01 Public Chain

As the foundation of the crypto ecosystem, public blockchains are central to the core narrative. Whether it’s a Layer 1 or Layer 2, the key is to have genuinely active users and diverse application scenarios alongside high performance. TON (The Open Network), the sole public blockchain officially supported by Telegram, harnesses Telegram’s vast user base of 900 million monthly active users to build a distinctive narrative in areas like payments, social interactions, and mini-programs. By utilizing Telegram’s existing social network, TON can transform Web2 business models into Web3 without incurring additional user migration costs.

Although Telegram is already a significant base for crypto users, the adoption of the TON chain among these users is still limited. Many exclusive Telegram groups require an NFT for entry, but these NFTs are not based on TON’s Jetton. Trading bots like Unibot and Banana Gun enhance Telegram’s use among crypto enthusiasts, but most transactions still occur on Base or Solana, not on TON. (Note: Jetton is a token on the TON Blockchain, similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20 tokens. For more information, see the official documentation: https://docs.ton.org/develop/dapps/asset-processing/jettons).
The TON team and the TON Foundation are actively working to overcome existing challenges and unlock TON’s full potential. With many real users directly owning crypto wallets, users can easily make crypto transfers as seamlessly as sending WeChat red envelopes. Combined with Mini Apps similar to WeChat mini-programs, TON is set to achieve the Holy Grail of true mass adoption in the crypto industry.

02 Current State of the Ecosystem

According to Defillama data, TON’s Total Value Locked (TVL) currently stands at $310 million, ranking 25th among all public blockchains. Thanks to the combined and coordinated efforts of the TON Foundation, Telegram, and its partners, the on-chain ecosystem has seen explosive growth over the past two months. In late March, the TON Foundation announced that it would distribute 30 million $TON for liquidity incentives within a month. In April, Tether announced that USDT would be directly integrated into TON, enabling minting and redemption. These successive incentives have caused TON’s TVL to surge rapidly, growing from $22 million in early March to $300 million now. In less than three months, the TVL has increased nearly 15-fold and shows momentum for further growth.

（Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON?price=true）

The ensuing blockchain activity has seen significant growth across various metrics:

• Daily transaction volume has increased more than 50 times: since March 2024, transaction volume has increased from 100,000 transactions per day to 4 million to 9 million transactions per day
• Daily active wallets increased 8 times: from 60,000 daily active wallets in March 2024 to nearly 500,000 now
• Number of active wallets on chain increased 4x: from 1.5 million addresses to 6.2 million
• TON daily fees average $100,000: half of TON fees are burned

（Source: https://app.artemis.xyz/project/ton）

According to data from ton.apps, there are currently 787 apps in the TON ecosystem, including development tools, games, NFT, social networking, Launchpad, groups and other categories.

（Source: https://ton.app/）

There are two main approaches to interacting within the TON ecosystem:

1. Established DeFi projects can earn additional rewards through the Foundation’s liquidity incentives.
2. Viral games and Meme projects, like mini-games such as Notcoin, can easily attract a large number of real users via Telegram. Getting listed on a major exchange can lead to significant success.

Here are some interaction opportunities:

Wallets

The first step to getting involved in the TON ecosystem is to use a wallet. Currently, there are 43 wallets that support the TON chain.

（Source: https://ton.app/）

Wallet

Wallet is Telegram’s native centralized custody wallet. It is somewhat similar to the WeChat wallet that is built into WeChat’s settings. Users can directly use Wallet to exchange tokens. Wallet supports users to deposit funds through P2P or bank cards.

(Wallet and TON Space)

TON Space

TON Space is a self-hosted wallet based on Telegram launched by the TON Foundation. It is also embedded in Telegram. It is opened through Ton Space in Wallet. Users can use TON Space to connect directly from TON-based dApps.

The experience of using TON Space is similar to using other non-custodial EVM wallets. You can import existing accounts from other non-custodial wallets such as Tonkeeper. The difference is that in addition to the mnemonic private key, wallet recovery can also be restored through email and Telegram accounts.

