The Essential Chain for Telegram to Become “WeChat” in the Web3
Forward the Original Title ‘MT Capital 研报：TON ：Telegram成为Web3领域里的微信的必由之链’
In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of various public chains L1 such as Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Aptos, most of which are pursuing high performance, EVM compatibility, etc. However, apart from Ethereum, which relies on an active developer community and constantly innovates, continuously creating new value areas for users such as Uniswap, AAVE, etc., other public chains mostly just replay the same script - copying the DeFi trilogy products on the market, using airdrops, high APY, etc., to attract users/traffic from other chains, issuing coins, developing ecological projects, and then driving up the prices of public chain coins. Chain fungibility, product fungibility, user groups, and funds are mostly “hired” through rewards or airdrops, and innovation fundamentally cannot reach the needs of users. In the bull market, the bubble effect makes these public chains appear prosperous, but it is only in the bear market that we realize who is swimming naked.
Recently, whether it is ZK, AA or L2, they all tend to pursue technology away from specific products, copying the same narrative and putting old wine in new bottles. To a certain extent, they have achieved a high degree of involution. And the problem of l2 liquidity fragmentation is becoming increasingly serious.
In the red ocean of public chains, there is no shortage of high performance and narrative, but there is a lack of users with real needs to use public chains. Backed by Telegram, the public chain TON, which has close to 900 million monthly active users, stands out from the battle among hundreds of chains because of its close partnership with Telegram. With a wide range of global users and developers, Telegram is no longer satisfied with being just a social communication platform. Through its continuously enriched product line (Dapp) and opening up links between payment and high-frequency life scenes, Telegram is trying to shift to a social platform, eventually transforming into a super application similar to WeChat.
If Telegram is the WeChat of the Web3 field, then TON is the indispensable public chain in its strategy.
Recent Hot Topics of TON
In February, Telegram founder Durov openly announced the official sales channel for TON tokens on his personal channel, further strengthening the relationship and tacit understanding between TON and Telegram.
Telegram Ad Platform’s Use of TON
The Telegram advertising platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries, with channel owners in these countries receiving a 50% commission from the revenue generated by Telegram showing ads in their channels.
Officials stated that in order to ensure fast and secure advertising payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be specifically used. The revenue will be shared with channel owners, creating a virtuous cycle where content creators can cash out their Toncoin or reinvest it to promote and upgrade their channels.
Fish
The first meme coin on Ton was launched fairly, with more than 22,000 holding addresses. The current market value is 47M, with an increase of 14 times in March. It has officially announced partnerships with many projects: TonRaffles, Tonano, Tap Fantasy, RoOLZ, Catizen.
Telegram is about to launch IPO
According to the Financial Times, Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed that Telegram now has 900 million active users and is approaching profitability. Telegram’s revenue has reached hundreds of millions of dollars, and it is expected to go public after achieving profitability this year or next, with the United States being a potential listing location. In the IPO, Durov stated that Telegram would consider selling shares to loyal users.
Telegram has raised about $20 billion in debt financing, including $1 billion in bonds issued in 2021, as well as $750 million and $270 million in bonds issued last year. If listed before the end of March 2026, bondholders will be able to convert their priority unsecured debt into equity at a discount of 10% to 20% of the Telegram IPO price.
About TON
The Open Netwotk (TON), formerly known as Telegram Open Network, was created by Telegram in 2018 to create a powerful and scalable blockchain platform. Through its token $Grams, it completed the ICO with the highest amount of funds raised in history. Due to SEC accusations that it conducted an unregistered securities offering, the Telegram team abandoned the Telegram Open Network project and returned the U.S. dollars raised in the ICO after agreeing to pay a fine of $18.5 million to settle with the SEC in 2020.
Since then, Telegram Open Network has continued to be developed by a community called NewTON. In May 2021, the community voted to rename the long-term stable Testnet 2 to Mainnet; the NewTON community was renamed to the TON Foundation to support and develop TON as a non-profit community; the Telegram Open Network was also renamed to The Open Network.
Currently, the TON Foundation is the main force promoting the development and development of TON. The TON Foundation safeguards the interests of the community by supporting initiatives that contribute to the mission of the open network and supports the development of the TON project without controlling TON technology. Currently, the TON Foundation team has more than 50 people, more than half of whom are from Russia, Ukraine and other countries, involving business development, engineers, marketing, finance, law, etc. Most of the employees have work experience in VK and Telegram.
It is worth noting that one of the core founding members of the TON Foundation, Andrew Rogozov, was the former CEO of VK.com, a social network founded by the founder of Telegram in Russia. Additionally, the first CEO of VK.com was Durov himself. Furthermore, other members of the TON Foundation include Bill Qian, who was responsible for global M&A at Binance and Binance Labs, as well as John Hyman, the former Chief Investment Advisor at Telegram.
Development status and current situation of Ton
The goal of TON is to provide easy-to-use tools and reliable, stable infrastructure to make massive adoption easier. Although TON launched its exchange in 2021 and subsequently introduced infrastructure and features such as TON payments, storage, DNS, and cross-chain bridges (with official bridges supporting TON/ETH and BSC), TON truly gained widespread attention last July with the frenzy surrounding Telegram bots like Unibot and Bananagun. Moreover, during the Token 2049 event in September, Telegram officially announced its collaboration with TON and released TON Space, a self-hosted crypto wallet developed by TON blockchain, which further propelled TON to its peak. As a result, TON’s price rose from $1.2 in August of last year to $3.8 (a 215% increase), and its market cap squeezed into the top twenty, making it a prominent dark horse in the previous bear market. Now, although TON’s popularity has somewhat waned, as the only public chain officially supported by Telegram, backed by Telegram’s 900 million active users, TON will unfold a completely different narrative from existing public chains in terms of payment, social, mini-programs, and more, amidst the backdrop of TPS, MEV compatibility, and narrative competition.
