Abstract

Recently, the Telegram ecosystem has rapidly developed, becoming a hot topic in the Web3 space. With 900 million users, the communications giant Telegram has quietly introduced mini-apps and bot development features. Currently, Telegram mini-apps can fully replace most websites, supporting seamless authentication, integration payments through 20 payment providers (including Google Pay and Apple Pay), and more customized features like automatic news dispatch and the popular Catizen mini-game. Additionally, Telegram has developed the Ton blockchain, facilitating convenient blockchain transactions. This “traffic + payment” approach, similar to WeChat, has propelled Telegram’s rapid growth.

Users in mainland China are already very familiar with WeChat mini-programs. Nowadays, mini-programs have penetrated all aspects of daily life. For example, when ordering a Luckin Coffee, the store often suggests placing the order through the mini-program for a better price. Similarly, with the Maoyan and Taopiaopiao mini-programs on WeChat, buying movie tickets is as easy as pulling down the WeChat interface. Recently, with the rise of GPT, the leading AI assistant Kimi has also joined WeChat mini-programs, allowing users to ask Kimi questions anytime, anywhere, by simply pulling down the WeChat page, making work and study more convenient. The internet era has evolved from the initial web versions to a flourishing variety of apps, and now to a market dominated by major platforms like WeChat, Alipay, TikTok, and Meituan. As these internet giants monopolize the market, individual shops gradually move online on each platform, with each platform containing numerous mini-programs, dazzling to the point of overwhelming.

Against this backdrop, this article will delve into the development history and current status of Web2 and Web3 mini-programs. First, we will review the development trajectory of WeChat mini-programs, analyzing the reasons for their success and their existing ecosystem. Then, we will introduce the rise of Telegram mini-apps, exploring their integration with Web3 technology and their applications in the blockchain field. Finally, we will look ahead to the future trends of mini-programs, discussing how they will continue to change our way of life and lead the next era of the internet.

Web2 Era: The Development History and Current Status of Mini Apps

The Origin of Mini Apps

The origin and development of mini apps have been a process driven by several major companies, with WeChat mini apps being the earliest and most typical representative. The origin of mini apps can be traced back to 2013 when Baidu proposed the concept of “light applications,” defining a type of full-featured app that does not require downloading and can be used immediately upon search, with a user experience comparable to that of native apps and the searchability and intelligent distribution characteristics of web apps. However, light applications did not achieve the expected success. Subsequently, Google introduced the concept of PWA (Progressive Web App) in 2016, which also did not gain widespread application in China. Ultimately, WeChat mini apps, with the massive user base of WeChat and strong platform support, successfully led the trend of mini app development. Today, mini apps have become an indispensable part of the mobile internet field, providing new possibilities for users and developers.

• WeChat Mini Apps: The concept of WeChat mini apps was first proposed by Zhang Xiaolong in 2016, aiming to provide a new form of service that allows users to enjoy “at-hand” services within the WeChat ecosystem. On January 9, 2017, WeChat mini apps were officially launched, allowing users to use apps without downloading and installing, realizing the concept of “use and go.” WeChat mini apps have developed rapidly, becoming an important tool to connect online and offline services, and in 2018, they introduced mini app advertising components, enabling developers to earn advertising revenue through mini apps.
• Alipay Mini Apps: On September 20, 2017, Alipay mini apps were officially opened to the general public. In April 2018, the State Administration for Market Regulation launched the “Electronic Business License” mini app on Alipay, allowing business owners to receive and use business licenses at home. To date, Alipay has become the second-largest mini app platform in China.
• Baidu Mini Apps: On July 4, 2018, Baidu’s intelligent mini apps were officially launched. On January 10, 2019, the Guangdong Public Security Department, in conjunction with Baidu and several other internet companies, launched the “Guangdong 110” intelligent mini app alarm platform, accelerating the construction of smart new police affairs. On April 25, the national mini app “Switzerland” was launched. On November 25, Baidu announced that the monthly active users of intelligent mini apps had broken 300 million.
• Douyin Mini Apps: In July 2021, Douyin piloted its own “Heartbeat Takeout” service. Although it was eventually taken off the shelves due to the difficulty of building a delivery system, this attempt opened up the exploration of Douyin mini apps in the field of local life services. As of March 2024, the traffic of mini apps on the Douyin platform reached 232 million.

