience to blockchain projects.
About LongHash Ventures
LongHash Ventures is a crypto-native venture capital firm founded in 2017, based in Singapore and Silicon Valley. We work closely with founders to build their Web3 models and tap into the immense potential of Asia. We invest alongside visionary founders who are pioneering the next phase of the open economy.
About ANAGRAM
We are an institution focused on technological innovation. We are dedicated to helping those who bring ownership economies to the masses through human and financial capital.
1. What are the differences in the current round of SocialFi development compared to the previous one?
OKX Ventures Researcher: This round of SocialFi focuses on Memecoin trading and casual game development based on high-distribution protocols (like TON), paying more attention to consumer and creator tools compared to the previous NFT cycle. Many major brands (like LVMH, Nike, etc.) have attempted to test related narratives in the crypto space but ultimately failed to adapt to the hyper-financial culture of the crypto community. In the success of Memecoin trading and "casino-type dApps" like Polymarket, we see that these crypto dApps catering to hyper-financialized applications can indeed achieve positive results. Other trends include:
1. From Content Monetization to Social Monetization
Early Social projects, such as Steemit and Mirror, relied on content production for incentives, but quality was hard to control, leading to an overflow of low-quality content. In this round, friend.tech undeniably brings a new experiment—monetizing social relationships, where each user becomes a "Key" asset, constructing a new form of asset through social identity, making everyone a potential investment object. Pump.fun inherits the liquidity innovation idea of Friend.tech, further promoting the narrative of low liquidity AMM models and effectively bridging the liquidity conversion path of on-chain assets between DEX and CEX. Compared to Friend.tech, Pump.fun focuses more on combining liquidity models with social interaction, deeply binding asset liquidity with social activities. The innovative model of UXLINK is through its Link to Earn model—users contribute their social network data to earn rewards, thus addressing the shortcomings of relying solely on content production, emphasizing the value conversion of social relationships, and avoiding the pitfalls of short-term financial incentives.
2. The Trade-off Between Decentralization and Financialization
Projects are more flexible in terms of decentralization. Social platforms like Farcaster emphasize users' digital ownership of social relationships and content control, but their core is not immediately fully decentralized. Their highlight is allowing users to control their social data while reserving experimental space for future on-chain operations, with innovation emphasizing community-driven and community culture. TON+Telegram focuses on a more pragmatic Web2.5, providing users with convenient entry points through embedded programs like mini-games, integrating financial operations into daily social interactions, enhancing the financial attributes of social identities; gradually introducing on-chain activities while reducing the transition costs to Web3, leveraging the existing platform to enhance user trust and experience.
In addition, there is a trend of intellectual property (IP) moving on-chain. The increasing UGC and AI-generated content are the main forces behind this.
LongHash Ventures (Emma Cui): In this cycle, the infrastructure is ready to support mass adoption.
First, scalability: Rollups, Alt L1s, and data availability layers have reduced the cost of on-chain activities to a few cents or less. More innovative rollups (like zkSync) further optimize data costs through state differences by aggregating data.
Second, interoperability: Chain abstraction and intent-based protocols allow on-chain assets and credentials to be easily recognized or used across any chain. For example, to send a tip on SocialFi, Particle Network can seamlessly aggregate assets across multiple chains and send them in one step.
Third, account user experience: Account abstraction, MPC, passwords, and social logins allow users to interact with web3 without managing private keys and gas fees. Today, the Safe protocol has protected billions in assets, with its peak exceeding Binance and Robinhood by $120 billion, comparable to real-world banks. With account abstraction, users can log into SocialFi applications using session keys and authorize multiple on-chain interactions without logging into their wallets each time.
ANAGRAM(David Shuttleworth): The SocialFi space has undergone significant changes compared to the last cycle, especially in the number of original experiments and new mechanism designs. In the last cycle, builders typically focused on replacing existing legacy systems, such as the launch of Lens as a decentralized version of X, with Farcaster following a similar path. However, in this cycle, many projects (like Lens and Farcaster) not only stop at replacing existing structures but also begin to implement more attractive features, such as Farcaster's Frames.