As of March 20, 2024, there are 301 validators on the TON chain, with a total staked $TON amount of 440 million distributed across 29 countries under the PoS mechanism. The total number of on-chain accounts on TON has been showing a long-term growth trend, with 8.12 million existing accounts. Official information from the Dubai Summit shows that over the past year, TON has achieved a 2.5-fold increase in active user addresses, with a daily trading volume of approximately $220,000. Currently, the TVL on the TON chain is $53.43 million, with a total of 13 projects listed on DefiLlama. In addition to the TON chain, TON also includes TON Storage—a decentralized file storage system; TON DNS—for assigning readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services, and nodes; TON Pay—micro-payment channels for instant off-chain transactions; and TON Proxy—an anonymous network proxy service for the TON network to hide TON node IP addresses. Although TON has been established for five years, its grand blueprint is just beginning to unfold, and developers and users are gradually exploring this ecosystem.
Token Economy
The initial supply of the $TON token was 5 billion until June 28, 2022, when the last $TON was mined. The supply of $TON is uncapped and grows at approximately 0.6% per year (approximately 3 million coins). After Telegram settled with the SEC in 2020, all tradable $TON tokens were placed in special Giver smart contracts for anyone to mine. Therefore, 98.55% of the tokens were allocated in early POW mining. The team only holds 1.45% of the tokens. Unlike in the early days when most public chain tokens were held hostage by large capital, currently a large amount of $Ton is concentrated in the hands of early miners, and the distribution of chips is more dispersed. In order to solve the problem of most tokens being concentrated in the hands of early miners, TON launched a community proposal in February last year to freeze 171 inactive early wallets for 48 months, totaling 1.08B $TON (about 21% of the total). If this portion of frozen $TON is included, Ton’s total market capitalization will rank among the top 10 in the cryptocurrency market. After $TON is mined, it is converted from PoW to PoS. $TON’s annual token inflation of 0.6% (approximately 3 million coins) will be used to reward validators who maintain network security. However, if the validator behaves inappropriately, the $TON they staked will be slashed. According to information revealed at the Dubai Conference, TON intends to increase staking rewards to promote further increases in the TON chain’s staking rate.
The token $TON has multiple usage scenarios, such as transaction fee payment, staking, cross-chain transactions, etc. on the TON chain. In the future, $TON can also be used to pay for TON agency services, etc. The positioning of $TON is also similar to the legal currency on Telegram, and the application of $TON on Telegram is particularly worthy of attention. For example, $TON can be used to pay for Telegram Premium membership fees at a more favorable discount. The Telegram wallet can currently directly use a credit card to purchase $TON, and then use $TON to purchase virtual goods such as anonymous accounts. According to statistics, all anonymous accounts worth a total of 50 million US dollars have been sold within one month of going online. So far, anonymous accounts have sold 130 million US dollars. $TON has huge payment potential in this area. In the future, $TON may also be used for Telegram promotion, and advertising services can also be paid for using $TON.
Additionally, the $TON token will likely deflate as network usage increases. Because, in June last year, the TON Foundation proposed the introduction of a burning mechanism: 50% of the transaction fees generated by transactions on the TON chain, domain names, and number auctions in the TON network will be used to burn $TON.
TON Token Analysis
As of March 20, 2024, the total supply of $TON is 5.104 billion tokens, with a circulating supply of 3.469 billion tokens. The token price is $3.8 per token, resulting in a Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of $19.276 billion and a Market Cap of $13.101 billion, ranking 13th. Currently, $TON is listed on exchanges such as Bybit, OKX, Kucoin, Bitget, and has been listed on Binance futures. $TON has also become the highest-ranking token not listed on Binance spot. Given time, if TON’s visibility and user traffic experience explosive growth, $TON will also become the preferred choice for listing on Binance. Looking at the distribution of tokens, the top ten wallets hold 38% of the total $TON supply, while the top 100 wallets hold 49% of the total $TON supply, indicating relatively dispersed token distribution, which helps to avoid potential selling pressure from large institutional investors and project parties. Additionally, TON has launched the TON Believers Fund, which locks in over 1.317 billion $TON (approximately 25% of the total supply). The TON Believers Fund allows any $TON holder to donate or lock their tokens for 5 years: a 2-year lock-up period followed by a 3-year vesting period, during which donated tokens will be rewarded to all depositors starting from the 3rd year. According to current public information, 10.54% of the tokens were donated to the TON Foundation by the community in 2022.
Compared to existing public chains with a vision of Mass Adoption, if we evaluate the TON chain based on the commonly used metric “Market Cap/TVL,” it is not difficult to see that TON has the highest “Market Cap/TVL” ratio, indicating a risk of overvaluation of the TON token price. However, as will be discussed below, the value of TON cannot be assessed using traditional public chain valuation methods. Instead, it should be evaluated from the grand narrative of TON’s integration with Telegram and from perspectives such as trading volume and protocol revenue from Dapps. Because achieving Mass Adoption solely relies on the profit effect of DeFi may not retain traffic in the long term (this can be seen from the bearish TVL of chains like Avalanche and Fantom in bear markets), the key lies in low-threshold user experience, integration with daily high-frequency life scenarios, and huge traffic entry points. And this is also TON’s core competitiveness—deep integration with the Telegram ecosystem. The application experience brought by the deep integration of TON and Telegram is far superior to that of most Web3 products, and the comparable valuation of TON can also be benchmarked against WeChat and WhatsApp in Web2 with similar ecosystem experiences. From this perspective, the current valuation of TON, which is only $7-8 billion, is still undervalued. However, although we are optimistic about the long-term development of TON and its vast potential, achieving 5-10 times returns for $TON tokens will require the arrival of a major bull market.