Analysis of the Reasons Behind the Popularity of Mini Apps

• User Convenience: Mini apps offer an extremely convenient user experience with characteristics such as “no need to install, easily accessible, use and leave, no need to uninstall.”
• Low Development and Maintenance Costs: Compared to native applications, the development cost of mini apps is significantly lower because they do not require separate development for different operating systems and are easier to maintain. For instance, WeChat mini app developers can use familiar front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for development. At the same time, WeChat mini apps provide a rich set of APIs and components that can easily call WeChat’s provided functions, such as obtaining user information, local storage, payment functions, etc., without starting from scratch. In addition, the platform’s unified handling of sandbox isolation, platform control (authentication, review, version control), syntax restrictions, capability encapsulation, package compilation, and loading strategies ensure the stability and security of mini apps.
• Huge Potential User Base: Platforms like WeChat (as of March 31, 2024, the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat International are 1.359 billion), Alipay (as of June 2022, 1.045 billion), and Douyin (as of June 2023, about 723 million monthly active users on Douyin) have a large user base, providing a huge potential market and user base for mini apps. In March 2024, the traffic of mini apps on the WeChat, Alipay, Baidu, and Douyin platforms reached 945 million, 648 million, 389 million, and 232 million respectively, forming a strong “traffic pool” effect for medium and long-tail apps and offline merchants.
• Traffic and Marketing Advantages: WeChat mini apps can be seamlessly integrated with other WeChat features such as public accounts, WeChat Pay, the discovery tab, and the search bar, using WeChat’s social network for rapid dissemination and marketing. Alipay mini apps enhance user retention and brand trust through the combination of life accounts and mini apps, especially in low-frequency businesses. Douyin mini apps benefit from the platform’s traffic aggregation advantages, with a significant immersion time for users compared to other platforms.
• Lightweight Application Scenario Adaptability: The lightweight design of mini apps is particularly suitable for those tool application scenarios that are not frequently used but indispensable. Mini apps occupy very little mobile storage space, loading only the necessary resources and data when running, and their design tends to be simple and lightweight. Developers are encouraged to retain only necessary functions to avoid redundancy, making the size of mini apps far smaller than that of traditional apps with rich functions. In addition, the updates and maintenance of mini apps are usually managed by the host platform, and users do not need to update manually.
• Avoiding Platform Dividends: For developers, mini apps can avoid high dividends and strict review mechanisms from platforms such as Apple’s App Store, increasing revenue and saving time costs.

In summary, the reasons why WeChat mini apps are favored by developers and users are mainly due to their advantages in convenience, cost, user base, marketing capabilities, application scenario adaptability, and avoiding platform dividends. These advantages have made mini apps the preferred platform for many businesses and individual developers, and also make users more inclined to use mini apps instead of downloading traditional apps.

Composition and Ecology of the Mini App Industry Chain

• Full Competition Among Multiple Platform Parties: The mini app industry currently involves almost all major internet companies: WeChat, Alipay, Douyin, Baidu Smart, Meituan, Taobao, JD.com, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, etc. Developers cover almost all online scenarios: online shopping, life services, games, government affairs, content consulting, video, tools, community group buying, offline retail, catering, tourism, education, images/photography/videos, and social networking. Various service providers (SaaS, BaaS, development service providers, mini app stores, marketing service providers, MCN, and operation outsourcing) provide solutions, operations, advertising, live broadcasting, data, and underlying structures for mini apps. Mini apps provide business/social services and user retention for platform parties, while platform parties provide mini app ecology and business scenarios. Governments, media, enterprises, and venture capital provide investment, resource integration, and some publicity for mini apps, and mini apps return with direct investment returns and production.
• Users Have Fully Become Accustomed to Mini Apps in Production and Life: In 2023, the scale of China’s internet application users in instant messaging, short video, online payment, and search engine fields reached: 1.038 billion, 1.0185 billion, 911.4 million, and 801.7 million, respectively. The average monthly number of mini app usage per netizen is 15.2.
• Development Momentum: In terms of the number of mini apps and transaction scale, WeChat and Alipay are on par and lead Douyin, Kuaishou, Baidu, and other platforms. WeChat remains in the first place, and Alipay has become the second-largest open ecosystem of the mini app internet, with leading platforms accelerating entry. The growth momentum of Douyin mini apps is strong, with a year-on-year increase of 280% in the number of mini apps, a 640% increase in developers, an 84% increase in mini app DAU, and a monthly average sequential increase of 201% in the number of mini app matrix account numbers (from March to December 2023).
• Mini App Industry Distribution: Life service mini apps have the most entries in various rankings, the highest proportion, and the largest number of visits (about 40%). The number of entries for offline retail and games has begun to increase significantly. Online shopping mini apps are greatly affected by the economic environment, with larger fluctuations, but they have the highest proportion of sharing times (up to 49%). At the same time, the proportion of vertical e-commerce in online shopping mini apps is the largest (70.2%). Life service mini apps have a wide range of applications, a variety of types, and a large space for innovation. Tool mini apps are the most stable in development. It is worth noting that the rise of mini app short dramas has become the most money-attracting track in the second half of 2023.
• AI Helps Mini App Services Move Towards High Precision: The application of AI technology in mini app services is promoting the development of services towards a more efficient, intelligent, and personalized direction, including several common scenarios: personalized recommendations, intelligent customer service, voice interaction, automated marketing, content generation, intelligent search, etc.
• Regularization of Content Production and Marketing for Mini Apps: Publicity relies on KOLs’ social relationships to endorse products, and MCN companies join hands to expand publicity. The drainage technique focuses on driving unstructured groups and guiding the “self-media” public to participate in brand building. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the trend of brand co-branding has risen, with mini apps assisting in new marketing across platforms, and the global hit of soy sauce latte (Moutai × Luckin Coffee) is the most successful case.
• There is Great Potential in the Vertical Field of Life and Entertainment: The vertical fields of mother and baby parenting, travel, science popularization, pets, film and television entertainment, automobiles, health, etc., have a relatively high turnover rate, and the number of users and the average time per person are growing strongly.