DeFi

Although the TVL of the TON chain has grown explosively in the past two months, the asynchronous design of the TON chain has improved performance and scalability, but also increased the difficulty of development and maintenance for developers.

Therefore, unlike Ethereum Layer 2, which can see large-scale migration of leading projects on the TON chain, there is still a lot of room for growth in the diversity of the DeFi ecosystem.

（Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON）

TonUP

TonUP is a LaunchPad based on the TON chain, which helps potential project parties on TON conduct asset issuance and financing, and promotes the development of the TON ecosystem.

Early supported projects such as the game Tap Fantasy have now gained more than 730,000 users. TonUP has received official support from the TON Foundation and TONCoin.Fund, and has received financing from well-known investment institutions such as Foresight X.

（Source: https://tonup.io/）

STON.fi

STON.fi is the largest DEX on TON, providing almost zero-fee, low-slippage trading services and integrating directly with the TON wallet.

According to data from Defillama, excluding LSD projects that are not included in the TVL of the public chain, STON.fi ranks first in the TON ecosystem with a TVL of US$222 million, accounting for 71.4% of the total TVL. It is the largest beneficiary of the TON liquidity incentive plan. TVL increased 20 times within 2 months.

（Source: https://app.ston.fi）

STON.fi has the most complete trading pairs. Currently, before the end of the liquidity incentive event in June, you can earn additional income by trading in the designated trading pool or providing liquidity, with APY exceeding 200%.

At the same time, STON.fi provides 10,000 $STON tokens. Depositing $STON can get an airdrop of up to 10% of the deposit amount.

Tonstakers

TON is a POS blockchain, and Tonstakers is the first LSD-type liquid staking platform in the TON ecosystem, developed by TOP Labs and built into Tonkeeper. Similar to Lido, users can stake $TON to obtain $stTON, which can be redeemed back to $TON after the staking period ends.

At present, more than 50,000 users have pledged $220 million worth of $TON. Although the APY is only 2.76%, it is still a good financial choice for currency holders who are optimistic about $TON in the long term.

（Source: https://tonstakers.com/）

Game

Compared with the relatively scarce DeFi ecosystem, TON is very strong in the gaming industry. The mini app based on Telegram is naturally suitable for small games with social attributes. Simple and easy games and one-click forwarding on Telegram can spread the game in the most effective way.

$Notcoin, which was recently launched on Binance Launchpool, is a mini-game on TON. Players mine $Notcoin by clicking on coins in Telegram.

The simple gameplay, team mechanism and real profits made it spread virally, gaining more than 35 million users and reaching 5 million daily users.

Notcoin not only makes good use of Telegram’s huge mass base of encrypted users, but also allows many people to experience digital currency for the first time in a simple way, fully demonstrating the application potential of the TON chain.

Catizen

Catizen is the second Telegram Bot product from Pluto Studio. As an early development team and co-builder of the ecosystem, the Pluto team has received multiple financial and resource support from the TON Foundation.

In August 2023, the team launched its first mini-game based on Telegram Bot, Tap Fantasy, in the TON ecosystem, which currently has 730,000 users worldwide.

Catizen is a cat-themed game that integrates GameFi, AI and the Metaverse to bring users a highly immersive interactive experience.

In just two months since it was launched, the number of Catizen players has exceeded 10 million, bringing 695,000 users to the TON chain.

（Source: https://x.com/CatizenAI/status/1795059958146605532）

Catizen players can participate in the game by developing cat characters and obtain token rewards through in-game activities.

The game provides a mining mechanism that allows players to earn $wCATI tokens in the form of cat claws by completing tasks and activities.

In addition to the game itself, Catizen also serves as a Launchpool for new development. The first round of Launchpool that just ended at the beginning of the month issued $840 million wCATI. More than 24,000 users participated, and the pledge amount exceeded $39 million.