The Important Position of TON in Telegram’s Web3 Vision
Telegram Possesses Inherent Web3 Genes
Telegram is a cloud-based free instant messaging software founded in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the founders of VK, one of Russia’s mainstream social media platforms. Telegram’s commitment to free speech and privacy protection has attracted a large number of global users, with over 1.3 billion registered users and nearly 800 million monthly active users (MAU). The relaxed speech atmosphere and regulatory environment on Telegram have made it an “important battleground” for Crypto—almost all Web 3.0/Crypto projects have Telegram communities used for project promotion, news announcements, and community interaction. The activity level of Telegram communities has also become an important indicator of project marketing capabilities. Moreover, more than half of the most subscribed Channels and Groups on Telegram, with the highest number of subscribers/members, are related to Crypto content (as shown in the figure below, the two largest Groups on Telegram are both related to Crypto). More importantly, according to statistics from the TON Chinese channel, Telegram has over 37,000 active crypto communities.
Due to regulatory reasons and other factors, a large number of genuine users have migrated from Slack and WeChat groups to Telegram. This trend has led to a significant demand for services beyond group chatting, such as news, announcements, and notifications of large transactions. Telegram has timely responded to these user demands by reshaping its platform’s emoji system, introducing Story video sharing, and launching blockchain-driven anonymous number login services (e.g., virtual phone numbers starting with +888). Furthermore, the immense success of WeChat as a widely used social platform has prompted Telegram to move closer to WeChat, aiming to transition from a communication protocol to a social platform, ultimately transforming into a large integrated super app.
Additionally, Telegram’s open-source, open API, and rich database have made it a developer-friendly platform, attracting a large number of developers to build apps on it.
Based on the above discussion, it is evident that Telegram has accumulated a broad base of active users and developers, fully equipped to build its own public chain or even a unique Telegram ecosystem—a blockchain kingdom—with users and developers. In this scenario, coupled with the support of Telegram’s founders for blockchain technology and the commercialization of Telegram through blockchain, TON and Telegram Bot have emerged.
The Telegram Web3 Triangle: Wallet, Dapp/Bot & TON
Wallet
The success of WeChat is not only due to its social attributes but also its financial attributes. WeChat facilitates various aspects of daily life, including transfers, mobile payments, taxi hailing, ticket booking, online shopping, and recharging, thereby becoming indispensable in China. Similarly, many crypto enthusiasts use Telegram as one of their core communication tools. With the expansion of the crypto world, network effects will also occur here, and the Telegram platform has become an essential communication tool for crypto enthusiasts and project teams, showing a trend towards becoming the WeChat of Web3.
Just as the widespread development of mobile internet in China is inseparable from the emergence of WeChat Pay and Alipay, the transition of Web3 from attracting new users to massive adoption also relies on traffic ports—the crypto digital wallet—a simple and secure encrypted digital wallet! Of course, this encrypted digital wallet not only allows free trading of various crypto assets like most existing wallets but also needs to be linked with traditional currencies, allowing users to easily exchange and convert between fiat and cryptocurrencies. The introduction of the @Wallet non-custodial wallet within Telegram allows users to access and use @Wallet without leaving the Telegram platform, meeting the needs of Web2 users. Its convenience and ease of use reduce the barriers to entry and learning costs for new Web2 users, making it the preferred wallet for Web2 users transitioning to Web3. Additionally, since @Wallet can operate within the Telegram app on mobile phones, where people use their phones more frequently and for longer durations compared to computers, its presence also facilitates the transition of PC Web3 to mobile Web3. One challenge in the massive adoption of Web3 solutions is that users must first have an app, which is often the most difficult step. The core logic of the integrated wallet within Telegram is that users no longer need to download a separate app, as it naturally inherits the trust users have in Telegram, making the final step much simpler.
(Gate Learn reminder: @Wallet is deployed by Ton Foundation)
So what are the features of @Wallet? @Wallet is the built-in non-custodial wallet deployed on Telegram by the Ton Foundation, similar to Alipay and WeChat Pay. It can be opened directly in the Telegram chat interface without entering a password. Users can use bank cards to purchase, receive, trade, and withdraw cryptocurrencies. Moreover, users can easily pay for products and services on Telegram using $TON, $USDT, or $BTC through Telegram Bot. Additionally, @Wallet may also become a Telegram version of Yu’e Bao in the future, allowing users to flexibly manage their cash through assets such as government bonds.
In September last year, Ton Foundation newly launched TON Space, a self-hosted version of @Wallet. TON Space is directly integrated into the @Wallet interface within Telegram. Third parties cannot access user assets, and users can settle directly on the TON Space page without redirecting to third-party payment platforms. This enhances the security and privacy attributes of the wallet while also strengthening Telegram’s own encrypted financial attributes. Unlike existing wallets such as Little Fox Wallet and TP Wallet, TON Space allows users to recover the wallet using email and Telegram accounts in addition to mnemonic phrases, providing users with additional convenience and security. Currently, the user interface of TON Space resembles that of Little Fox Wallet, allowing users to accept, send, and exchange tokens, and the wallet page displays the NFT assets held by the wallet. However, Dapp cannot be accessed through TON Space at the moment, but this feature will be launched in the future. According to the team, the TON Space wallet will support projects within the TON ecosystem, allowing users to link their Telegram accounts to projects on the TON chain. The official version of TON Space is expected to be launched in November in regions other than the United States. In order to facilitate users in managing multiple wallet addresses simultaneously, TON Space plans to integrate multiple addresses in the future. Additionally, TON will support the transfer and display of NFT collections to meet the social needs of Telegram users. Furthermore, considering the density of information, Telegram has a higher information density than WeChat, and users are more immersed in information on Telegram, with a wider range of private traffic density. This will also drive the integration of TON Space with payment and social scenes within Telegram, achieving more refined and high-density transmission of value, traffic, and information through higher information density.
