Introduction: Decoupling of the Classical Public Chain Concept

The numbers on DeFiLlama and CoinMarketCap seem to conclusively demonstrate that TON is a “Giant Unpopular public chain” — its total market capitalization has long been in the top 20, yet its 24-hour trading volume consistently ranks beyond the top 100. Even under a new all-time high total value locked (TVL) of only 53 million, it fails to make it into the top 50 public chains. The MC/TVL valuation is even more astonishing at 293, which is 33 times that of Ethereum.

Source: DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap

In the past few months, we have witnessed the decoupling of the traditional public chain concept from Ethereum with the emergence of Rollup and modularity. The narrative of chain legitimacy has weakened, and the market has accepted Blast’s mere association with the term “chain,” while also recognizing AO’s actual implementation of a public chain under the guise of a borrowing network.

This change has accelerated the unleashing of TON’s potential under its “non-traditional” positioning. The market’s understanding of TON no longer confines it to the classical public chain narrative based on TVL. Instead, metrics closer to the user side, such as daily active users (DAU) and monthly active users (MAU), should perhaps be considered.

Recently, Telegram founder Durov told the Financial Times that Telegram’s MAU has exceeded 900 million, with a valuation of over $30 billion, and is considering an IPO. Compared to Meta’s 3 billion MAU and $13 trillion market value, Telegram’s valuation is only 1/40. Moreover, Telegram’s user base is concentrated in Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East, with a significant proportion of retail investors and a strong demand for peer-to-peer payments. This makes them an ideal group for conversion to Web3. With Telegram’s own growth, if TON can successfully attract 30% of Telegram users within 3-5 years, it may effectively support its valuation.

Source: DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap, Nansen, Token Terminal

New Paradigm of Web3 Creation: Content Packaging and Value Transfer Based on Telegram

By splitting the distribution model, Telegram opens up Web2 incremental markets.

In an article last year, I outlined three stages of the Web3 creator economy. The first stage, Web3 1.0, adhered to the simplest “blockchain” logic, employing a centralized content creation plus Web3 distribution model (primarily in the form of NFTs). This model remains mainstream, albeit with NFTs increasingly being used as speculative tools rather than creative mediums.

Since the beginning of this year, experiencing the TON ecosystem has gradually made me realize that, within the realm of attention-based traffic pathways, the functionality encapsulated by NFTs in terms of content/equity/governance might be more naturally replaced by a “channel-advertisement-payment” system. Friend.tech, once in the limelight, represents an intermediate form of this approach—packaging group chats into assets—but its content is difficult to expand, and its economic model lacks sustainability.

Compared to many NFT and SocialFi projects still struggling to find applications for their assets, the TON ecosystem based on Telegram has built a more user-friendly product experience and value network for Web2 developers/creators and users. By further breaking down the Web3 distribution model into Web2 business forms + middleware wallets + Web3 settlements on existing social networks, it not only reduces the understanding and operational barriers for creators and users but also enriches creators’ income sources (advertising revenue sharing).

Source: Lydia @Mint Ventures

Moving from content to services, Trading Bots facilitate the transformation of Web3 assets.

Web2’s Super App, WeChat, expanded its ecosystem from content to services by introducing service accounts and mini-programs. Telegram follows a similar approach by consolidating its position as a mobile traffic entry point through the introduction of enterprise accounts and service-oriented bots, with Trading Bots being particularly favored by crypto users.

The Trading Bot sector has seen rapid development since 2023, being one of the few products with real demand and cash flow during the bear market. With the market turning bullish, the money-making effect of the Bot sector has been further amplified, with top protocols like Banana Gun and Unibot generating daily revenues exceeding $200,000. Currently, apart from a few deployed on websites and Discord, most Trading Bots interact through Telegram.

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

At the current stage, the relationship between Trading Bots and TON trading is not significant. Instead, Trading Bots primarily leverage Telegram’s Bot modules to access Ethereum and Solana. However, the popularity of Trading Bots greatly contributes to market education and user mindset development within the TON ecosystem. As crypto users become accustomed to new interaction methods like bots, the psychological friction when experiencing other non-trading products within the TON ecosystem will significantly decrease. Coupled with a comprehensive on-chain identity system and payment module, TON theoretically can build a coherent content packaging and value transfer system.

Exploration of the Market Model: TON’s Bot Universe and Mini App Store

Currently, many products within the TON ecosystem appear to be simple Telegram Bot entrances paired with H5 web pages, accompanied by bustling Telegram groups that can sometimes feel chaotic, resembling a lively marketplace.

In the Meme project Notcoin, players simply continuously click on coins on the screen to earn points. They can also join teams led by celebrities, such as Telegram founder Durov, or attract traffic by sending “red envelopes” to friends. With its mindless gameplay and viral spread, Notcoin attracted 5 million players within a week, with the current number of players exceeding 26 million and 1 million followers on Twitter. In pre-trading, the highest transaction amount so far was a purchase of 100 million points for 1100 TON (approximately 4521U).

As a darling of the crypto community, Farcaster’s Frames feature, launched in January 2024, was hailed as a “remarkable innovation.” However, its performance on mobile devices, where traffic density is higher, was less than satisfactory. While users could perform simple Swap and Mint operations, more complex interactions, such as even the simplest mini-games, proved challenging to complete within the small square box occupying less than one-third of the phone screen, posing a significant challenge to visual acuity.