This is largely due to advancements in underlying blockchain technology. Lens launched the Lens network using ZKsync, enhancing its ability to change how social networks operate. Rollups on Ethereum allow networks and their built protocols to scale more efficiently, handling millions of transactions. This technology was almost unavailable in the last cycle and is now fully explored. Additionally, features like Farcaster Frames enable users to seamlessly interact with multiple applications running on the Farcaster source and allow developers to distribute applications in a "one-click" manner. This kind of innovation and user experience did not exist in the last cycle.
To expand the application scope, Solana recently launched Actions and Blinks, connecting Solana to the entire internet, allowing users to perform various operations on any website or application (like X, Reddit), such as swaps and payments. These new primitives convert on-chain operations into shareable links, making the design space more open than in the last cycle.
Another interesting area of innovation is the fusion of social and speculation. Friend.tech and Fantasy.top are two major examples that combine social elements with user interaction, allowing users to speculate on various parameters, such as the popularity of posts on X. Friend.tech allows users to profit through the community and trade "keys" that unlock different features (like exclusive in-app chat rooms), while Fantasy.top allows users to collect and trade NFTs related to certain crypto figures on X. While many well-known projects struggle to maintain user activity, these new experiments, which did not appear in the last cycle, provide useful guidance for future development.
2. What is the current development status of the Consumer Apps track? Where is the intersection with social?
OKX Ventures Researcher: The market is transitioning from a traditional model centered on "trust" to a smart contract model focused on "contract execution," and the application track is no longer just a playground for whales, leaning towards a broader user base. Users not only want platforms to "make quick money" but also expect consumer applications that meet daily needs. The previously complex blockchain operations and difficult user interfaces are being simplified, and developers realize that users do not need to understand blockchain; they just need a smooth user experience.
Progressive Web Applications (PWA) are becoming a new distribution method for crypto applications, providing a smooth experience similar to Web2 while avoiding the traditional app store's 30% fee. In terms of payments, the crypto payment experience is gradually becoming mainstream, such as the collaboration between Venmo, PayPal, and ENS, and EtherFi launching its own credit card compatible with Apple Pay. The launch of Solana's Saga and Seeker marks the development of Web3 native devices, becoming mobile wallets with convenient features like double-click crypto payments and built-in seed vaults, further enhancing user experience through built-in distribution. The combination of hardware, payments, and distribution addresses operational complexity, accelerating user participation in the network and the transition of crypto applications to the mainstream market.
Whether entertainment or financial applications, they will ultimately enter a financialization track. Once ownership (like NFTs or tokens) is introduced, the financial attributes of the applications become immediately apparent. Entertainment financialization applications, such as mini-games and memecoins, attract massive participation through speculation, while serious DeFi applications focused on investment and finance emphasize asset appreciation and preservation.
The fusion of Consumer and Social is not just "buying and selling crypto assets on social platforms." Many crypto applications are centered around social, as examples like Polymarket and Pump.fun illustrate that the power of community and social interaction cannot be ignored. Social elements can firmly bind users to the platform because people inherently enjoy interacting and sharing, expressing their thoughts on specific events.
Imagine memecoins no longer being just speculative trading; they can be the news itself, a reflection of social elements and societal dynamics. People place bets or interact with memes around specific events or topics, which is also crucial in DeFi. In the past, many DeFi applications relied on the trading volume of whale users to attract users, but now, applications with social features are beginning to leverage user interactions and the power of communities to drive liquidity and participation.
Successful applications must integrate social elements, not just as social media platforms, but by capturing interactions between users through the front end to build network effects. The reason is simple: you need users to enter your front end to generate revenue. Without a front end, competitors of Uniswap can directly utilize their protocols to steal users. User familiarity, interaction habits, and dependency are the moats of applications. The user network on the front end is the core driver of everything—just as financial liquidity is crucial for launching protocols, user liquidity is equally important for launching applications.
The composability of crypto means that smart contracts can be called from anywhere, making protocols scalable and interoperable. This flexibility allows embedded applications to interact directly with on-chain functionalities; imagine prediction markets appearing right where people discuss the news; SocialFi mini-programs can allow users to stake tokens, follow trades, or purchase fan tokens; governance mini-programs can enable members to brainstorm, collaborate, and vote—all of which rely on the "proxy front end" that carries them. On-chain financial transactions can be integrated into familiar social structures, making them engaging and interactive—sending messages to other traders on DEX, competing with friends' portfolios, and so on.