Web3 Era: The Rise of Telegram Mini Apps

Recently, Telegram introduced a new feature that allows ‘Mini Apps’ to run within its application. Similar to WeChat Mini Apps, this enables it to provide users with a flexible interface similar to that of a website, allowing for various operations to be performed directly within Telegram, such as playing small games and electronic payments. This feature is similar to the bots that have been running in Telegram for some time but offers a more advanced user experience.

Specifically, Telegram Mini Apps have the following characteristics:

• Seamless Integration: Telegram Mini Apps can be directly integrated into Telegram, one of the most popular messaging platforms with millions of active users. A user might be discussing an upcoming party in a Telegram chat. Through Mini Apps, they can open an application directly in the chat to book a venue, select catering services, and even purchase tickets, all without leaving the Telegram app.
• Enhanced User Experience: Users can use interactive and complex web applications without having to download or install separate applications. Suppose a Mini App is an online store; users can browse products, view recommendations, and make purchases directly in Telegram without downloading an additional shopping app. This experience is similar to visiting a full-featured e-commerce website in a browser but is fully integrated within Telegram.
• Multifunctionality: Mini Apps can be applied to various scenarios such as e-commerce, customer support, games, and quizzes. Because Mini Apps can be any type of application, such as an online education platform where users can access courses, participate in quizzes and exams, or a fitness app that provides exercise guidance and health tracking, all within Telegram.
• Rapid Development: Developers can quickly develop Mini Apps using familiar web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. A developer might develop a simple application within a few days.
• Cross-platform Compatibility: Mini Apps can be used in all official Telegram applications, regardless of whether the user is on a mobile phone, tablet, computer, or through Telegram’s web version, they can access and use Mini Apps. This means developers do not need to develop multiple versions of the application for different platforms.
• Increased User Interaction: Mini Apps provide a simplified method of communication between users and projects. A Mini App could be an interactive survey or voting tool, allowing users to participate in surveys directly in Telegram groups, collect feedback, or make decisions. Such applications can promote communication and collaboration within groups, increasing engagement.

In addition, Telegram’s Mini Apps also collaborate with TON, enhancing the functionality of Mini Apps through the TON Chain. TON’s Mini Apps provide a convenient entry point for Web2 users to easily step into the Web3 world. In fact, the TON blockchain was initially promoted by Telegram but was canceled in 2019 due to the intervention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Despite this, the community and other development teams continued to advance the project, forming the current TON blockchain. Although TON is not directly related to Telegram, Telegram founder Pavel Durov and his team have repeatedly supported the project, emphasizing the business relevance between the two.