Interestingly, what is often overlooked is the seamless integration between Telegram and TON, which has already achieved a nearly imperceptible transition from chat box to semi-native application. The tactile speed of summoning applications through bots is even faster than WeChat mini-programs.

In June 2015, Telegram introduced the Bot feature, which had limitations such as the inability to customize interface styles and the client not directly communicating with the server. Trading Bots built on this functionality were not standalone applications but rather proxy interfaces, limiting their response speed and making it difficult to handle multiple interactions concurrently.

In April 2022, Telegram launched Mini Apps, allowing developers to fully control the user interface and enabling direct client-server communication. Mini Apps offer a more user-friendly interaction and stronger composability, seamlessly integrating with wallets and other infrastructure, suitable for deploying diverse Web3 products, and potentially replacing all mobile web pages.

Following the launch of Mini Apps, Bots did not fade away but rather evolved into “transmission rooms,” serving as the first entry point for user interaction and connecting multiple Mini Apps.

Source：@tonx_fans?source=post_page-----3aff329bf05a--------------------------------">TON x Fans | TON Heart Fans

Source: Lydia

At present, deploying a Bot or Mini App is not particularly difficult. Users can quickly set up their own Bot through a question-and-answer format on the Telegram @BotFather channel. Similarly, they can experience setting up and using a Mini App for virtual ordering through @DurgerKingBot.

The Differentiated On-Chain Experience: TON Ecosystem Highlights

Lightweight Gaming Experience

In an era where public chains boast surplus performance, playing a game on Ethereum L2, Solana, or BSC may not yield significant differences in experience. However, for a game with strong social attributes, such as chess or other party games, the experience of seamlessly sharing teams with friends on Telegram or waiting for random matches with strangers online can be vastly different.

Originally a MMORPG game on Facebook, Tap Fantasy transitioned into Web3 and attracted over 700,000 players on the BSC and Solana chains. In August 2023, as the first IDO project on TON’s ecosystem Launchpad TonUP, Tap Fantasy’s token $MC sold out within half an hour. In November 2023, Tap Fantasy officially launched a new version based on TON, issued by the Web3 game incubator Pluto. Within three months, the player base exceeded 600,000, with over 16,000 on-chain players. Due to the well-functioning in-game economy, the exchange rate of $MC relative to TON rose from 0.2 to 1.

Pluto’s newly incubated game, Catizen, is an AI-driven metaverse cat-raising game. It launched closed beta testing on March 7, 2024, and within five days, accumulated over 160,000 players and 13,000 on-chain users. Catizen also partnered with the leading meme token $FISH within the TON ecosystem, planning to airdrop to $FISH holders after the end of the testing phase.

Source: Tap Fantasy TON version dashboard

Source: Catizen dashboard

Social Inscriptions and Memes

As a new issuance trend in this cycle, the inscription ecosystem of BTC is trending towards multi-chain expansion. The development of the inscription ecosystem in TON has also integrated the Telegram front end and built-in wallet, enhancing interaction convenience while achieving dual purposes of anti-science.

• $NANO: The first TON20 inscription brought 20 million interactions and 36,000 unique minting addresses to the TON ecosystem.
• $GRAM: Named after the Telegram Open Network’s native token, which was halted by the SEC, $GRAM is the first to utilize Telegram Mini App frontend for deployment, minting, and transfer.
• $TONOT: With 61,000 unique minting addresses and 57,000 holders, $TONOT broke the record held by $NANO. It supports conversion between inscriptions and NFT tokens, and its product roadmap includes in-game currency, DID, and staking mining.

Meme assets on the “obscure public chain” TON were barren for a long time, and crypto users lacked a window to understand TON until Notcoin gained traction.

• $NOT: Notcoin is set to airdrop $NOT tokens at the end of March or early April, with pre-trading taking place on the NFT trading market Getgems in the TON ecosystem.
• $REDO: Inspired by a hand-drawn sketch by Telegram founder Durov during protest activities, $REDO is currently the highest-valued meme in the TON ecosystem.
• $FISH: Ton Fish is the first social meme in the TON ecosystem, with over 18,000 holders.
• $TPET: A meme in the Ton Fish ecosystem, the fair launch will continue until March 26th. It will serve as the main token for the game Ton Pet: Tik Ton, with opportunities for $FISH and NFT holders to receive airdrops.

Multi-chain Liquidity Launchpad

XTON is the first Launchpad in the TON ecosystem to introduce multi-chain liquidity, with team members from the TON Foundation. XTON will launch its mainnet and token sale in Q1, with the first project scheduled to start in Q2. In line with XTON’s vision, the TON ecosystem will have the opportunity to bridge the traffic between Web2 social giants and the Web3 EVM world.

Conclusion: Towards an interconnected future

Since March, the TON coin price, which had been quiet for a long time, has rapidly surged in response to news such as Telegram’s announcement of using TON to process advertising revenue, Binance listing U-based contracts, and Telegram seeking an IPO. Additionally, on-chain activity has notably increased.

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

Looking back at TON’s roadmap since its inception in 2018, from its initiation by Telegram to its handover to the community, and from the launch of the first cross-chain bridge to the gradual improvement of its infrastructure, the resilience and vitality of the TON ecosystem leave a lasting impression. In 2024, TON will focus on stablecoins, cross-chain bridges, and the Asian market for development. We look forward to seeing TON become a truly open network that connects different regions, ecosystems, and applications, allowing everyone involved to catch a glimpse of the long-promised ancient future of blockchain.

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

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