Since 2024, there has been an explosive trend in the TON chain ecosystem. From May 25th to June 17th, Toncoin saw a maximum increase of 79.7%, Notcoin saw a maximum increase of 700%, and Fishcoin saw a maximum increase of 400%. The TON ecosystem has demonstrated a strong wealth creation effect, attracting countless hot money inflows. So, how can we participate in this grand feast? This article takes stock of the past and present of TON, its core logic, and ecosystem development.
1. Project Background
Basic Information
- Name: TON (The Open Network)
- Founders: Pavel Durov, Nikolai Durov
- Operating Team: TON Foundation
- Official Website: TON: The Open Network for Everyone
- Social Media: TON-Twitter
TON (The Open Network) is a decentralized first-layer public chain designed for billions of users, with scalability and sharding capabilities, aiming to solve the problems of high transaction fees, slow transaction speeds, inter-chain communication, and scalability in blockchain. Currently, the main operating team for TON is the TON Foundation, a non-profit organization whose goal is to enable 500 million users to have their digital identities, data, and assets by 2028, with the TON chain backed by Telegram being an important means to achieve this goal. Although Ton's current development is booming, its development history has been full of twists and turns.
Figure 1 TON definition
A Twisting Development Journey
- 2017, Project Launch: Telegram founders Pavel Durov and Nikolai Durov began developing the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain project and planned to launch its native cryptocurrency Gram.
- 2018, Initial Coin Offering (ICO): Telegram raised approximately $1.7 billion through an ICO, making it one of the largest token offerings at the time. Investors included several large venture capital firms and individual investors, and the ICO also attracted the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
- 2019, Development Progress: The TON blockchain introduced sharding technology to improve scalability and processing speed, and at the same time released a test network for developers to test.
- 2020, Regulatory Issues and Project Turnaround: Telegram announced its withdrawal from the TON project, and the development work was handed over to an independent open-source developer community. The project was renamed "The Open Network," and the token name was changed to Toncoin. The ICO funds were refunded.
- 2021, Community Takeover and Development: The TON Foundation, founded by Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelianenko, took over the project and continued to advance the development and promotion of TON.
- 2023, Return to Telegram: Telegram officially announced that the TON blockchain would be its preferred Web3 infrastructure and planned to integrate it into the user interface of the Telegram application; Telegram released an IPO plan.
- 2024, Ecosystem Expansion: The application ecosystem of the TON blockchain continues to expand, covering multiple areas such as finance, storage, payments, and domain names. At the same time, projects such as PunkCity, PUNK, and HyperGPT in the TON ecosystem began to receive widespread market attention. In February of the same year, Telegram announced that it would exclusively use the TON blockchain and Toncoin for all transactions and payment activities with channel owners.
Figure 2 TON icon
From its establishment to its current popularity, TON has gone through a huge circle but has steadily improved, from the initial narrative to the actual landing of the project, demonstrating the project's strong vitality.
User-Centric Core Narrative
Throughout TON's development, the shadow of Telegram has never been far away. While most public chains are promoting their innovative technologies, the TON chain relies on Telegram's 900 million monthly active users, emphasizing user needs and convenience.
At the same time, Telegram has long ceased to be satisfied with being just a social communication platform. Through continuously enriching its product line, bridging payments and life connections, and providing potentially huge Bots, Telegram is trying to transform into a comprehensive platform. This strategic shift not only demonstrates Telegram's ambition but also heralds the infinite possibilities of the TON public chain in the future.
Figure 3 Telegram user growth
Telegram currently has over 1.3 billion registered users and 900 million monthly active users. Freedom of speech and privacy protection were the original mission of Telegram's founding, and all of this has made Telegram a gathering place for cryptocurrencies—almost all Web 3.0 projects have Telegram communities for project promotion, news release, and community interaction. Telegram's Web3 soil has provided huge support for the TON chain ecosystem, providing a community foundation for projects in its ecosystem from incubation to ICO.
Growing Market Recognition
As of the time of writing, the market value of the TON chain has reached $18.759 billion, making it the ninth largest cryptocurrency. At the same time, the TVL (Total Value Locked) of the TON chain has grown rapidly since April, reaching 605.72 million USDT, ranking 15th among public chains. Clearly, while the growth rate of TON chain TVL is fast, it has not kept up with its market value, indicating that there is still significant room for improvement.