From the above, it can be concluded that the wallet is the traffic entry point of Telegram Web3. However, after attracting users, various entertainment facilities are still needed. This leads to the provision of existing Web2 Dapps in a Web3 manner, giving rise to Telegram mini apps (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bots.
Telegram Mini Apps and Telegram Bots
Telegram Mini Apps are web applications running within the Telegram Messenger, launched by the TON Foundation, aiming to meet users’ needs for games, content sharing, productivity tools, etc., and can be easily accessed from Telegram chats or group conversations. Telegram Mini Apps include bots, games, and web applications, divided into four categories: management, Web3, utilities, and games based on their functions. Telegram Bots are automated programs running through the Telegram chat program, allowing users to access information and market data without leaving the Telegram platform and interact with smart contracts.
At this point, readers may wonder what the connection between Telegram Mini Apps and Web3 is. These Telegram Mini Apps can be built on the Ton chain using the infrastructure provided by Ton and made available to users through Telegram Bots in the Telegram interface. This allows app developers not only to use Ton’s infrastructure to develop projects, reducing the difficulty of project development, reducing development time, and obtaining Ton grants for financial support, but more importantly, developers can quickly reach Telegram’s extensive user base and monetize in various ways within Telegram (such as through in-app purchases, subscription models, or advertising).
The bridge between Telegram Mini Apps and Telegram is Telegram Bot, which can be seen from its “cumulative trading volume exceeding $190 million as of last July, with a peak daily trading volume of $10 million,” indicating the popularity of the Telegram Bot track and its vast demand from real users. From the user’s perspective, they can use these bots for DEX trading, participating in airdrops, or tracking transactions in specific wallets, among other operations. Through interaction with Telegram Bot, users can easily connect to the entire blockchain within the Telegram interface by paying a certain fee.
Currently, the main functions provided by Telegram Bot are: 1) Trading: directly buying and selling tokens; 2) Sniping: monitoring token launches and setting automatic purchases in advance; 3) Copy trading: follow others’ strategies; 4) Airdrop farming: automatically executing a series of operations to increase the chance of receiving airdrops; 5) Finding the best liquidity pool for a specific token, and more. According to a Binance research report, Telegram Bot profits from collecting trading fees and “taxes” on token transactions, with Telegram bots collecting over 15,000 ETH (approximately $28.7 million) in revenue as of last July.
According to the Binance Research Report, the number of daily active users of Telegram Bot peaked at more than 6,000 in July last year. The most used ones are Maestro (about 2,000-3,000 daily active users) and Unibot (about 1,700 people).
Of course, there are also hidden concerns about project security and privacy when using Telegram Bot: 1) Like all Web2 applications, the user’s Telegram account is at risk of being stolen, and a Telegram account does not require a password to log in to the Telegram Bot, so the Telegram Bot is also exposed to the Telegram account password Under security risks; 2) Through Bot transactions, Bot will access the private key, and there is a risk of private key leakage; 3) Like all crypto projects, the interaction between Bot and smart contracts exposes the wallet to smart contract risks; 4) Most people worry about transferring money to a robot. Although Telegram Bot has risks, compared with the existing DeFi front-end, Telegram Bot provides a more friendly and convenient user experience, has real practical and large demand, and is backed by Telegram’s 800 million daily active users, making the Bot track full of imagination. Using Blueprint under the Telegram TACT language has also reduced the difficulty for developers to build and maintain Bot projects, spawning the emergence of a large number of Bot projects. The following “Investment Opportunities-Bot” chapter will try to analyze the investment opportunities in the Telegram Bot track.
TON: The only blockchain supported by Telegram
TON has been inextricably linked to Telegram since its inception, and Telegram executives have not hesitated to support TON. For example, Telegram CEO Du Rove publicly stated in a statement in July last year that he held $TON.
(from public social media)
At the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore last September, Telegram publicly stated that it will now rely entirely on TON as its blockchain infrastructure. $TON and its Web3 ecosystem will enjoy promotion on Telegram and have priority access to Telegram’s global advertising platform Telegram Ads. The goal is to cultivate and promote a TON-centric Web3 ecosystem in Telegram and develop the Telegram integrated wallet into an all-in-one platform that meets all user needs.
Readers may be confused. Since Telegram Bot already provides users with a convenient and fast Web3 experience, why does it need TON? The main role of Bot is to guide traffic and link users with Dapps. As a TON Foundation representative said, TON allows developers to create products with real-world needs that can be deployed on the Telegram platform. As a public chain, TON can not only provide tools and infrastructure for blockchain construction, but Dapps built on TON can also be used on the Telegram interface, which will empower Telegram and form a powerful flywheel effect. In other words, TON can promote the use of Dapps. For example, using a TON wallet to open Telegram Mini Apps can enhance users’ sense of safety. Because TON has launched TON Connect, a technology based on modern cryptography that allows users to log in to services and applications with one click through the TON wallet, which means that the user’s key will never leave the user’s device and the user’s privacy will not be violated. Using TON Connect can reduce users’ worries about entering private keys when using Telegram Bot, thereby promoting the usage of Telegram Bot and Mini Apps. On the other hand, the token $TON provides Telegram with a path to commercialization - due to historical sensitivity, Telegram’s single profit model and limited sources of operating funds (the founder’s personal funds and 2 bond issuances raised a total of approximately $1.2 billion US dollars), causing Telegram to turn to looking for decentralized commercialization methods. In addition, the $TON token provides the public with technology to protect their rights and freedoms, adding a new dimension to communication between users on the basis of transactions. For example, in July last year, the TON Foundation announced the introduction of encrypted messaging functionality on the TON chain, using end-to-end encryption to ensure that only the sender and receiver can see the message content, and the transaction fee for each message sent is 0.006 $TON. TON’s infrastructure and its financial properties are indispensable and important components of Telegram’s Web3 landscape.