The adoption path for consumer applications mainly has two approaches: one is optimizing existing products, and the other is creating new demand. The first approach involves continuously refining the user experience to make the product better than other options in the market, which involves leveraging underlying technologies to find entry points for marginal improvements while using tokens to change community behavior and experience. The latter focuses on uncovering unmet user needs and opening up new market spaces, which is the direction many Web2 products have taken, such as Twitter redefining the social media space from the outset. Although the latter has higher Alpha potential, the former is equally essential. If today users have to endure long waits and cumbersome processes to use an app, such an environment cannot foster applications that create entirely new demands like Twitter.
In contrast, products like collateralized lending can develop based on existing demand; even if there are complexities in operations, those in need will actively overcome them. For applications driven by innovative demand, users will not fill these gaps on their own. Therefore, investing all energy into UI/UX too early may not be the best choice; as long as the target users are found, there is no shortage of suitable suppliers or partners (such as underwriters) to optimize product services.
LongHash Ventures (Emma Cui): Consumer applications as B2C use cases can be defined as any application developed for end users. From this perspective, social applications can also be seen as consumer applications. By enhancing user experience, innovations in social applications lower the barriers to creating seamless consumer applications. Outside the Web3 ecosystem, Telegram has also become an important distribution channel. With 950 million users, Telegram is the most popular instant messaging application in the crypto ecosystem, while bypassing the approval processes and fees of Android and Apple app stores.
Both consumption and social have strong motivations to attract new users, creating seamless user experiences within products and accumulating value through real consumer behavior. For example, Catizen has 34 million users and generates over $25 million in revenue. Leading gaming ecosystems like Ronin and YGG also have millions of users actively spending time and money in Web3.
TON also demonstrates how blockchain can provide new opportunities for monetization, participation, and innovation by supporting small and medium-sized Web2 game developers. By introducing tokenized economies, it creates reward systems for content creation and consumption, promoting participation through digital ownership. The integration of Web3 consumer products with Web2 platforms like social media and mini-games faces the main challenge of simplifying the Web3 experience for Web2 users. While Web2 excels in user-friendly interfaces, it is essential to minimize the complexities of Web3 (such as using wallets and tokens) to encourage adoption. Another potential lies in decentralized governance models, where platforms and games develop through community input, fostering user loyalty and democratized ownership.
ANAGRAM (David Shuttleworth): Consumer and social applications are becoming increasingly powerful, starting to provide real utility for users. These applications come in various forms, including prediction markets (like Polymarket), token launchers (like Pump.fun), and more socially-focused applications (like Farcaster and Lens). If executed well, these applications can become strong drivers of mass adoption and revenue.
In the past year, consumer applications have generated increasingly significant fees for the protocols themselves and their underlying networks, while also becoming "lighthouses" for attracting new users, increasing liquidity, and driving demand for block space. They have had a significant impact on the DeFi space of the network. For example, since March, Pump.fun has generated nearly $100 million in fees, becoming one of the most profitable protocols in the entire field. More notably, it has positively influenced other DeFi applications on Solana, such as Raydium, which saw its activity reach an all-time high in July, the most popular month for Pump.fun, with monthly trading volume hitting $28.7 billion. Pump.fun has made token issuance and the creation of memes around it simple and fun, translating into actual demand for tokens. Although this has raised concerns about "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs" for the ecosystem, it provides effective short-term experiments to study how consumer and social adoption affects user behavior and network outcomes. In fact, the transience of applications themselves has become a new trend in this cycle.
Ultimately, the main reasons for success lie in improvements in network scalability, enhancements in user experience, and the proliferation of stablecoins. In terms of infrastructure, blockchain costs have significantly decreased, and performance continues to improve; this is accompanied by the emergence of Solana's Firedancer and ultra-high-performance chains like MegaETH and Monad. In terms of user experience, years of infrastructure development have made interactions with different chains unprecedentedly smooth. With just a few clicks, users can easily access applications on any chain, often without leaving their wallets. The in-wallet experience has also improved significantly—from custody and trading to super applications, unlocking a range of innovations: from simple messaging and content distribution (for example, for holding concert tickets) to DeFi applications built on top of them. Although the overall user experience is not yet perfect, it has improved significantly compared to a few years ago.
