From Web2 to Web3: How the TON Chain is Reshaping the Future of Social and Payments

Author: Biteye

01 Public Chain Positioning

As the cornerstone of the crypto ecosystem, public chains have always been the focus of core narratives. Whether it's a layer one or layer two public chain, while pursuing high performance, it is even more important to have real active users and rich application scenarios.

TON (The Open Network), as the only public chain officially supported by Telegram, relies on Telegram's massive 900 million monthly active users to create a unique narrative from various aspects such as payments, social interactions, and mini-programs.

By leveraging Telegram's existing social network without increasing user migration costs, TON can reconstruct Web2's business model in a Web3 manner.

Although Telegram has become an important base for crypto users, the popularity of the TON chain among these users still seems insufficient.

Many Alpha Telegram groups require NFTs as tickets, but these NFTs are not based on TON's Jetton; trading bots like Unibot and Banana Gun have deepened Telegram's application among crypto users, but a large volume of transactions still occurs on Base or Solana rather than TON.

Note: Jetton is a type of token on the TON Blockchain, comparable to ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. For details, please refer to the official documentation.

The TON team and the TON Foundation are actively working to break existing barriers and fully unleash TON's potential.

Allowing a large number of real users to directly own crypto wallets, enabling users to easily conduct crypto transfers like sending WeChat red envelopes, combined with Mini Apps similar to WeChat mini-programs, TON is expected to bring the true Holy Grail of Mass Adoption to the crypto industry.

02 Ecological Status

According to Defillama data, TON's TVL is currently $310 million, ranking 25th among all public chains.

Thanks to the joint and coordinated efforts of the TON Foundation, Telegram, and its partners, the on-chain ecological activity has exploded in the past two months.

At the end of March, the TON Foundation announced it would distribute 30 million $TON for liquidity incentives within a month, and in April, Tether announced the direct integration of USDT within TON, allowing for minting and redemption.

The continuous stimuli have rapidly increased TON chain's TVL from $22 million in early March to the current $300 million, achieving nearly a 15-fold growth in less than three months, with further momentum expected.

Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON?price=true

The subsequent blockchain activity has shown significant growth across various metrics:

• Daily transaction volume increased by over 50 times: since March 2024, daily transactions have risen from 100,000 to between 4 million and 9 million.
• Daily active wallets grew 8 times: from 60,000 daily active users in March 2024 to nearly 500,000 now.
• The number of activated wallets on-chain increased 4 times: from 1.5 million addresses to 6.2 million.
• TON's daily fees average $100,000: half of TON's fees are burned.

Source: https://app.artemis.xyz/project/ton

According to ton.apps data, there are currently 787 apps in the TON ecosystem, including development tools, games, NFTs, social applications, launchpads, groups, and more.

Source: https://ton.app/

03 Interaction Directions

In terms of interaction within the TON ecosystem, there are mainly two angles to consider:

• One is established DeFi projects that can receive additional rewards from the foundation's liquidity incentives;
• The other is highly viral games and meme projects, such as Notcoin-style mini-games that can easily attract a large number of real users based on Telegram, with the last major example being "Splashing Wealth."

Here are some interaction opportunities.

Wallet

The first step to participate in the TON ecosystem is to use a wallet, with a total of 43 wallets currently supporting the TON chain.

Source: https://ton.app/

Wallet

Wallet is Telegram's native centralized custodial wallet, somewhat similar to WeChat Wallet embedded in settings, allowing users to directly exchange tokens. Wallet supports users to deposit funds via P2P or bank cards.

(Wallet and TON Space)

TON Space

TON Space is a self-custodial wallet based on Telegram launched by the TON Foundation, embedded within Telegram, and can be accessed through Ton Space in Wallet. Users can directly connect to TON Space from dApps based on TON.

Using TON Space offers a similar experience to other non-custodial EVM wallets, allowing users to import existing accounts from other non-custodial wallets like Tonkeeper. The difference is that wallet recovery can be done not only through mnemonic phrases and private keys but also via email and Telegram accounts.

DeFi

Although TON chain's TVL has seen explosive growth in the past two months, the asynchronous call design of the TON chain, while enhancing performance and scalability, has also increased the development and maintenance difficulty for developers.

As a result, unlike Ethereum Layer 2, we do not see large-scale migrations of leading projects to the TON chain, and there is still significant room for diversity in the DeFi ecosystem.

Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON

TonUP

TonUP is a LaunchPad based on the TON chain that helps promising projects on TON with asset issuance and financing, promoting the development of the TON ecosystem.

Early supported projects include the game Tap Fantasy, which has now gained over 730,000 users. TonUP has received official support from the TON Foundation and TONCoin.Fund, and has secured funding from well-known investment institutions like Foresight X.

Source: https://tonup.io/

STON.fi

STON.fi is the largest DEX on TON, providing almost zero-fee, low-slippage trading services, directly integrated with the TON wallet.

According to Defillama data, excluding LSD projects not counted in public chain TVL, STON.fi ranks first in the TON ecosystem with a TVL of $222 million, accounting for 71.4% of the total TVL, making it the biggest beneficiary of TON's liquidity incentive program, with a 20-fold increase in TVL within two months.

Source: https://app.ston.fi

STON.fi offers the most comprehensive trading pairs, and before the liquidity incentive event ends in June, trading or providing liquidity in designated trading pools can yield additional rewards, with APY exceeding 200%.

Additionally, STON.fi provides 10,000 $STON tokens, with deposits of $STON potentially earning a 10% airdrop of the deposited amount.

Tonstakers

TON is a POS blockchain, and Tonstakers is the first LSD liquidity staking platform in the TON ecosystem, developed by TOP Labs and built into Tonkeeper. Similar to Lido, users can stake $TON to receive $stTON, which can be redeemed back to $TON after the staking period ends.