Specifically, the cooperation between TON (The Open Network) and Telegram’s Mini Apps can bring multiple benefits to the latter:

• The TON payment system allows users to make instant, fast payments within Telegram, greatly enhancing the payment experience and convenience.
• By integrating with TON, Telegram’s Mini Apps can also support fiat currency payments, further expanding the coverage and convenience of payments.
• TON’s sharding technology improves the scalability and performance of the blockchain, allowing Mini Apps to handle larger-scale transactions and user requests, supporting more complex application scenarios.
• TON’s token economic model can provide economic incentives for Mini Apps, encouraging user participation and use of the applications, while also providing an incentive mechanism for developers to promote the continuous development and innovation of the applications.

Comparison between WeChat Mini Apps and Telegram Mini Apps

WeChat Mini Apps are a lightweight application platform launched by Tencent in 2017, allowing users to use various applications within WeChat without the need to download and install them. Initially, Mini Apps mainly provided basic tools and service functions, gradually expanding to e-commerce, gaming, social networking, education, and other fields. With the continuous improvement of functions and the diversification of user needs, WeChat Mini Apps have introduced a wealth of development tools and interfaces, and integrated powerful features such as WeChat Pay, quickly becoming an important part of China’s mobile internet ecosystem. Its openness and convenience have attracted a large number of developers and enterprises, promoting the rapid development and popularization of Mini Apps. Although WeChat Mini Apps and Telegram Mini Apps are both small applications embedded in social platforms, they have significant differences in many aspects:

1. User Experience and Access Methods

WeChat Mini Apps

• User Experience: Users can access Mini Apps by scanning QR codes, sharing links, or searching within WeChat. The interface is usually consistent with the overall style of WeChat, offering a smooth user experience.
• Access Method: Developers use the development tools and APIs provided by WeChat to build Mini Apps, mainly using technologies such as JavaScript, WXML, and WXSS. They need to pass WeChat’s review before publishing.

Telegram Mini Apps

• User Experience: Users can access Mini Apps through chatbots, groups, channels, or embedded buttons. The interface design is more free, can be detached from the default style of Telegram, bringing a diversified experience.
• Access Method: Developers use the Bot API and Mini Apps API provided by Telegram to develop applications, mainly using standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The publishing process is relatively simple, without a strict review mechanism.

2. Application Scenarios and Business Models

WeChat Mini Apps

• Application Scenarios: Cover a wide range of fields such as e-commerce, gaming, social networking, tools, education, etc., especially suitable for lightweight, high-frequency applications.
• Business Model: Mainly profits through service charges, advertising, e-commerce, and value-added services. WeChat provides a wealth of monetization means, such as WeChat Pay, advertising platforms, etc.

Telegram Mini Apps

• Application Scenarios: Mainly used for information services, entertainment, financial tools, and social interaction. Due to Telegram’s advantages in privacy protection and security, financial tools and private social interactions will be its strengths.
• Business Model: The business model of Telegram Mini Apps is still being explored and may be monetized through subscription services, value-added features, and third-party payment interfaces.

3. Governance and Community Participation

WeChat Mini Apps

• Governance: Led by Tencent, with strict review mechanisms to ensure content compliance and security.
• Community Participation: The developer community is relatively closed, relying more on Tencent’s support and official documentation.

Telegram Mini Apps

• Governance: Relatively open, Telegram provides basic usage guidelines, but there is a high degree of freedom in development and publishing.
• Community Participation: The developer community is open, with frequent interaction between Telegram officials and developers, and significant community contributions.

Telegram: Building a Bridge Between Web2 and Web3

Telegram’s Mini Apps are currently very popular, and more importantly, they have now become a bridge between Web2 and Web3. Their vast user base provides a significant foundation for this. The freedom and lack of censorship make their user profiles more aligned with the group that accepts Web3, as the most Web3-like Web2 software, a large proportion of its huge user base are Web3 enthusiasts or potential Web3 users. As analyzed above, the low development cost of Mini Apps, ease of use and dissemination, make the TG ecosystem very easy to spread. And Ton’s native support further lowers the threshold for on-chain interactions. In this section, we will introduce some popular applications in the current TG ecosystem, and through case studies, we will introduce how they have introduced Web2 users to Web3.

NotCoin

NotCoin is a “click-click-click” game on the TG Mini App. Its main operation is very simple: users just need to keep clicking the screen to get in-game coins when they have energy. On the basis of the traditional GameFi Play2Earn, NotCoin proposed the Tap2Earn concept, where users can make money just by clicking the screen. In addition, NotCoin also has skill enhancement, task systems, team cooperation, points leagues, and inviting new users and other features. From the official launch on January 1, 2024, to the token launch on Binance on May 16, NotCoin attracted more than 35 million players, with more than 5 million daily active users.