At the same time, fiat-backed stablecoins are ubiquitous, allowing users to access more options without needing to bridge or leave the main chain. Additionally, applications from the PayFi sector enable users to easily deposit fiat, make instant cross-border payments, and perform various daily on-chain activities. All of this achieves the effect of "wherever the user is, the service is there," seamlessly integrating all the core elements needed to build complete applications in the background. Users can click on Solana Blink on X or Frame on Warpcast to instantly connect to applications. This is the starting point for further integration of consumption and social, and it is just the beginning. The trend of integrating DeFi functionalities into consumer applications is also continuously evolving. For example, prediction market positions can be tokenized, allowing users to not only trade their betting directions but also earn returns while holding their bets.
As transaction costs gradually decrease and speeds increase, payment functionalities will come closer to the Web2 experience (i.e., instant and convenient), providing greater capacity and design freedom for building use cases for consumer and social applications. The strength of these Web3 applications lies in their ability to not only enable new forms of interaction and collaboration but also to lead the establishment of new economic and social norms.
3. Where are the explosive points for the future of Web3 social and consumption?
OKX Ventures Researcher: Social applications are essentially a subclass of consumer applications. If the consumer direction is to handle high transaction volumes through applications like Pump.fun, these ecosystems will continue to expand. Currently, they may lack large DeFi components (such as leveraged trading, shorting, etc.), but these will gradually be developed. The key for casual gaming communities is to find the most sustainable business model and consider whether issuing tokens is the right choice.
Many on-chain applications are lowering protocol fees to zero to remain competitive, attracting short-term users and speculators, which forces developers to rely on increasing user activity and liquidity to boost revenue rather than creating genuine long-term value, thus failing to develop into large-scale consumer applications. Developing for whales is much easier than addressing the needs of the general public; it only requires going fully on-chain and leveraging various opportunities like MEV to maximize profits easily. Most application failures actually occur "off-chain," such as poor experiences in deposit and withdrawal channels, identity verification, and other daily behaviors.
Therefore, relying solely on existing on-chain mechanisms cannot truly solve user retention issues. To break through this bottleneck, Web3 social networks need to transform from being financially driven to becoming multifunctional user experience platforms centered around social consensus—seamlessly navigating multiple domains such as NFT markets, DEX, games, and governance forums through a unified portal, closely integrating wallets with financial behaviors.
The explosive points of applications come from the combination of social consensus, speculation, and tribal behavior. Because blockchain inherently possesses decentralized consensus mechanisms, it helps users reach coordination and consensus around events, assets, and dynamics they care about, thereby enhancing the credibility of the trust system.
Currently, many applications rely on short-term speculative behaviors like NFT investments and liquidity mining, leading users to focus on "quick in and out" operations. As the market matures, applications need to attract and retain users through content filtering, intelligent trading processing, and community management.
Optimizing user data management and quality filtering is key to ensuring that user experience is not disrupted by financialization, enhancing the naturalness and friendliness of on-chain interactions while reducing reliance on speculative capital. Lasting communities, brand loyalty, and a sense of belonging, along with strong and sticky user communities, will determine the success of applications and protocols. For example, Monad encourages users to become community guardians, motivating them to engage in tribal behaviors and providing incentives for their expectations; this community-driven model will become a long-term growth point.
Future social networks will also need to separate the social data layer from the financial layer. Users do not want complex financial transactions accompanying every interaction; platforms should intelligently manage these interactions, hiding financial transactions in the background, and providing users with more valuable interaction experiences through AI-driven intelligent filtering and quality standards.
Key growth areas will also focus on how to enhance user trust and experience through decentralized identity verification, proof of activity, and privacy protection. Platforms can effectively manage and reward users who genuinely contribute to the community, rather than just speculators. With the development of ZK technology and scaling solutions, users will enjoy a more efficient and secure decentralized interaction network, especially in terms of private messaging and social privacy protection.
