Author: Wyz Research, DetectiveTON

How can a public chain without listing on Binance and with an underdeveloped ecosystem maintain a high market value? This is a question that many industry practitioners may want to ask.

On March 13th, after a slight decline in the overall 312 market, the TON public chain's token Toncoin surged to 4.5U before falling back, and TON's ecosystem projects also responded with increases, such as the TonUP token surging to 0.95U, a 20% increase.

Since TON was listed on the OKX exchange, within the small cycle from 2022 to 2024, the K-line trend of the Toncoin token formed a clear "W" shape, which has become the favorite bottom pattern for K-line enthusiasts.

In addition, from the trading data, TON's price has risen by over 200% within 2024, and by over 400% within six months. As the price rises, the token trading volume has surged, with the trading volume in the past three weeks being approximately four times that of a month ago.

More notably, with the price surging to 4.5U, TON's total market value exceeded 15 billion US dollars, ranking 11th in the cryptocurrency rankings (excluding stablecoins and pegged coins), highlighting its value performance.

When comparing these tokens in the top 30 rankings, it is worth noting that TON is the only token that has not been listed on Binance. Without the liquidity support of the world's largest exchange, TON has already occupied a high market value using its current circulation.

In comparison to other ecosystems, TON has a relatively small number of ecosystem projects. What exactly has driven the token price surge and led TON and its ecosystem to rise unexpectedly?

Finding Analytical Entry Points in the Logic of Token Price Surge

We attempt to find the reasons to explore its subsequent development space. According to basic logic inference, the rise in token price is due to a high demand from buyers, continuously driving up the price of individual transactions, which is clearly evident from the recent trading volume.

In this process, external buying is one factor, and the other is the market-making efforts of TON tokens. In the cryptocurrency trading market, market makers can sense market buying and selling trends at any time through market-making data, actively driving prices with market heat to maintain price fluctuations within relatively stable thresholds.

Under this line of thinking, market makers' price manipulation is proactive. In comparison, external buying investors will make purchases after their own judgment, which can be influenced by external factors and other influencers.

Lastly, TON's characteristics, compared to other ecosystems, may have the ability to attract users and investors, or the ecosystem may be able to generate a self-driven trend in ecosystem valuation.

Therefore, we attempt to find reasons from three aspects.

They are:

1. Who are the influencers in the bull market background?
2. Who are the market makers?
3. What is supporting TON's market value and liquidity?

TON's Influencers

When searching for TON on X, most of the recent news is related to TON and Telegram's founder Durov. However, upon opening Durov's account, it is found that his tweets stopped in 2022, but his Telegram account continues to be updated, with over 20 million subscribers currently. It is evident that Durov's influence has grown despite his departure from the Twitter platform. Along with Durov's increased influence, Telegram's user base has also been growing. According to official disclosures, Telegram now has over 900 million monthly active users.

Around the time of writing, most users were discussing the recent exposure of Durov's wallet address holding a large amount of TON tokens.

Additionally, there have been two major news clues recently. Firstly, Durov indicated the possibility of leading Telegram to conduct an IPO. From an external perspective, TON is closely tied to Telegram, and Telegram is already the biggest trump card for TON users and commercial potential. If an IPO is conducted, it will provide significant support to the value capture of the TON ecosystem.

The second piece of news is that Durov proposed a solution to address the centralization impact and investment returns of TON. After Telegram adopted TON tokens as advertising payment tokens, some users were concerned that Telegram's large holdings of TON tokens would have a detrimental impact on decentralization.

To limit Telegram's holdings of TON to no more than 10% of the supply, Durov proposed a plan to sell excess TON at a price below market value, with a lock-up period of 1-4 years, to long-term investors in TON to stabilize the ecosystem and reduce volatility.

The above developments clearly indicate that every project founder is the center of the entire ecosystem's dissemination and represents the orthodoxy of the ecosystem. Durov's announcements are the core of TON's strong performance and a strong needle in the development trend of the ecosystem. From Durov's subjective behavior, it can be predicted that TON and Telegram will not be divided under any circumstances in the future, and they will remain closely associated, just as Telegram and TON have completed the integration in the Web2 and Web3 models.

When using Web3 assets or wallets for the first time in Telegram on Web2, you will be surprised to find that your personal account page will have a Wallet option. In the Wallet, you can seamlessly exchange cryptocurrencies (using fiat currency or stablecoins, or trading between other tokens), and in any Telegram chat page, you can fully experience Web3 games or operate on the chain using Web2 interaction methods.

This may be the most important and disruptive step in Durov's pursuit of the ideal establishment of Telegram.

Who are TON's Market Makers?

In the first paragraph, we discussed that the main internal driving force for pushing up the token's rise lies in the hands of market makers. So, who are TON's market makers? There is no accurate confirmation from external sources, but the direction can be inferred from disclosed partnership relationships.

Currently, most market makers in the industry have capital attributes. In April 2022, the TON Foundation announced the establishment of the $250 million Toncoin Fund, which received investments from Huobi, KuCoin, MEXC, DWF, and others.

Apart from exchanges, DWF is a well-known Web3 market maker in the industry. In addition to this investment, DWF Labs has sponsored TON hackathons and deployed two verification nodes on the TON blockchain.

