Market Downturn: Why is Ton Thriving Amidst the Gloom?
Recent market sentiments have turned pessimistic, especially within the altcoin space. As Bitcoin’s volatility persists, many altcoins have plummeted, with numerous projects suffering severe setbacks.
However, amidst this downturn, Ton’s ecosystem has shown remarkable resilience. Over the past thirty days, Ton has surged by 23%. Moreover, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in the Ton ecosystem has skyrocketed since March, multiplying more than sixfold in just four months. Projects within the ecosystem, such as Notcoin, have seen significant increases in both price and user engagement. Could this herald a prosperous summer for the Ton ecosystem?
Ton’s Unique Position
Ton’s greatest asset lies in its affiliation with Telegram, boasting a staggering 900 million active users. Despite historical criticisms regarding the lack of integration between Ton and Telegram platforms, recent developments suggest a pivotal shift.
Since March, Ton’s TVL has surged from under $23 million to a current $145 million, marking a more than sixfold increase. Concurrently, TON’s price has roughly tripled during this period, remaining remarkably robust even amid recent bearish trends. What factors are driving these bullish developments?
1) Utilization of TON in Telegram’s Ad Platform
Unlike Facebook or WeChat, Telegram prioritizes user privacy and has refrained from leveraging user data for targeted advertising. Consequently, Telegram lacked a precise user ad platform, diverging from mainstream social media profit models. It struggled to achieve a sustainable balance between revenue and expenses for several years.
Recently, however, Telegram launched an ad platform independent of precise user tags, alongside a subscription service. In late February, founder Durov announced on Telegram that the ad platform (which logs over 1 trillion monthly views) would open to advertisers across nearly a hundred countries in March. Channel owners stand to earn 50% of ad revenue, settled in TON tokens.
Next month, channel owners on Telegram can start monetizing their efforts. Telegram’s broadcast channels generate 1 trillion monthly views. Currently, only 10% of these views are monetized through Telegram ads, an advertising tool designed with privacy in mind.
In March, the Telegram ad platform will officially open to advertisers across nearly a hundred new countries. Channel owners in these countries will begin receiving 50% of any revenue generated from ads displayed on their channels, all settled in TON.
To ensure fast and secure ad payments and withdrawals, we’ll use the TON blockchain exclusively. Just as we handle Telegram usernames on Fragment, we’ll sell ads using TON and share revenue with channel owners. This will create a virtuous cycle, allowing content creators to withdraw their TON or reinvest it in promoting and upgrading their channels.
For TON, this marks a significant leap from being perceived as “air” to possessing tangible value.
Before this, TON was used mainly for on-chain smart contract transactions, staking, cross-chain transactions, and other on-chain service fees. The difference from other general public chains is not significant, and because Ton public chain developers and user numbers are much lower than other popular public chains, TON’s consumption is very insignificant. Although it can be used to purchase virtual goods such as anonymous accounts on Telegram, the total transaction volume is not as large as one might imagine.
Making TON the sole settlement asset for the Telegram advertising platform is a big move for Ton, effectively endowing Telegram’s 900 million users to Ton, achieving true integration between the Ton ecosystem and the Telegram platform, and immediately opening up the Ton ecosystem and TON price to new heights.
At the same time, to avoid the Telegram team from holding more and more TON due to this move, which may pose risks of centralization to TON, Durov subsequently announced that in the future, more than 10% of TON held by the team would be sold at a discounted price to long-term holders, with these sold TON having a lock-up period of 1-4 years.
For TON, it’s equivalent to Telegram using advertising revenue to continue repurchasing TON, while seeking other long-term investors or institutions, which naturally is a great positive factor of 1+1>2.
2) Launch of Ton Space
Ton Space, launched in September 2023, differs significantly from Telegram’s built-in wallet Wallet, which is KYC-compliant and can only be used for payments. Ton Space allows users to manage their private keys, similar to regular cryptocurrency wallets.
After using Ton Space, users can seamlessly connect their Telegram accounts with apps within the Ton ecosystem, logging into applications directly from their Telegram accounts to participate in various DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and other services.
Imagine being able to shop directly within WeChat’s mini programs for all sorts of things like Pinduoduo or JD. Similarly, for Telegram’s 900 million active users, they can directly buy/sell Token/NFTs, borrow proxies, or participate in GameFi projects within Telegram, significantly reducing the entry barriers to participating in Web3.