Trinity
As @Wallet COO Halil Mirakhme clearly pointed out when talking about its competitor Signal, @Wallet’s advantage over Signal is that it is supported by a platform like Telegram that supports social interaction and discussion of cryptocurrencies. The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp/Bot and TON provides Telegram users with a complete closed-loop Web3 experience: starting from getting messages and communicating through Telegram group/channel, to conducting Token transactions with Telegram Bot through Telegram Mini Apps, and then to Use @Wallet and TON Space to participate in TON ecological projects.
At this point, we can describe the grand layout of Telegram Web3: Wallet serves as the traffic entrance for Telegram Web2 users to enter the Web3 world, Dapp handles traffic and retains users, Bot bridges Wallet and Dapp to provide users with a simple and convenient operation process, and TON chain provides the foundation Facilities and $TON tokens provide commercialization avenues, and Dapps developed on TON can empower Telegram to form a powerful flywheel effect. The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp/Bot and TON can provide users with a simple, convenient, free Web3 experience without censorship or external control, and also create a Web3 Mini Dapp development platform for developers that can quickly reach a wide range of users. The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp/Bot and TON enables Telegram to not only become a network, but also a decentralized digital kingdom with its own economy, citizens, digital property rights, currency, free market and communication infrastructure and many other services.
TON’s framework and technology development
Understanding TON first requires breaking free from the design framework of existing public chains led by ETH. TON is a public chain designed from the outset by a team experienced in handling giant platform businesses (such as VK, Russia’s largest social network), with the goal of massive application adoption. Although the team eventually ceased development due to regulatory reasons and the project was taken over by the community, as a project contemporaneous with Ethereum, TON even proposed the concept of sharding earlier than Ethereum 2.0 to support more complex business operations. TON’s underlying architectural design logic differs significantly from Ethereum, and the design of the underlying architecture to some extent determines whether the public chain can meet its goal of supporting a large number of users. Even WhatsApp and WeChat cannot support synchronous message synchronization across multiple devices (e.g., phones and computers), which is a problem of architectural design.
The core design of the TON blockchain includes “resource payment” and “asynchrony.” “Resource payment” means that unlike other public chains like Ethereum and Solana, where users need to pay transaction fees, every smart contract on TON requires a certain amount of $TON tokens to pay fees. If the token balance of a smart contract is depleted, the contract will eventually be deleted. This design introduces an automatic cleanup mechanism to prevent data inflation on the blockchain. “Asynchrony” means that calls between smart contracts are asynchronous—when two contracts are involved in a call, the call is not executed immediately but is processed on a future block after the transaction is completed. The advantage of this design lies in the higher scalability and flexibility, but the downside is the increased difficulty and slowness in developing and maintaining applications on the TON chain, leading to challenges in DeFi development on TON.
TON’s architecture is divided into three layers: masterchain, workchain, and shardchain. The masterchain serves as the coordinating hub, while workchains and shardchains handle actual transactions. Therefore, TON has a main chain (masterchain) that can accommodate up to 232 workchains, each of which can be further subdivided into up to 260 shardchains. TON claims to support millions of TPS and applied for the Guinness World Record for the “fastest blockchain” in October last year. However, the true TPS of TON may only be validated once the TON chain ecosystem thrives and experiences significant traffic running on the TON chain.
Smart contract development on TON can be done using three programming languages: Fift, FunC, and Tact. Fift has a lower-level difficulty and is rarely chosen by developers. Currently, the most widely used development language is FunC, which is a programming language similar to C. Tact is a new high-level language introduced by TON, designed to resemble popular programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Solidity, aiming to lower the development difficulty for a broader range of developers. Since this article is not a technical guide, the technical details of TACT are not elaborated here. Interested readers can refer to “Why TACT is the Next Big Breakthrough for TON.” However, noteworthy aspects of TACT include: 1) its support for Message-Oriented Programming (MOP) principles, simplifying the development process and enhancing efficiency, as well as facilitating the creation of contracts that easily interact through message passing, thereby simplifying the integration and interaction of different contracts; 2) the availability of the Blueprint framework, which provides a comprehensive set of tools for smart contract development, simplifying and streamlining the process of contract development and deployment. With Blueprint, developers can easily manage all stages of the smart contract lifecycle. Other Telegram bots like Unibot, which gained popularity last year, were developed using the TACT language and its Blueprint scripts. Although TACT is still undergoing auditing, its ease of development is expected to play a crucial role in the development of the Ton ecosystem and is expected to be widely promoted in the future.
TON Ecosystem and Opportunities
As of the end of September last year, the TON developer community had a total of 10,747 members, with 176 active developers on GitHub. Some well-known development teams include TonWhales, Orbs, and TON Tech. To attract more project teams to develop on TON, the TON community not only provides basic tools such as TON SDK, Ton Connect, TACT language, and the Blueprint framework but also offers TON blockchain courses, TON TACT Challenge to promote the TACT language, organizes Hack-a-TON x DWF x AWS hackathons with a prize pool of over $415,000, and establishes TON Grants and TON Bounties projects. The TON Bounties project has successfully processed over 155 proposals, with 40 new bounty tasks approved in the third quarter of last year, and 25 completed projects receiving approximately $53,000 in rewards. The TON Grants project has received 103 project applications and approved 10 projects. In addition, TON has established the $250 million TONcoin.Fund to invest in TON ecosystem projects, covering areas such as Infra, DeFi, NFT, gaming, and sociafi.
As of November 11 last year, the Ton ecosystem had a total of 551 Dapps, covering wallets, Defi, NFT, gaming, socialFi, etc. However, according to the Starbase article, the TON ecological project actually includes many Telegram groups. At present, overall, the TON ecosystem is still in a very early stage.