As a simple TG Mini App game, NotCoin, with the huge TG user base and simple operation method, greatly reduced the user threshold. At the same time, the fission mechanism in the game made its spread very fast. In terms of the token economy system, the project side only retained 5% of the tokens, and there is no VC reservation, 78% of the remaining 95% is allocated to all game users. This kind of community project without VC, and the practice of allocating most of the tokens to community users, is very politically correct in the current environment and is highly praised by community users. In the end, NotCoin was listed on Binance on May 16, with a market value of up to 2 billion US dollars.

NotCoin successfully attracted a large number of users and subtly transformed a large part of the users into Web3 users. The project side airdropped most of the tokens to the players, and under the premise of such a large number of players, this airdropping covered a large number of users. During the airdropping phase, users have two choices: transfer the tokens to Binance or to the TG wallet. No matter which one the user chooses, it brings new players to the Web3 world. Users who choose to transfer the airdropped tokens to Binance may become virtual currency traders, while users who choose to transfer the airdropped tokens to the TG wallet become players on the Ton chain.

NotCoin’s success not only relies on the multi-faceted support of TG but also on the support of Binance. Binance has long been committed to introducing Web2 users to inject fresh blood into Web3. Looking back at the controversial Binance LaunchPad projects EDU and HOOK in 2023, they are both non-Web3 native projects, which are asset tokenization education platforms and Web3 learning platforms, respectively. Binance has occupied a certain market share among Web3 users, but facing high customer acquisition costs, it hopes to introduce more Web2 users to Web3, expand the entire market volume, and contribute to its own user base. Therefore, Binance noticed NotCoin as early as the end of February and carried out joint activities with it. In the end, NotCoin successfully landed on the Binance LaunchPool.

From Binance’s perspective, the TG user and Web3 user profiles are highly consistent, and the quality of TG users is relatively high. Therefore, Binance chose to let NotCoin go online on its platform. NotCoin is a successful example. As a TG mini-game, it attracted tens of millions of users in just over four months and transformed these users into virtual currency traders or blockchain users through airdropping.

Catizen

Catizen comes from a team with extensive experience in Mini Apps. The team has more than 5 years of experience in the development and operation of WeChat Mini App games and Facebook games. Compared with other games, this game is more mature in terms of gameplay. In the game, players play as the owner of a cat shop, and the cats will automatically receive customers to obtain revenue. The revenue depends on the number and level of the cats in the shop. Players can use coins to buy new cats and obtain higher-level cats by synthesizing two cats of the same level to earn higher per-second revenue.

Catizen, with its cute painting style and addictive business game attributes, has gained more than 20 million users in three months, with a daily active user (DAU) of 2.5 million. Through excellent user payment guidance in the game and potential airdropping expectations, Catizen has exceeded 12 million US dollars in TG in-app revenue. This achievement is very eye-catching, especially for traditional GameFi, which lacks external revenue and has a strong Ponzi attribute, while Catizen has made more than 10 million US dollars in revenue in three months, which has solved the problem of no external source of revenue to a certain extent.

Catizen not only attracted tens of millions of players but also guided players to bind the TG wallet and achieve on-chain contract interaction in the game. There are some options in the game, and users can obtain in-game revenue through smart contract interaction, which is carried out on the Ton chain without payment, only paying gas fees. For example, the occasionally appearing puppies can give players a 500% revenue for a period of time. If it is obtained for free, it is only 1 minute, and if it is obtained through contract interaction, it can be obtained for 4 minutes. Catizen’s clever in-game incentive mechanism has made it have more than a million on-chain users, and these users have carried out smart contract interactions on Ton through Catizen. Catizen’s guidance may be because it has accepted investment from Ton.

Catizen has achieved eye-catching results in many aspects, not only attracting a large number of users and bringing high revenue to the project side, making Web3 games profitable, but also guiding a large number of users to enter the Ton chain and become Web3 players. In terms of airdropping, although Catizen is not as generous to users as NotCoin, the initial plan allocated 20% to the team and 8% to VC, only 35% to users, but it has continuously increased the airdropping ratio to 43%.

Hamster Kombat

Hamster Kombat is similar to NotCoin, but it is far from just an imitator. Compared with the simple gameplay and settings of NotCoin, Hamster Kombat is more complex in terms of background settings and gameplay. The game is set in a virtual currency exchange where players act as the boss, gaining points by consuming energy and clicking on the screen. The game also adds business elements, where players can upgrade the exchange by consuming coins, such as improving employee levels, marketing, and making compliance investments, to gain more revenue.