Figure 4 TON chain TVL
Figure 5 Public chain TVL ranking
2. Financing Information
In 2018, the first ICO raised $1.7 billion, and a portion of the funds were refunded due to SEC legal proceedings.
In April 2022, Huobi Incubator, KuCoin Ventures, and MEXC Pioneer Fund jointly invested $250 million to establish the TON Foundation, focusing on supporting DEX and NFT projects on the TON chain.
In October 2023, MEXC Ventures provided tens of millions of dollars in investment to promote the popularization of the Web3 ecosystem on Telegram.
In November 2023, Animoca Brands invested in and supported third-party mini-programs and game projects within the TON ecosystem, and Animoca Brands became the largest validator.
Early on, Telegram focused on protecting user privacy and did not have obvious revenue channels. It raised hundreds of millions of dollars through bond issuance to maintain daily operations. Starting in 2022, Telegram began to explore revenue models and recently announced that it is close to profitability. In 2023, Telegram founder Pavel Durov proposed a plan to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) within the next two years. The company's valuation has now exceeded $30 billion and may choose to list in the United States.
Figure 6 Telegram cartoon icon
Whether it's TON or Telegram, both are currently in a stage of vigorous development. Investing in the TON ecosystem is equivalent to recognizing the huge potential of the Web2 social platform Telegram's transformation into a Web3 comprehensive platform.
Three, Technical Features
Development Language
The TON chain's smart contract development does not use popular smart contract languages such as Solidity, Rust, or Vyper. Instead, there are three programming languages: Fift, FunC, and Tact. Fift leans towards low-level development, focusing on runtime efficiency and having a high development difficulty. Tact is a new high-level language introduced by TON, with syntax similar to Typescript, aimed at reducing development difficulty. FunC is similar to the C language and is currently the preferred language for development. Given the efficiency of Tact development, mainstream developers may shift towards using Tact in the future.
Figure 7 TON chain development language
Cutting-Edge Technology
Asynchronous Smart Contract Invocation: Unlike other public chains like Ethereum, TON's smart contract invocation uses an asynchronous mode, which enhances the system's scalability. When one smart contract calls a function of another contract, the call is not executed immediately, and it is not necessary to complete all transaction processing within one block. However, this asynchronous calling mechanism also increases the complexity of developing and maintaining applications, leading developers working on the TON chain to face higher technical barriers.
Infinite Sharding: The TON blockchain is designed to be divided into three types of chains: the master chain, working chains, and shard chains.
Figure 8 Sharding technology
The master chain is the core of the entire network, responsible for storing the metadata and consensus mechanism of the entire network. It records the state of all working chains and shard chains, ensuring the consistency and security of the entire network. Working chains are independent blockchains responsible for processing specific types of transactions and smart contracts. Each working chain can have its own rules and characteristics to meet different application requirements. Shard chains are sub-chains of working chains used to further divide the workload of working chains, improving processing capacity and scalability. Each working chain can contain multiple shard chains, and shard chains independently process some transactions, achieving efficient parallel processing.
- Privacy Protection: The TON chain uses TON Proxy to hide the IP addresses of TON nodes, creating a decentralized VPN service, combined with TON DNS and TON P2P network to protect user privacy.
Figure 9 TON privacy protection
Relative Advantages
Although asynchronous smart contract invocation and sharding technology are applied in projects such as Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot, and NEAR Protocol, TON integrates multiple technologies and surpasses Ethereum and Solana in various metrics such as transaction confirmation time (Time-to-finality).
Figure 10 TON chain horizontal comparison
For more specific technical features, you can visit the TON official website.
Four, Market Analysis
Token Economics
- Token Function: The positioning of $Toncoin is similar to the native token on Telegram. On Telegram, it can be used to pay for Telegram Premium membership fees at a more favorable discount and to purchase other virtual products. On the TON chain, $Toncoin can be used for transaction fee payments, staking, cross-chain transactions, decentralized data storage, proxy services, and more.
Figure 11 TON token function
Token Supply: The maximum supply of $Toncoin is 5 billion. As of June 28, 2022, all $Toncoin has been mined, marking the complete transition of TON from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS). A token inflation of 0.6% per year (approximately 3 million tokens) will be used to reward validators maintaining network security.