(from public social media)
The on-chain TVL of TON is $53.43 million USD, with 13 projects listed on DefiLlama. Among them, the projects with the highest TVL are Tonstakers ($105 million USD) and Bemo ($27.33 million USD). It can be seen that the TON ecosystem lacks popular DeFi projects. One reason is that existing DeFi projects support single staking assets with low yields. For example, the highest TVL project Tonstakers currently only allows staking of $TON with an APY of 4.64%.
Another reason for the low TVL on the TON chain is the lack of stablecoins. Currently, besides USDT, other stablecoins on the TON chain such as oUSDT, oUSDC, jUSDT, and jUSDC have low liquidity, high slippage, and lack the asset backing and audit support like USDT and USDC. This significantly reduces the incentive for users to trade on the TON chain. With more cross-chain bridges launching in the future, it is expected that stablecoins with liquidity other than USDT will appear on the TON chain to promote its ecosystem prosperity. Additionally, the native USDT on TON is expected to be launched this year, and TON is currently in talks with other stablecoins. The introduction of stablecoins is expected to continue to stimulate TVL growth on TON.
Currently, TON has only launched the eth cross-chain bridge, but mature projects in the Ethereum ecosystem have not yet migrated to the TON chain, such as AAVE and Uniswap. This results in a large amount of traffic on Ethereum not flowing into the TON chain. From the various activities launched by the TON Foundation and TON Society, the official stance on cross-chain and EVM is not very proactive. This may be because users’ cross-chain needs can be met through Telegram bots, Mini Apps, official and third-party cross-chain bridges. Moreover, with the massive traffic of Telegram, attracting traffic from other chains through cross-chain bridges to meet the needs of TON users is more urgent for other chains. Therefore, at this stage, TON can cooperate with mainstream DeFi protocols such as AAVE and Uniswap, and select suitable projects from numerous cross-chain cases for cooperation to achieve better benefits. However, it is worth noting that due to the different underlying architectures of TON and Ethereum, the atomicity of transactions on Ethereum cannot be achieved on TON, which will to some extent limit the richness of DeFi applications on TON. For example, it is difficult to implement flash loans on TON. Therefore, we need to pay more attention to DeFi applications and scenarios that are integrated with the Telegram ecosystem.
TON’s community governance
At present, the TON community has not yet formed a state of complete autonomy, but this does not mean that community members cannot participate in the construction and governance of TON. Officially, Channel and Chat are provided for community members to subscribe and communicate. For developers, the official also provides relatively complete tutorials and developer documents to help developers develop. It also has a developer community and TON answer to help developers answer questions.
The general governance process of Ton is as follows: 1) First, the Author needs to submit the proposal content through TON Enhancement Proposal and pull the request, so that the proposal enters the review status; 2) Secondly, the Editor will verify the pull request and then assign Reviewers for review; 3 ) Subsequently, Reviewers will share their opinions or comments and vote for or against; 4) Once the majority of Reviewers unify the proposal, the proposal will enter a 10-day comment period; 5) When the comment period ends, the Editor will change the status of the proposal from Review to Active or Rejected;
Through the above process, community members and core contributors can more easily participate in Ton’s internal governance. However, considering that in the early stages of the development of public chains, too much decentralization of power and governance is often inefficient, therefore, the TON community has not yet reached a state of complete autonomy at this stage. As the TON chain gradually develops and matures, TON will gradually move towards a fully autonomous DAO management model.
TON TVL and Ecology
Typically, we assess the prosperity of a blockchain ecosystem using TVL as a judgment basis—the Lego effect of DeFi. However, in the saturated market of public chains, we feel that it is inappropriate to evaluate TON using traditional blockchain valuation methods. The core value of TON lies in its strong integration with Telegram. We should evaluate TON from the grand narrative of TON x Telegram, considering factors such as trading volume and protocol revenue from Dapps.
As Telegram rapidly evolves and attracts and accommodates a large number of real users, it is also expanding its functionalities and Dapps to retain users, attempting to upgrade from a communication protocol to a social platform and then to a super app platform. Its free and relaxed atmosphere, coupled with an increasingly diverse range of Dapps and services, is bound to attract more users. Moreover, considering Telegram’s status as a “critical territory” for Crypto, TON, the only blockchain supported by Telegram, is poised to benefit from this. As stated by the TON Foundation, the goal is to onboard 30% of Telegram’s active users to TON by 2028. According to this calculation, there will be 500 million Telegram users who will become users of the Ton blockchain by then. Therefore, we believe that the primary concern for TON at the moment is how to channel Telegram users to TON. In addition to continuously developing various categories of Dapps to meet the traffic brought in by Telegram, it can also integrate games, DeFi, creator economies, and crypto-commerce into high-frequency life scenarios using the TON wallet, thereby increasing the frequency and stickiness of users using TON. Furthermore, TON needs to conduct more extensive and intensive promotion on Telegram. From an investment perspective, the current price of $TON is $3.8 per token, with a market cap of $13 billion, ranking 13th. Currently, TON’s market cap is relatively high, surpassing that of Apt, Sui, and other public chains. Investors looking to achieve a 5-10x return on investment may need to wait for a major bull market. The price of TON six months ago was $2.48, and the current price is $3.8. Aptos’ price six months ago was $5.2, and the current price is $14.4. Solana’s price six months ago was $20, and the current price is $166. Sui’s price six months ago was $0.45, and the current price is $1.52. It can be seen that TON’s price increase over the past six months has not been significant, indicating potential for growth.
TON ecological project
Tonup
The Launchpad platform on the TON chain has received strong support from TONCoin.Fund and TON Foundation since its inception, and has completed a seed round of financing led by TONCoin Fund. Other investors include Foresight X, Waterdrip Capital, BitFund DAO, etc.