This background setting allows players to experience the game from the perspective of a virtual currency exchange CEO, increasing their understanding and identification with virtual currency. In addition, Hamster Kombat also combines the task system with watching video tasks, leading to its own YouTube channel. Players watch two videos every day, which introduce blockchain knowledge and blockchain news.

Hamster Kombat has performed very well, and by the end of June, the game has more than 200 million users. At the same time, its official YouTube channel has more than 30 million subscribers, and the average number of video views exceeds 20 million. The game’s airdropping mechanism requires users to first bind their TG wallet, which effectively guides users into the Web3 world.

From the perspective of a Web3 guide, Hamster Kombat has succeeded in many aspects. First, it has attracted a large number of users and made them register and bind the TG wallet through the airdropping mechanism. Second, in terms of user education, the game allows players to act as the CEO of a virtual currency exchange, enhancing their understanding of virtual currency. Through daily video uploads and task systems, the game encourages players to learn about Web3 knowledge and pay attention to Web3 news, making them subtly accept these concepts. Acceptance and learning are the prerequisites for joining Web3, and Hamster Kombat has successfully achieved this.

Conclusion and Outlook

Relying on the high potential of Web3 customers on TG, and the seamless integration of payment and on-chain interactions in Mini Apps, convenient mobile terminal semi-centralized applications, TG provides a new entry point for the Web3 world. From the data, the popularity of TG Mini Apps has brought rapid user growth to Ton, and since the beginning of 2024, the number of active wallets has grown from one million to more than ten million in seven months, ten times the increase. Similarly, this is also reflected in the transaction gas fee, with the daily consumption of Ton on the chain increasing from an average of 1000 Ton last year to tens of thousands of Ton per day now.

TG’s Mini Apps are more like a hybrid model of Web2 and Web3, neither completely centralized nor completely decentralized. In terms of payment methods, there are both centralized legal currency in-app purchases and on-chain transfers and interactions, and the chain wallet is also divided into custodial abstract account wallets and external wallets. In terms of operations, some operations are centrally processed, and asset-related parts are processed on the chain. The profit model is also a mix, including Web2 advertising fees, in-app purchase fees, and Web3 NFT minting fees and transaction fees, etc. In the TG ecosystem, blockchain is more like a supplement to Web2, rather than the core role in the native Web3.

Although TG Mini Apps have performed very well recently, bringing a large amount of fresh blood to the Web3 world and attracting many users to be active on the Ton chain. However, in the long run, the TG ecosystem is different from BTC, Ethereum, Solana, etc., which serve finance through blockchain technology, the TG ecosystem is more like serving other fields through technology. This is an exploration and attempt of blockchain technology in more applications, but it is different from the current mainstream Web3 dominated by finance.

This difference comes from several levels. First, the users are different. In the financial ecosystem, users are mainly investors, while in the TG ecosystem, most users are consumers, and the number of investors is less than that of consumers, and the average consumption ability of investors is higher. The second is the difference in applications. Mainstream chains such as ETH and Solana mainly focus on financial aspects, including DeFi, Oracle, etc., and even GameFi and SocialFi focus on the financial aspect, eventually becoming a capital pool. The larger volume of these chains provides a certain guarantee for financial security and liquidity. In the TG ecosystem, the popular projects are mainly games, gambling, payments, etc., which rely more on the number of users and usage time.

The above figure shows the TVL ranking. Even though Ton’s TVL has soared to \$700 million, it is still a big gap compared to ETH’s more than \$50 billion and Solana and BSC’s \$4 billion or so. Therefore, we believe that the TG ecosystem is not taking business away from existing Web3 projects, but opening up a new path, transforming Web2 users into Web3 users. Its application scenarios are different from traditional Web3. The TG ecosystem is more like a WeChat Mini App that enhances applications through payment functions, while ETH, Solana, and other ecosystems are more like Alipay that enhances finance through technology. At present, the TG ecosystem is still in the early stage, and there will definitely be more practical applications appearing in the TG ecosystem in the future, not limited to games, and ultimately becoming a super App like WeChat. The development of the Ton chain will be more inclined to the payment means and auxiliary of applications. Whether the TG ecosystem will involve more in the financial field still depends on the response of the traditional old chains.

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1. This article is reprinted from [Topology Lab], All copyrights belong to the original author [YuppieZombie, Lumos Ngok, Noah Ho]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
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