Token Distribution: The initial 5 billion $Toncoin tokens were distributed with 1.45% to the team and 98.55% obtained through mining. In February 2023, TON initiated a community proposal to freeze 171 inactive early wallets for 48 months, totaling 1.08 billion $Toncoin (approximately 21% of the total supply), reflecting the TON community's consistent optimism for the development of the TON chain.
Secondary Market Analysis
Market Value: As of June 3, 2024, the market value of $Toncoin is $18.759 billion, ranking No. 9, with a fully diluted market value of $39.382 billion, a circulating supply of 2.432 billion tokens, and a total supply of 5.107 billion tokens.
Chip Distribution: As of June 3, 2024, according to Coinmarketcap data analysis, 85.45% of holders hold 0-$1k $Toncoin, 14.16% of holders hold 1k-100k $Toncoin, and 0.38% of holders hold over 100k $Toncoin.
- Figure 12 TON Holdings Address Ranking
According to whale holdings analysis, whales hold 68.68% of $TON, while retail investors hold 31.32% of $TON.
- Figure 13 Whale Holdings
According to the holding time analysis, 29.20% of holders have held $Toncoin for over a year, and 16.7% of traders have held $Toncoin for less than 1 month. The proportion of diamond hands is high, and the public is very optimistic about the future of TON.
- Figure 14 TON Holding Time Address Ranking
According to Etherscan data, the top 10 addresses hold 29.99% of $Toncoin tokens, and the chip distribution is relatively loose, indicating a healthy market status.
Figure 15 Top 10 Address Holdings
Trends: In the past year, the price of $Toncoin has risen from 12.4071 CNY to 56.54 CNY, an increase of over 400%, reflecting strong market expectations and wealth effects for the TON chain.
- Figure 16 One-Year Trend of TON Token
Five, Ecosystem Development
The TON ecosystem currently has over 500 Dapps and a large number of Telegram Bots, covering almost all popular areas including infrastructure, development tools, DeFi, GameFi, NFT, SocialFi, and more. Vertical segments include Launchpad, wallets, cross-chain bridges, staking and lending, DEX, various chain games, collectibles, and more.
Ecosystem Assistant Telegram Bot
Telegram Bot is an automated bot running on Telegram that can be highly effective in community building, asset management, information aggregation, and project promotion.
For regular users, Telegram Bots provided by Telegram official and others can provide users with the latest crypto news and market updates in real time.
For the general Web3 community, Telegram Bots can provide automatic Q&A, FAQs, manage community activities, competitions, and airdrops, promoting interaction among community members.
For DAO organizations, Telegram Bots can provide the latest governance proposals and discussion notifications, allowing DAO members to vote and participate in governance decisions through the bot, greatly simplifying the DAO governance process.
For project teams, the existence of Telegram Bots undoubtedly improves the efficiency of information transmission within the project community, and an interesting bot can attract users to participate in project development.
For TON ecosystem projects, Telegram APP and Telegram Bot are indispensable, allowing 900 million users to participate in project airdrop activities without barriers, helping to promote the project.
Telegram Bots are not only widely used but also easy to develop. Telegram provides mature documentation and API technical support for the development of Telegram Bots. After clarifying the functional requirements of the bot, it can be easily built using programming languages such as Python, Node.js, and cloud server support. At the same time, there are already a large number of Telegram Bots open-sourced on Github, providing opportunities for using bots with zero code knowledge.
DeFi Leader STON.fi
STON.fi is currently the largest DEX on the TON chain, supporting over 280 trading pairs. It uses three technologies: Automated Market Maker (AMM), Request for Quote (RFQ), and Hash Time-Locked Contracts (HTLC), inheriting the low slippage characteristic of Uniswap while enhancing the reliability and security of transactions.
- Figure 17 STON.fi Icon
The STON.fi token is $STON, with a total supply of 100,000,000 $STON. Its token distribution strategy is as follows:
- Figure 18 STON.fi Token Distribution
With the explosion of the TON chain ecosystem, STON.fi's TVL has experienced explosive growth since February, reaching 262.2 million USDT, ranking third in the TON ecosystem.
- Figure 19 STON.fi TVL Growth
- Figure 20 TON Ecosystem TVL Ranking
From a comprehensive perspective, STON.fi is undoubtedly the top DEX in the TON chain ecosystem, and even one of the top ecosystems in the TON chain ecosystem, worthy of continuous attention.