By examining the price performance of projects previously invested in or market-made by DWF Labs, corresponding market-making styles can be predicted. The project list includes CFX, Mask, YGG, SNX, ACH, RSS3, and others, but this is only a general market inference.

According to informed sources, the TON Foundation is also cooperating with other mainstream market makers, such as GSR. However, it is still uncertain whether these market makers have the ability to actively drive up TON. Therefore, who is driving up TON as a market maker remains a mystery.

TON's Ecosystem Performance

Influencers and market makers are one of the main external performances, but more importantly, substantial growth and development are essential externally, which can be considered as the internal repair of a public chain.

According to statistics from the TON official website, the entire ecosystem currently includes 602 application projects, divided into 19 categories such as centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, staking, wallets, browsers, bridges, public utilities, channels, NFT collections, chats, social media, gambling, games, Jettons, NFT services, VPN, development tools, shopping, and launchpads.

Example of a DApp promoted by TON

By specifically calculating the number of projects in each category, it can be concluded that exchanges, wallets, browsers, channels, public utilities, NFT collections, chats, gambling, and games account for a relatively large proportion. If we only calculate the number of on-chain applications in the ecosystem, the number is approximately around 300, with the main application types being games, bots, gambling, and DeFi.

From the overall perspective of application types, most applications are a fusion of Web2 and Web3, with the functional boundaries being clearly distinguished. It can be said that the TON ecosystem applications integrate the properties of Telegram and Web3.

If you have experienced using applications and the built-in wallet function in Telegram, you can clearly see that Telegram is the external entry point for TON, and entering Web3 through this entry point is extremely smooth.

The applications within the ecosystem all uniformly use Telegram as the entry and interaction method, and use the wallet as the interaction tool.

The wallet also supports two types of transactions, Web2 and Web3, allowing for smooth exchange of USDT for TON, independent account transfers, and interaction with other applications. Additionally, it can support various types of calls and invocations.

In the end, it can be almost summarized that TON has completed a thorough integration within the Telegram ecosystem. Telegram exists in the form of Web2 but with the spirit of Web3 and the decentralized core of TON, making it a super app. Within Telegram's nearly 1 billion global users, the TON token will become an absolute value performance outlet, and it is these applications that support TON's value.

After TON's native token has demonstrated value, with the support of applications for the native token and ecosystem development, DeFi applications will carry the same value performance, such as Dex, Launchpad, lending, etc. The most obvious example is the TonUP token, which also experienced a short-term increase of about 300% during the time of TON token's surge, showing a quick associated response that is worth paying attention to. As for ecosystem projects further away from the native token business, such as games and social media, they will be the targets of the associated response leaning towards the backend rotation.

In addition, the TON Foundation has recently been actively promoting the ecosystem development in fields such as Meme, and has launched the Open League liquidity incentive program, which plans to select core ecosystem projects including STON, DeDust, TonUP, etc., and provide support of 50K TON. According to statistics, in the past six months, the number of TON ecosystem projects has increased by about 10%, and after the price increase, more projects have joined TON, choosing launchpads such as TonUP for IDO, etc.

TON's on-chain data verifies the current growth trend. Firstly, according to DeFiLlama data, TON's on-chain TVL reached a new high after the surge in TON price, with a lock-up of approximately 13.86 million TON, valued at about $56 million. Secondly, according to token terminal data, TON's weekly active users and monthly active users have both reached new highs, with weekly active users surpassing 490,000 and monthly active users surpassing 730,000.

TON's Continued Value Capture in the Future

Although TON currently ranks high in market value, it has two obvious characteristics compared to other ecosystems.

Firstly, there is a lack of ecosystem project quantity, which provides immense room for expansion in the future. Additionally, within the ecosystem projects, there are not many projects designed based on native tokens and mainstream tokens.

Secondly, TON currently lacks a huge potential for trading release. Recently, the news of TON being listed on Binance has been spreading, and once confirmed, TON's trading potential will be even greater.

We are in a bull market, and expectations for the track and ecosystem will be transformed into buying actions, which is to vote with our feet. TON's expectations, from Telegram's 1 billion users, to the performance of the founding team, and to the ecosystem expectations, have all whetted the market's appetite.

When we discard the easily misleading vocabulary and look at the core of TON's value capture, it ultimately comes from the platform value of Telegram:

1. Valuation of 1 billion internet users.
2. Liquidity demand generated by using TON as advertising fees within the platform.
3. Telegram's ability to smoothly and effortlessly market and acquire customers.
4. Product integration design that completely breaks the entry barrier of Web3.

Referring to any platform with such characteristics, TON can continuously provide the value it wants to capture, and businesses closely related to TON and the ecosystem, whether it is the previously mentioned TonUP, or Dex STON, DeDust, or games like Notcoin, will all benefit infinitely.

Of course, long-term gains come from holding and building, and the biggest breakthrough in the short term is still the listing on Binance. Currently, Binance has already listed perpetual contracts for TON, and the news of spot trading for TON is still fermenting. Judging from the recent actions of the foundation, it seems to be actively preparing, and similarly, both new and old investors in the market are eagerly awaiting.

PS: This article mainly presents to readers how to track the driving factors behind the surge in token prices, and does not constitute investment advice. In addition, this deconstruction logic is more suitable for a one-sided trend.

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