Currently, over 50,000 users have staked $TON worth $220 million, and although the APY is only 2.76%, it remains a good financial choice for long-term holders of $TON.

Source: https://tonstakers.com/

Game

Compared to the relatively sparse DeFi ecosystem, TON is very strong in the gaming sector. Mini-apps based on Telegram naturally fit social mini-games, where simple and easy gameplay combined with Telegram's one-click sharing can spread games in the most effective way.

Recently launched on Binance Launchpool, $Notcoin is a mini-game on TON where players mine $Notcoin by clicking on coins in Telegram.

The simple gameplay, team mechanics, and real earnings have led to viral spread, acquiring over 35 million users and achieving 5 million daily active users.

Notcoin not only effectively utilizes Telegram's vast base of crypto users but also allows many people to experience digital currency for the first time in a simple way, fully showcasing the application potential of the TON chain.

Catizen

Catizen is the second Telegram Bot product under Pluto Studio. As an early development team and co-builder of the ecosystem, the Pluto team has received multiple economic and resource supports from the TON Foundation.

In August 2023, the team launched its first Telegram Bot mini-game, Tap Fantasy, within the TON ecosystem, which now has 730,000 global users.

Catizen is a cat-themed game that combines GameFi, AI, and the metaverse, providing users with a highly immersive interactive experience.

In just two months since its launch, Catizen has surpassed 10 million players, bringing 695,000 users to the TON chain.

Source: https://x.com/CatizenAI/status/1795059958146605532

Catizen players can participate in the game by nurturing cat characters and earn token rewards through in-game activities.

The game offers a mining mechanism that allows players to earn $wCATI tokens presented in the form of cat paws by completing tasks and activities.

In addition to the game itself, Catizen also serves as a Launchpool for new projects. The first round of Launchpool, which just ended at the beginning of the month, distributed 840 million $wCATI, with over 24,000 users participating and a staking amount exceeding $39 million.

In the next phase, Catizen will transform into a Telegram gaming platform, having already signed contracts with 18 popular WeChat mini-games. The team will leverage its valuable experience in chain transformation and rich experience in deploying on the TON ecosystem to gradually launch these games on the Catizen gaming platform and initiate Launchpool.

Considering Catizen's unique positioning, experienced team, and on-chain performance, it is worth long-term tracking and participation.

Hyper

Hyper is the first metaverse project in the TON ecosystem that simulates real-life scenarios, similar to Notcoin but with upgraded gameplay, where a simple clicker cannot replace real human gameplay.

By clicking the bot to start the game, players drag characters to collect coins according to the instructions, and can purchase boxes to achieve high scores and recharge batteries to collect coins.

This game also employs a strategy of inviting friends to earn coins. With Notcoin as a template, the more refined graphics and enhanced gaming experience give this upgraded version of Notcoin considerable potential.

The Open League (TOL)

TOL is a competition for projects and users within the TON ecosystem, aimed at increasing user engagement across the entire ecosystem, helping projects expand their user base, and developing more attractive and functional products for the large audience on Telegram, with users receiving rewards for participation.

Thus, the TOL leaderboard serves as a great guide for engaging with the TON ecosystem.

(Source: https://blog.ton.org/these-are-the-best-projects-of-tol-season-1)

During the first season, which lasted a month, over $3 million worth of $TON was distributed. The top two DeFi projects, Ston.fi and DeDust, are now the top two DEXs by TVL on TON, while the top LSD project, Tonstakers, has even surpassed Ston.fi in TVL.

Source: https://blog.ton.org/tol-season-2-results-just-landed

In the second season, Catizen ranked first, and the NFT trading platform Getgems ranked second. The airdrop provided by Getgems was the main trading market for previous Notcoin points.

Source: https://ton.org/en/open-league?filterBy=forProjects

The third season is currently underway, with an expected distribution of $1 million worth of $TON, focusing on projects that rank high in interactions.

Yescoin

Besides the top-ranked Catizen, the second-ranked Yescoin is the fastest-growing game on TON recently. Very similar to Notcoin, it features a coin collection and task completion model, where users can collect tokens by swiping their screens.

Such simple and mindless games can be quite addictive, and high-quality clones will attract many followers.

Tonano

Tonano is the inscription project on the TON chain. During the minting process of the first TON20 inscription $nano, the number of participating users and triggered network transactions brought a significant amount of traffic and transaction load to the TON network, causing temporary delays and congestion.

Source: https://tonano.io/

Tonano's Marketplace has over a million dollars in transaction volume, providing necessary liquidity for TON20.

Cross-protocol asset bridges enable asset swaps between TON20 and other inscription protocols and Jetton tokens, making a broader inscription ecosystem possible.

Fanton

Fanton is a game based on TON that resembles a football manager, with star cards issued as NFTs on the TON chain.

It currently has over 400,000 registered users and has received investments from TONcoin.Fund, First Stage Labs, and Tonstarter. Considering the upcoming European Cup, it is likely to become the next hotspot.

Source: Fanton Twitter

Squid

Squid is an inscription game built on TON, where users can purchase squid eggs containing $TON from the marketplace, hatch squids from the eggs, and produce more squid eggs to sell for profit.

04 Summary

The TON chain's ecosystem is still in its early stages, especially with relatively sparse DeFi projects. However, the value of TON cannot simply be measured by TVL; its reliance on the real user base of the Telegram platform is a natural advantage that other public chains cannot match.

Mini-apps focusing on mobile are particularly easy to spread and create FOMO, akin to WeChat's game "Sheep A Sheep."

Moreover, for non-crypto users using Telegram, TON can significantly reduce the learning curve, making it easier to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3.

With the stimulation and promotion from the TON Foundation, the TON ecosystem has shown good development momentum and is worth long-term attention and participation.