Launchpad Leader TonUP
TonUP is a star asset issuance platform based on the TON blockchain, aimed at helping projects achieve successful asset issuance and financing.
Figure 21 TonUP Icon
In August 2023, TonUP was established and completed its first IDO token issuance for the Tap Fantasy project within 32 minutes at the end of the same month, raising 80,000 $Toncoin.
In October 2023, TonUP launched the TONversation column to deliver high-quality content. In the same month, the TonUP team officially announced the completion of a seed round of financing led by TONCoin Fund, with follow-on investments from Foresight X, Waterdrip Capital, BitFund DAO, and several angel investors.
On December 12, 2023, TonUP 2.0 was launched, and on the 20th of the same month, the IDO activity for the platform token $UP was initiated. On the 22nd, an IEO was conducted through Bitget Launchpad, marking a new development stage for TonUP.
As a phenomenon-level Launchpad platform on the TON chain, TonUP has received investments from leading funds in the TON ecosystem such as TONCoin Fund, Foresight X, Waterdrip Capital, and BitFund.DAO. Unlike other Launchpad platforms, TonUP has strong crisis handling capabilities. During the launch of the $MC token through the TonUP platform Launchpad and subsequent promotional activities, Tap Fantasy had to postpone the game's launch due to technical issues, leading to a significant drop in token price. However, at the same time, TonUP used all the commissions received from the IDO for repurchase and burning, gaining the trust of the community. Most importantly, TonUP has not yet entered its explosive period, with 99.66% of the tokens concentrated in the project's address, indicating that the project has a good cash reserve to maintain development and operations without the need to collect funds from retail investors. The future price of the coin is likely to rise with the further development of the TON chain, making it a strong player in the Ton chain ecosystem.
Telegram Wallet and Tonkeeper
Compared to any other platform, Telegram Wallet has the best chance of becoming the interface for future fund flows between Web2 and Web3. The wallet itself operates on the Telegram platform, making it very convenient for the general public. The Wallet provides Visa and Mastercard cryptocurrency purchase services for users in over 100 countries through the built-in Neocrypto, and collaborates with platforms such as MoonPay, Onramp.money, and AlchemyPay to build efficient P2P market deposit and withdrawal channels. Additionally, Telegram has partnered with Tether to establish USDT-TON exchange terms, bringing higher liquidity to $TON by introducing USDT. Before integrating the USDT-TON exchange, the TON network TVL exceeded 100 million USD, and just two weeks after the terms were announced, this number doubled.
Figure 22 2024 TVL Growth
Furthermore, transfers, withdrawals, merchant fees, and virtual transactions on Telegram are all fee-free, attracting the use of large capital users.
Figure 23 Comparison of Fees on Various Platforms
Tonkeeper is the simplest way to store, send, and receive Toncoin on the open network, providing unprecedented transaction speed and throughput for smart contract applications. Unlike Wallet, Tonkeeper stores encryption keys on the local device, without the need for files, personal information, contact details, or KYC, greatly protecting personal privacy. It also has a built-in exchange function, allowing users to purchase Toncoin directly within the Tonkeeper application and exchange it on decentralized markets. Tonkeeper is a great choice for holding a large amount of cryptocurrency on the TON chain.
Notcoin and Catizen
Notcoin is a free and easy-to-use Telegram game that has gained immense popularity since its launch on January 1, 2024, with over 30 million participants and a daily active user base of up to 5 million.
Notcoin has a simple and fun game format:
- Users can easily earn tokens through interface clicks, and the project sets appropriate time energy to maintain user engagement.
- It has introduced NFT vouchers, allowing users to trade the earned Notcoin before the game starts, further stimulating FOMO among users.
- It adopts a game alliance system to inspire player-led promotional activities, creating a positive cycle.
Figure 24 Notcoin's Popularity
Relying on viral spread through the game, the Notcoin community has accumulated a large user base, laying the foundation for its ICO on mainstream exchanges such as Binance, OKX, and Bybit. After entering the exchange market, Notcoin's performance remains strong, aligning with the current meme coin boom, with an increase of over 400% in seven days.
Catizen is a cat game built on the TON ecosystem, combining the metaverse, GameFi, and AI. The game has introduced a revolutionary play-to-airdrop model, allowing players to earn future airdrops while playing. Additionally, backed by the TON official, Catizen has become a Showcase project for Token2049 in the TON ecosystem. As of May 30, 2024, the mining of $wCATI tokens for Catizen has ended, but the community's enthusiasm remains high, and the development plan is far from over.
