Author: Frank, PANews
On February 28th, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, announced on his personal Telegram channel that starting next month, owners of Telegram channels will be able to receive financial rewards for their work. He stated that currently, Telegram broadcast channels generate 1 trillion views per month, but only 10% of the views are monetized through Telegram Ads, which is a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind. In March, the Telegram advertising platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. The owners of channels in these countries will start receiving 50% of the revenue generated from displaying ads on their channels. To ensure fast and secure ad payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be specifically used, and ad revenue will be shared with channel owners through Toncoin.
Upon the release of this news, the TON token saw a sharp increase, with a short-term peak surge of up to 38%, reaching a high price of $2.95. However, after 4 hours, the TON price experienced a significant decline, with a maximum drop of 25%, falling to a low of $2.2, almost returning to the pre-surge level. What positive impact will this change bring to the TON chain? Or is it just another short-term market stimulus?
An Increase of 2 Billion in Advertising Revenue, No Dividend Benefits for Now
Perhaps it is the lukewarm reception over the years that has led Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, to repeatedly provide blood transfusions to TON through various partnerships. So, in terms of the cooperation introduced this time, how much actual impact does it have on TON?
In this key information, Pavel Durov mentioned that Telegram broadcast channels generate 1 trillion views per month, but only 10% of the views are monetized through Telegram Ads. With the new advertising plan set to launch in March, channel owners will receive 50% of the ad revenue, which will be transacted through Toncoin.
PANews found in the official Telegram advertising merchant description that the current CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for Telegram is as low as 2 euros. Based on Pavel Durov's mention of 1 trillion monthly views and 10% of ad views, the ad playback volume is approximately around 10 billion times. Based on the lowest CPM value, Telegram's minimum monthly ad revenue is about 200 million euros, and the total revenue for channel owners is estimated to be at least 100 million euros per month.
Another report also largely validates this data. According to a report from Telega.io, the largest advertising trading market for the Russian-language segment of Telegram, in 2021, the Russian Telegram user community exceeded 50 million, and the annual advertising revenue in the Russian market reached 285 million US dollars. Based on the current claim of 800 million global Telegram users, the current global advertising revenue for Telegram is approximately 4.56 billion US dollars. Based on this data, the data transacted on the Toncoin chain is estimated to be around 2.28 billion US dollars per year.
However, it is worth noting that this income is not shared with TON token holders, but is transacted in the form of TON. Therefore, this news is quite different from the dividend proposal put forward by Uniswap some time ago. Nevertheless, based on the current on-chain data of TON, even if only a transaction volume of this scale occurs on the chain, it will still elevate the overall activity level on the chain.
Currently, Telega.io shows that there are 4,351 channel owners who are verified ad space providers in the market, and the number of active advertisers is only about 70,000. Therefore, in terms of user growth, the potential effect may not be significant. However, the issue of assets deposited in Toncoin by Telegram through advertising fees has become a concern for the community.
To address concerns that Telegram holding an excessive amount of Toncoin due to the specialized sale of TON ads may have a detrimental impact on the decentralized ecosystem, Pavel Durov proposed a solution. They plan to limit Telegram's share of TON to about 10% of the supply, and they plan to sell the excess TON holdings to long-term investors at a price lower than the market price, with lock-up and attribution plans ranging from 1 to 4 years. This will lock up freely circulating TON, stabilize the ecosystem, and reduce volatility. In addition, Telegram has also set up a new email address for high-value investors (over $1 million) to express their interest.
Telegram's Rocky Road in Cryptocurrency
When it comes to TON, most people may recall Telegram's official encryption plan, the TON public chain. However, the current TON is not fundamentally a blockchain public chain directly controlled by Telegram.
As early as 2019, Telegram attempted to launch the "Telegram Open Network" (TON) blockchain network. TON is a multi-purpose blockchain platform designed to provide higher speed and scalability than Bitcoin or Ethereum, to support global payments and decentralized applications. However, this project was canceled after a series of legal battles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The TON project was originally planned to be promoted by Telegram, but after settling with the SEC, Telegram announced that it would no longer be involved in the TON project. Subsequently, the community and other developer teams decided to continue the project and launched several branch projects based on TON, such as Free TON (later renamed Everscale) and TONcoin. These projects inherited the technological vision of TON and aimed to create a high-performance blockchain platform, but they no longer have direct ties to Telegram. The TON public chain that we are familiar with today, named The Open Network, is the most mature public chain project that grew after Telegram's official encryption plan was discontinued. Although TON is not directly related to Telegram, the official Telegram and founder Pavel Durov have continued to support the project in recent years and emphasized the business connection between Telegram and TON.
In December 2022, Telegram announced that users could purchase anonymous numbers on the Fragment blockchain by paying with Toncoin. Stimulated by the news, TON surged 30% from $1.84 to $2.4, reaching a high of $2.8. Despite Fragment's trading volume exceeding $5,000 in the following month, TON's market performance did not remain strong, but instead steadily declined to a low of $0.96, following the pace of the crypto bear market.
With 800 Million Users, Eager to Build the World's Largest Public Chain
In the official introduction of TON, it is written that as of 2022, the TON blockchain remains one of the few truly scalable blockchain projects. Therefore, it is still the most advanced blockchain project, capable of executing millions, and potentially tens of millions, of truly Turing-complete smart contract transactions per second when necessary.
In its official performance comparison with other public chains, the TON chain seems to outperform Ethereum and Solana in various aspects.
In 2023, Steve Yun, the president of the TON Foundation, revealed in a speech that their goal is to attract 30% of Telegram's users to join TON by 2028. It is expected that TON will have 500 million active users by 2028.
Although the goal is ambitious, and with the strong support of Telegram's 800 million users, the current progress of TON seems to be less than ideal. As of March 1, 2024, there are approximately 1.56 million activated wallets on the TON blockchain, with a peak daily active user count of 32,439. In comparison, Ethereum has approximately 110 million of these data.
Overall, Telegram, as a product with strong Web3.0 genes, is widely recognized in the industry. Especially as more and more Telegram bots and encryption tools grow on the platform. As one of the world's largest social platforms, Telegram also has the potential to become the king of the encryption industry. However, in the current context of the somewhat superficial partnership with TON, market performance may be the best feedback.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