In the next stage, Catizen will transform into a Telegram game platform. Currently, it has signed contracts with 18 popular WeChat mini-games. It will use the team’s valuable chain reform experience and rich experience in TON ecological deployment to gradually launch them on the Catizen game platform. These games are launched in Launchpool.

Considering Catizen’s unique positioning, experienced team and on-chain performance, it is worthy of long-term tracking and participation.

Hyper

Hyper is the first metaverse project in the TON ecosystem that simulates real-person scenes. It is similar in type to Notcoin but has upgraded gameplay. A simple clicker cannot replace real people in the game.

Start the game by clicking on the bot, drag the character to receive gold coins according to the guidelines, you can obtain high scores by purchasing boxes, and replenish the battery power to receive gold coins.

The game also has a communication strategy of inviting friends to get gold coins. With the proofing of Notcoin, more exquisite graphics and improved game experience, this upgraded version of Notcoin also has great potential.

The Open League (TOL)

TOL is a competition for TON ecosystem projects and users. It aims to increase user participation throughout the ecosystem, help projects expand their user base, and develop more attractive and functional products for a large audience on Telegram, and users will also Get rewarded for participating.

Therefore, the TOL ranking is a good guide when participating in TON ecological interaction.

（Source: https://blog.ton.org/these-are-the-best-projects-of-tol-season-1）

In the one-month first quarter, $TON worth more than three million US dollars was distributed. Ston.fi and DeDust, which ranked first and second in the DeFi category, are now the top two DEXs in TVL on TON, and the LSD category ranks first. Tonstakers’ TVL now even surpasses that of Ston.fi.

（Source: https://blog.ton.org/tol-season-2-results-just-landed）

In the second quarter, Catizen ranked first and NFT trading platform Getgems ranked second. The pre-airdrop market provided by Getgems was the main trading market for Notcoin points before.

（Source: https://ton.org/en/open-league?filterBy=forProjects）

The third quarter is currently underway, and $TON worth one million US dollars is expected to be distributed. The top-ranked projects are the key interaction objects.

Yescoin

In addition to Catizen, which ranks first, Yescoin, which ranks second, is TON’s fastest-growing game recently. Very similar to Notcoin, the mode is to collect coins and complete tasks. You can collect tokens by sliding the screen on your phone.

This kind of simple and mindless game is actually very addictive, and high-quality imitation games will have many fans.

Tonano

Tonano is the inscription project of the TON chain. During the casting process of the first TON20 inscription $nano, the number of participating users and triggered network transactions brought huge traffic and transaction load to the TON network, causing short-term network delays and congestion. .

（Source:https://tonano.io/）

Tonano’s Marketplace has over a million dollars in trading volume, providing the necessary liquidity for TON20.

The cross-protocol asset bridge can realize asset swaps between TON20 and other inscription protocols and Jetton tokens, making a broader inscription ecosystem possible.

Fanton

Fanton is based on TON’s game similar to football manager, and star cards are issued on the TON chain in the form of NFT.

It currently has more than 400,000 registered users and has received investments from TONcoin.Fund, First Stage Labs and Tonstarter. Considering the upcoming European Cup, it is likely to become the next hot spot.

（Source: Fanton Twitter）

Squid

Squid is an inscription game built on TON. Users can purchase squid eggs containing $TON in the market, hatch squid from the squid eggs, produce more squid eggs and sell them for profit.

03 Summary

The TON chain’s ecosystem is still in its early stages, especially regarding DeFi projects, which remain relatively limited. However, TON’s true value cannot be solely assessed by its TVL; the authentic user base on the Telegram platform is a unique advantage that other blockchains cannot replicate. Mobile-focused Mini App mini-games are particularly effective for spreading and creating FOMO, similar to the popular WeChat game “Sheep a Sheep.” Additionally, for non-crypto users of Telegram, TON significantly lowers the learning curve, making it easier to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3. Thanks to the incentives and efforts from the TON Foundation, the TON ecosystem is developing robustly and is worth long-term attention and participation.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [Biteye]. All copyrights belong to the original author [Biteye 核心贡献者 LouisWang]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.