LongHash Ventures (Emma Cui): The reason why blockchain-driven SocialFi and consumer applications may become the core driving force of the crypto economy is that they provide new monetization opportunities and greater user ownership by integrating blockchain into familiar user scenarios, paving the way for widespread adoption of crypto technology. The shift in ownership and financial incentives will encourage more everyday participation in consumer applications to expand the crypto economy. By combining DeFi with social and consumer applications, new financial opportunities are created for users. Features like staking or decentralized lending can be integrated into daily digital activities, blurring the lines between financial and social products, further expanding the crypto space. In addition to simplifying complexities such as wallet management and security, regulatory transparency and user trust are also crucial for the long-term success of applications.
We are seeing an increasing number of applications aimed at driving new users, new assets, and new on-chain activities. Breakthrough applications are often difficult to categorize within existing frameworks, and those that stand out are likely to leverage the advantages of all new infrastructure, the popularity of emerging verticals, and the speculative potential of cryptocurrencies.
AI-driven conversations based on Telegram that promote consumer behavior and gaming experiences are a highlight. Telegram provides a seamless user experience, with AI companion agents creating personalized, on-demand experiences, while purchases of consumer goods, such as collectibles and in-game assets, become natural spending channels that are easy to implement on-chain and within AI agents. For example, protocols like Wayfinder, Virtuals Protocol, and Theoriq allow autonomous agents to execute transactions on-chain. Notably, Virtuals has launched AI idols that can interact with users on Telegram, allowing users to engage after watching their Twitch streams.
ANAGRAM (David Shuttleworth): The next wave of adoption will primarily be driven by stablecoins, RWAs, and payment innovations, accompanied by advancements in the security of the crypto economy, at least in the near term. As the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates and global rates decline, users will seek new opportunities outside traditional finance. Stablecoins not only provide users with a pathway to risk-free interest rates but also accumulate value through protocol fees, unlocking a new monetary layer for developers. Stablecoins utilizing previously idle capital (such as Bitcoin reserves) also create unique value spaces. Similarly, RWAs allow users to access a diverse range of financial tools without permission, and developers can leverage underlying RWA designs for infrastructure, such as stablecoins supported by BlackRock's BUIDL.
Payments are evolving beyond just cross-border transfers. More robust developers are creating applications with on-chain autonomous banking features, including traditional savings accounts, ZK payments, and DeFi primitives (such as on-chain lending, staking, and market-making). Users can also easily implement P2P payments in their non-custodial wallets. Furthermore, the emergence of Eigenlayer AVS will bring real demand to the re-staking market, allowing applications to build new core functionalities without redeployment. As protocols begin to explore different possibilities, the demand for re-staking may significantly increase. With more AVS with substantial functionalities being launched, the demand for shared security will drive re-staking yields.
Users now have an increasingly rich array of choices for on-chain financial activities such as lending, staking, re-staking, and leveraging. This is a significant improvement compared to two years ago. Currently, major DEXs like Uniswap, Pancakeswap, and Orca have a combined monthly trading volume exceeding $135 billion. Perpetual contract platforms like Hyperliquid and dYdX have achieved daily trading volumes of $12 billion. Liquid staking protocols like Lido have generated over $511 million in cumulative fees, while re-staking protocols like EigenLayer manage assets exceeding $12 billion, and lending protocols like Aave manage $19 billion. Additionally, stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle have monthly revenues exceeding $500 million.
However, outside of DeFi, the activities available to ordinary users are relatively limited, and most behaviors not directly involving the aforementioned DeFi activities are often related to financial speculation. Social and consumer applications bring hope for introducing the next wave of users into the crypto space.
While DeFi applications will continue to evolve, future iterations may face diminishing returns, and the extent of improvements will gradually narrow. In contrast, there remains vast room for innovation in the social and consumer sectors, where even minor improvements can yield significant results, thus revealing opportunities that differentiate marginal improvements from those that truly drive change.
Currently, many products are still in the experimental stage and require enterprise-level infrastructure to operate normally. Users also need simple and familiar ways to access these applications. As technology advances and entry barriers are abstracted, social and consumer applications have the opportunity to attract a new type of user that does not solely pursue speculation or monetary gains.
The PayFi and payments sectors may become one of the initial breakthrough points for cross-chain applications, with fiat on-chain becoming seamless, cross-border payments nearly instantaneous and free, allowing users to achieve meaningful integrations, such as linking MetaMask with a Mastercard debit card to spend cryptocurrency directly from a self-custodied wallet. The payments sector will be one of the most practical applications. Creating applications that replicate traditional banking experiences on-chain is equally important. Such autonomous banking allows users to have traditional savings accounts, borrow funds in DeFi, and participate in other on-chain activities like staking—without the need for intermediaries.