Catizen's seed round received investments from TON, Web3 Ventures, Mask Network, Y2Z, SecondLive, EMURGO Ventures, Moon Capital, and Initiate Capital.
The Catizen team has signed contracts with 18 popular WeChat mini-games and will gradually launch them on the Catizen gaming platform. The release of each Catizen game could reignite the community's enthusiasm and serve as a driving force for future community development.
Catizen will be the first application in the TON ecosystem to support recharging using NOT. In the future, Catizen and Notcoin are bound to collaborate deeply, achieving a comprehensive ecological integration.
The Rise of Hamster Kombat
Hamster Kombat is a mini-game based on Telegram, where players take on the role of a cryptocurrency exchange CEO and earn coins by clicking on hamsters in the game. Additionally, the game offers a card mining mechanism, allowing players to devise strategies to increase their fixed point income.
Figure 25 Hamster Kombat Game
Despite its simple nature, Hamster Kombat has rapidly dominated the Telegram gaming space at a faster pace than Notcoin. Since its launch in the first quarter, Hamster Kombat's Twitter followers have surged to 5.1 million in just three months, with a Telegram group fan base of up to 25 million, and its YouTube channel surpassed 10 million subscribers in just 7 days. In June, according to an official announcement from Hamster Kombat, its user base has exceeded 100 million, with a daily active user base of 32 million and an average concurrent online user base of 6.5 million. This indicates that Hamster Kombat has become the leading meme coin of the new generation of the TON chain. Furthermore, Hamster Kombat is not just a simple game; it is also committed to establishing the hamster as a well-known brand image in the Web3 domain.
Figure 26 Hamster Image
Whether it's Notcoin, Catizen, or the currently trending Hamster Kombat, they all rely on three important factors: innovative and simple game mechanics, the concept of fair mining, and strong institutional support. These factors have broken the routine problems of rug pulls and project abandonment on the ETH chain, attracting a large user base and creating viral community growth. Additionally, breaking into the meme space seems to have become an important strategy for the TON ecosystem to enter the public eye. The huge wealth effect brought by Notcoin is likely to continue to later-stage projects in the TON ecosystem, creating FOMO and paving the way for the development of projects like EVAA, STON.fi, Tonstakers, and others.
VI. Conclusion
TON, leveraging Telegram's 9 billion users, possesses user demand and resources that are difficult for any other public chain project to match.
The combination of TON and Telegram has the potential to create an interface from Web2 to Web3, reshaping the landscape of the Web3 world.
With its advantages in asynchronous contracts and infinite sharding, TON currently surpasses Ethereum and Solana in various performance aspects. However, its total circulation and TVL are still relatively low, and it is uncertain whether it has strong generalization capabilities.
TON has a unique ecological development architecture, which can bind a group of excellent developers and establish a complete development ecosystem.
The TON project adopts a fair and effective token distribution mechanism, coupled with excellent community governance strategies, laying the foundation for future development.
Whether it's TON itself or recent breakout projects like Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, etc., they all demonstrate a strong wealth effect, providing significant momentum for the future development of the TON ecosystem.
Figure 27 TON Ecosystem Architecture
While TON currently ranks as the ninth largest token in the cryptocurrency market with a market value of $187.59 billion, there is still significant room for improvement in its TVL and ecosystem development compared to Ethereum, BSC, Solana, and others. With the continuous release of positive news, there is still potential for appreciation in the future. The journey of TON is far from over, but it is still uncertain whether it can ultimately become a public chain that can rival Ethereum.
VII. References
Data Sources
Article References
A Technical Study of the Rise of the TON Public Chain Backed by Telegram
Monthly Active Users Reach 900 Million, Close to Profitability, Telegram Founder Considers U.S. IPO
Telegram Co-Founder Durov Says Company Close to Being Profitable, IPO on the Horizon
9 Billion Users, Valued at $30 Billion, Telegram Decides to Go Public
Understanding the Hot Traffic Game PANews Jointly Created by Telegram and TON
TON USDT Debut, Opening a New Era of Cryptocurrency Payments?
Catizen Launches Launchpool Mode: A New Step Leading the TON Ecosystem in the Gaming Field
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