Fragment
Fragment is a non-custodial decentralized NFT trading platform on TON. It can currently trade Telegram-specific usernames and virtual numbers, and the transaction settlement unit is TON. There is no handling fee for listing NFT on Fragment, and a 5% platform fee is charged for each auction. Users can bid freely, and the highest bidder wins each time. It is worth noting that Pavel, the founder of Telegram, is also the co-founder of Fragment.
Telegram usernames are similar to the decentralized username ENS. As Telegram founder Pavel Durov said, this is the first open and transparent username market established on a social platform. This means that users have gained ownership of their usernames on the Web2 social platform for the first time. If Telegram can explore a points system that combines usernames with activities on channels/groups, and integrate participant to earn into Web2, it will definitely be possible. Attract more users to buy and use Telegram usernames. The virtual phone number starting with + 888 launched by Fragment can be used to register a Telegram account and bind a TON wallet. It is defined as an NFT and is recorded in the TON blockchain, which can protect privacy and highlight the user’s identity and personality. This virtual phone number has hype and collectible value, and the current floor price is 9$TON. In addition, Fragment also integrates Premium functions. Users can pay the subscription fee for Telegram Premium functions on Fragment or donate $TON to Fragment to gain the opportunity to promote channels on Telegram.
Bot track
As mentioned in the section “Telegram mini app (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bot” above, Telegram Bot provides users with convenient operations to seamlessly connect to the entire crypto world within the Telegram interface. There is a significant amount of genuine demand for this, and it has already widely penetrated various fields such as trading, DeFi, cross-chain, airdrops, and more. However, Telegram bots are still in a blue ocean market, with many new application scenarios such as Bot integration with Telegram payments and Bot integration with Ethsign yet to be developed. It is expected that Telegram Bots will integrate with other narratives and applications, and in the future, they will also transition into Telegram mini apps, providing users with a better Web3 experience.
Judging from the Dex 24-hour transaction volume, Unibot and Banana account for the majority of the Telegram Bot track transaction volume, accounting for 50% and 41% respectively. They are still in the stage of project competition for market share. In addition, according to CertiK research and analysis, nearly 40% of Telegram Bot projects are suspected to be dormant, may be fraudulent, or face the risk of being unable to recover from a sharp sell-off. One of the possible reasons for this is that Bot projects are built directly using the TACT language and Blueprint provided by TON. The development process is relatively simple and it is easy to copy successful projects on the market. However, these projects do not have the ability to continue to attract users after they are launched. Therefore, investors should also pay attention to its risks when paying attention to Bot track projects.
LootBot
Lootbot focuses on automating airdrop interactions, being able to filter out the most beneficial airdrop opportunities while implementing strong security measures to protect users from hackers and fraudulent activities. Currently ZkSync, Layerzero, Linea, Base, Taiko and Polygon chains are supported. The first 15 transactions on Lootbot are free, after which users are advised to purchase its Premium version for $30/month. At present, Lootbot has received $148,000 in subscription fees. $LOOT holders can choose to burn $LOOT to mint $xLOOT to obtain income. Currently, a total of 1.98 million loot has been burned.
WagieBot
WagieBot provides users with the ability to conduct due diligence and interact with any liquidity pool on Ethereum, Binance Chain, and Arbitrum on Telegram and Discord. Users only need to paste a contract and WagieBot will automatically obtain the maximum liquidity pool and all necessary information for the token and complete anti-rug checks. WagieBot’s interaction speed is dozens of times faster than Dex, and it also integrates GMX to allow users to trade with up to 50x leverage. As of now, the transaction amount on WagieBot is $7.17 million, with a total of 414 users.
Disclaimer：
This article is reprinted from MT Capital, and the original title is “MT Capital Research Report: TON: Telegram’s Necessary Path to Becoming WeChat of the Web3 World.” The copyright belongs to the original authors [Ian, Betty, Xinwei, Momentum Capital; Vivi, Ton Foundation]. The Gate Learn team has annotated and modified parts of the introduction related to @Wallet and Ton Space. If there are any objections to this repost, please contact the [Gate Learn team].
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article represent only the author’s personal views and do not constitute any investment advice.
Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.
Related articles
Detailed explanation of the social network platform Cardano combined with domain names
What are Mini Apps in Telegram’s Web3 ecosystem?
MOMO AI: An AI-Driven Game Social Platform in Ton and Solana Ecosystems
The Essential Chain for Telegram to Become “WeChat” in the Web3
Recent Hot Topics of TON
About TON
Development status and current situation of Ton
Token Economy
TON Token Analysis
TON’s framework and technology development
TON’s community governance
TON TVL and Ecology
Forward the Original Title ‘MT Capital 研报：TON ：Telegram成为Web3领域里的微信的必由之链’
In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of various public chains L1 such as Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Aptos, most of which are pursuing high performance, EVM compatibility, etc. However, apart from Ethereum, which relies on an active developer community and constantly innovates, continuously creating new value areas for users such as Uniswap, AAVE, etc., other public chains mostly just replay the same script - copying the DeFi trilogy products on the market, using airdrops, high APY, etc., to attract users/traffic from other chains, issuing coins, developing ecological projects, and then driving up the prices of public chain coins. Chain fungibility, product fungibility, user groups, and funds are mostly “hired” through rewards or airdrops, and innovation fundamentally cannot reach the needs of users. In the bull market, the bubble effect makes these public chains appear prosperous, but it is only in the bear market that we realize who is swimming naked.
Recently, whether it is ZK, AA or L2, they all tend to pursue technology away from specific products, copying the same narrative and putting old wine in new bottles. To a certain extent, they have achieved a high degree of involution. And the problem of l2 liquidity fragmentation is becoming increasingly serious.