The proliferation of stablecoins and advancements in their underlying utility are also noteworthy. The continuous evolution of the digital dollar means it is no longer limited to value storage or exchange medium; currency can serve as an infrastructure layer, enabling developers to build more applications on top of it. New protocols are standardizing and making stablecoins interoperable, providing new ways to accumulate value, such as sharing protocol fees with users, making the additional utility of holding stablecoins more attractive than ever.
Verifiable computation is another area that could have a profound impact. It allows developers to transfer various processes from on-chain to off-chain and publicly verify them on-chain without re-executing the entire process. This optimizes performance, reduces the cost of on-chain logic for products, and minimizes attack surfaces and centralized dependencies. Potential uses include verifiable oracles—updating prices and inputs off-chain and publishing updated proofs on-chain, thereby expanding the capacity of traditional oracle architectures; cross-chain proof systems—providing verifiable proofs of activities on one chain (like Ethereum) that trigger corresponding actions on another chain (like Solana) (e.g., rebalancing liquidity pools after cross-chain swaps). Verifiable computation has many interesting applications in game theory and mechanism design, such as allowing users to hide orders in dark pools to avoid slippage or using hidden-reveal features to conceal specific content while simultaneously verifying the value of a basket of goods.
The gaming sector is also a potential breakthrough point. It doesn't necessarily have to be AAA or cutting-edge first-person shooters; it could be low-resolution 8-bit or 16-bit games that focus on deep narratives, engaging character development, and interesting gameplay mechanics. Given the permissionless nature of blockchain and the increasingly competitive traditional gaming market, more capable developers may turn to new distribution methods, breaking away from the current gaming industry trajectory.
Finally, there is AVS. EigenLayer is expected to attract the vast majority of ETH (both native and staked), as users seek to gain additional yields from it. The protocol has achieved deposits exceeding 4.5 million ETH (approximately $12 billion), and its strength lies in expanding design space by leveraging the economic security of re-staking. EigenDA, as the first implemented AVS, has already provided cost-effective and high-throughput data availability for rollups.
An increasing number of vertical AVSs are emerging, including network scaling (such as ZK light clients and prover networks), coordination layers (such as DePIN infrastructure) for coordinating computing power exchanges, and more cutting-edge areas like MEV management. As these services continue to create strong use cases and drive the growth of their usage protocols, the corresponding demand for AVS will also increase. Any protocol can create a re-staking and shared economic security system, but ultimately, the services built on top of it will define the protocol and drive the re-staking economy.
4. How to view the popularity of the TON ecosystem and the challenges it faces?
OKX Ventures Researcher: The short cycle characteristics of hyper-casual games make TON and Telegram effective avenues for users to engage with crypto. In the attention economy era, a healthy ecosystem, a solid user base, and a smooth onboarding experience are what developers look forward to. Users do not need to switch applications or master complex blockchain knowledge, making crypto technology "invisible" and lowering the application threshold.
The launch of TON Space's self-custodial wallet breaks down barriers to fund liquidity and usage, with the native integration of stablecoins allowing its DEX liquidity to reach 600 million USDT in a short time. Additionally, TON's off-chain scaling and lightning network design support native high-frequency low-cost microtransactions and off-chain payment channels, addressing scalability issues at the foundational level. Even before the TON ecosystem became popular, many trading bots relying on Telegram channels, such as UniBot and Banana Gun, emerged to meet users' needs for quick on-chain trading, operating directly with custodial wallets. They cater to the needs of Web3 users, and if project teams can find products that meet the needs of Web2 users, the wallet's role will be as a traffic and payment channel, potentially without the need for complex smart contracts, simplifying business operations.