Of course, this is also a big move for the Ton ecosystem, especially since no other public chain is backed by such a large user pool as Telegram.
3) Platform Push for Mini Applications
Following the opening of payment channels, Telegram began to promote mini applications, similar to WeChat mini programs, based on the Telegram platform, requiring no installation to use.
For example, the recently popular Notcoin is an embedded mini program within the platform, allowing users to directly participate in activities such as “Click to Earn” Token within Telegram. The built-in Web3 wallet greatly lowers user participation thresholds, and with Telegram’s official traffic support, it has gained over 40 million total users in just a few months.
Currently, under official traffic support, Telegram has seen a surge in Web3 mini-program applications similar to Notcoin, compared to the previous GameFi frenzy driven by gold miners, and seems to bypass this by directly promoting massive user participation through Telegram.
In addition, there are a series of other actions in deep cooperation between Telegram and the Ton ecosystem. It seems that since the second half of 2023, Telegram has truly begun to define its strategy for entering Web3, initiating deep integration and cooperation with Ton.
Under this series of actions, both TON price and TVL have shown breakthrough growth. For the Telegram platform, this not only achieves a highly profitable model apart from advertising and paid subscriptions but also proves to be a win-win situation.
Ton Ecosystem Review
Currently, there are 874 projects in Ton.app. Although this number is not impressive compared to ecosystems like Ethereum, Solana, or Polygon, it reflects an increase of nearly 60% in the number of projects within the Ton ecosystem in the past eight months. The TVL of the entire ecosystem has multiplied several times, demonstrating the strong growth momentum of the Ton ecosystem.
In terms of popular projects within the Ton ecosystem, let’s briefly review:
Notcoin
In the first quarter of this year, the Telegram developer community and Ton Foundation jointly released a report on Telegram ecosystem Apps, with Notcoin as a key showcase.
Notcoin, a “Click to Earn” game, is the most popular Web3 application in the Telegram Apps Center and currently enjoys the highest visibility within the Ton ecosystem. In just a few months, its user base has surpassed 40 million, despite criticisms that its Token NOT has not formed a closed application loop within the gaming ecosystem, being dubbed as a Memecoin. Nevertheless, it thrives after the initial BN rinse.
Catizen
Catizen is the largest game application platform in the Telegram ecosystem, with a total user base exceeding 20 million, over 500,000 paying users, and over 1.25 million on-chain users, consistently ranking first in the Ton Open League for several seasons.
Hamster Kombat
Hamster Kombat is also a play-to-earn game, currently experiencing a surge in popularity due to expected Airdrops. According to official data, its active user base has already exceeded 150 million, growing by 50% from last week, ranking third in Telegram Apps Center popularity.
Gatto|Game
Gatto is a pet-raising game showcased as an ecosystem project in the first quarter of 2024 by the Ton Foundation. According to the report, as of January 2024, Gatto DAU has reached 30,000, with over 1 million pets created and a monthly revenue of $35,000.
Gamee
Gamee is a social gaming platform under Animoca Brands and one of the highly popular gaming ecosystems on Telegram. Despite a recent token price drop due to a hacking incident early in 2024, Gamee remains highly popular within the Telegram ecosystem.
PocketFi
PocketFi is a Telegram trading bot supporting cross-chain transactions, using “Click to Earn” to attract users with simple operations and strong real-time feedback. After just three months online, its user base has exceeded 1.4 million, and its popularity in the Telegram Apps Center is also impressive.
Blum
Blum is a DEX in the Telegram ecosystem, offering spot and simple derivative trading. However, related functions are not yet online, and only mining through small games is possible. The current user base has already exceeded 10 million.
Notably, Blum was created by a former senior executive of BN and has been selected for the Binance Labs accelerator program.
Yescoin
As the name suggests, Yescoin is a replica of Notcoin with similarly high popularity. Its user base has already exceeded 18 million, and the number of subscribed users on the official Telegram channel has surpassed 6 million, with significant growth rates.
DeDust and Ston.fi
DeDust and Ston.fi are both DEXs within the Telegram ecosystem, ranking among the highest-rated apps in the Apps Center. In DeFiLlama, they rank first and second in TVL with $320 million and $260 million, respectively, making them the flagship projects of the entire Ton ecosystem