While TON has brought new opportunities and profit models for developers and entrepreneurs—leveraging Telegram's mature user base and token use case environment to rapidly commercialize social products—most applications, especially games and social mini-programs, still focus on meme culture and entertainment speculation, often being simple adaptations of mini-games from platforms like WeChat. Their core appeal has not fully utilized the unique advantages of cryptocurrencies or the secure and transparent financial data management capabilities of blockchain, but it also indicates that TON is accelerating its iteration from a validated path. Moreover, the opportunities for ad monetization and in-app purchases have yet to be fully explored. By opening its own infrastructure and providing entrepreneurs with opportunities similar to "small shops," it can still support new products with traffic and in-app purchase revenue. For example, in payment scenarios, TON can further develop online shopping, social e-commerce, and payment services for offline events; on the supply side, it can connect electronic consumer goods, exhibition tickets, e-commerce products, etc., to build a full-stack consumer experience.
While guiding users and developers to build a richer gamified experience ecosystem, the team needs to continuously explore how to connect everyday user needs with the on-chain world to build a stable ecosystem. For instance, for Web3 payments to be widely adopted, a key incubation scenario akin to e-commerce for internet payments is needed. When payment demands in real-world scenarios mature, TON's crypto payment and financial services can experience an explosion. Additionally, the integration of TON with TG faces challenges in user education and mindset shifts in non-Asian markets, especially regarding how to transform communication tools into multifunctional platforms.
LongHash Ventures (Emma Cui): The TON team is dedicated to creating a super app similar to WeChat, integrating features such as instant messaging, social networking, DeFi, and e-commerce, all based on TON blockchain technology. Their vision is to establish it as a portal to Web3, attracting hundreds of millions of users and facilitating billions of transactions within the user-friendly and seamless environment of Telegram, leveraging the existing user base. The goal is to gradually introduce and familiarize Telegram's loyal audience with on-chain workflows using the distribution channels already established by TON.
Although the goal of following WeChat to become a super app is challenging, considering WeChat's unique growth environment, such as government support, integration with almost all domestic banking systems, and a lack of competition during its early development, we believe that the TON ecosystem is gaining momentum and may become the largest entry point for Web3 users in the short to medium term. We have previously written a research article on the growth of the TON ecosystem and its potential risks.
ANAGRAM(David Shuttleworth): Over the past year, TON has achieved significant growth—the market capitalization of the $TON token has risen from $2 billion to $4 billion in 2023, climbing to $8 billion in 2024, with network users and activities reaching all-time highs. With Telegram's user base exceeding 900 million and continuously expanding features, the potential of the TON ecosystem far exceeds that of other blockchains.
However, despite the rising adoption rate, the TON ecosystem lacks meaningful applications, leaving users to speculate on the underlying tokens. Developer incentives are insufficient; unlike other chains that offer millions of dollars in financial incentives to attract builders and robust applications, TON does not have such mechanisms. Additionally, TON lacks a native stablecoin pegged to the dollar, limiting users' choices for stablecoins and relying on wrapped ERC-20 tokens (such as jUSDT) bridged from Ethereum. Poor user experience severely restricts the network liquidity for end users, exacerbating the difficulty of deploying applications.
The situation began to change in early 2024, driven by two key factors: an appropriate ecosystem incentive program and the native launch of Tether. The TON Foundation launched an open alliance, distributing $30 million in TON incentives to encourage developers and users to participate in network building, providing strong motivation for developers to start deploying more powerful applications and compete for user attention. The quality of builders in the industry is very limited, turning it into a competitive game where developers compete against each other, and the ecosystem must also compete to attract the best talent. Without a strong incentive framework and sufficient liquidity and user demand, the network will struggle to gain meaningful attention.
In April of this year, the integration of Tether USDT introduced the first dollar-pegged stablecoin to the TON network. The deployment of such stablecoins (like USDT or USDC) is crucial for the network's success. Since Tether's launch, user activity has significantly increased, with daily transaction volumes reaching new highs of over 3.7 million, a growth of over 530%. At the same time, daily user numbers have also surged, surpassing 1 million for the first time in September and recently reaching 1.1 million, a 752% increase since April.
With improvements in liquidity and incentive systems, the next step is to deploy new applications. Although most of TON's growth has only recently emerged and there is still room for improvement, such as better developer tools, it is ready for further expansion. If strong applications can be onboarded, TON has the opportunity to leverage its distribution channels in a meaningful way. Otherwise, it may face considerable resistance, with weakened ecosystem incentives leading to stronger applications being deployed elsewhere, causing users to flow toward the next opportunity and intensifying competition between ecosystems.
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