In the red ocean of public chains, there is no shortage of high performance and narrative, but there is a lack of users with real needs to use public chains. Backed by Telegram, the public chain TON, which has close to 900 million monthly active users, stands out from the battle among hundreds of chains because of its close partnership with Telegram. With a wide range of global users and developers, Telegram is no longer satisfied with being just a social communication platform. Through its continuously enriched product line (Dapp) and opening up links between payment and high-frequency life scenes, Telegram is trying to shift to a social platform, eventually transforming into a super application similar to WeChat.
If Telegram is the WeChat of the Web3 field, then TON is the indispensable public chain in its strategy.
Recent Hot Topics of TON
In February, Telegram founder Durov openly announced the official sales channel for TON tokens on his personal channel, further strengthening the relationship and tacit understanding between TON and Telegram.
Telegram Ad Platform’s Use of TON
The Telegram advertising platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries, with channel owners in these countries receiving a 50% commission from the revenue generated by Telegram showing ads in their channels.
Officials stated that in order to ensure fast and secure advertising payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be specifically used. The revenue will be shared with channel owners, creating a virtuous cycle where content creators can cash out their Toncoin or reinvest it to promote and upgrade their channels.
Fish
The first meme coin on Ton was launched fairly, with more than 22,000 holding addresses. The current market value is 47M, with an increase of 14 times in March. It has officially announced partnerships with many projects: TonRaffles, Tonano, Tap Fantasy, RoOLZ, Catizen.
Telegram is about to launch IPO
According to the Financial Times, Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed that Telegram now has 900 million active users and is approaching profitability. Telegram’s revenue has reached hundreds of millions of dollars, and it is expected to go public after achieving profitability this year or next, with the United States being a potential listing location. In the IPO, Durov stated that Telegram would consider selling shares to loyal users.
Telegram has raised about $20 billion in debt financing, including $1 billion in bonds issued in 2021, as well as $750 million and $270 million in bonds issued last year. If listed before the end of March 2026, bondholders will be able to convert their priority unsecured debt into equity at a discount of 10% to 20% of the Telegram IPO price.
About TON
The Open Netwotk (TON), formerly known as Telegram Open Network, was created by Telegram in 2018 to create a powerful and scalable blockchain platform. Through its token $Grams, it completed the ICO with the highest amount of funds raised in history. Due to SEC accusations that it conducted an unregistered securities offering, the Telegram team abandoned the Telegram Open Network project and returned the U.S. dollars raised in the ICO after agreeing to pay a fine of $18.5 million to settle with the SEC in 2020.
Since then, Telegram Open Network has continued to be developed by a community called NewTON. In May 2021, the community voted to rename the long-term stable Testnet 2 to Mainnet; the NewTON community was renamed to the TON Foundation to support and develop TON as a non-profit community; the Telegram Open Network was also renamed to The Open Network.
Currently, the TON Foundation is the main force promoting the development and development of TON. The TON Foundation safeguards the interests of the community by supporting initiatives that contribute to the mission of the open network and supports the development of the TON project without controlling TON technology. Currently, the TON Foundation team has more than 50 people, more than half of whom are from Russia, Ukraine and other countries, involving business development, engineers, marketing, finance, law, etc. Most of the employees have work experience in VK and Telegram.
It is worth noting that one of the core founding members of the TON Foundation, Andrew Rogozov, was the former CEO of VK.com, a social network founded by the founder of Telegram in Russia. Additionally, the first CEO of VK.com was Durov himself. Furthermore, other members of the TON Foundation include Bill Qian, who was responsible for global M&A at Binance and Binance Labs, as well as John Hyman, the former Chief Investment Advisor at Telegram.
Development status and current situation of Ton
The goal of TON is to provide easy-to-use tools and reliable, stable infrastructure to make massive adoption easier. Although TON launched its exchange in 2021 and subsequently introduced infrastructure and features such as TON payments, storage, DNS, and cross-chain bridges (with official bridges supporting TON/ETH and BSC), TON truly gained widespread attention last July with the frenzy surrounding Telegram bots like Unibot and Bananagun. Moreover, during the Token 2049 event in September, Telegram officially announced its collaboration with TON and released TON Space, a self-hosted crypto wallet developed by TON blockchain, which further propelled TON to its peak. As a result, TON’s price rose from $1.2 in August of last year to $3.8 (a 215% increase), and its market cap squeezed into the top twenty, making it a prominent dark horse in the previous bear market. Now, although TON’s popularity has somewhat waned, as the only public chain officially supported by Telegram, backed by Telegram’s 900 million active users, TON will unfold a completely different narrative from existing public chains in terms of payment, social, mini-programs, and more, amidst the backdrop of TPS, MEV compatibility, and narrative competition.
As of March 20, 2024, there are 301 validators on the TON chain, with a total staked $TON amount of 440 million distributed across 29 countries under the PoS mechanism. The total number of on-chain accounts on TON has been showing a long-term growth trend, with 8.12 million existing accounts. Official information from the Dubai Summit shows that over the past year, TON has achieved a 2.5-fold increase in active user addresses, with a daily trading volume of approximately $220,000. Currently, the TVL on the TON chain is $53.43 million, with a total of 13 projects listed on DefiLlama. In addition to the TON chain, TON also includes TON Storage—a decentralized file storage system; TON DNS—for assigning readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services, and nodes; TON Pay—micro-payment channels for instant off-chain transactions; and TON Proxy—an anonymous network proxy service for the TON network to hide TON node IP addresses. Although TON has been established for five years, its grand blueprint is just beginning to unfold, and developers and users are gradually exploring this ecosystem.
Token Economy
The initial supply of the $TON token was 5 billion until June 28, 2022, when the last $TON was mined. The supply of $TON is uncapped and grows at approximately 0.6% per year (approximately 3 million coins). After Telegram settled with the SEC in 2020, all tradable $TON tokens were placed in special Giver smart contracts for anyone to mine. Therefore, 98.55% of the tokens were allocated in early POW mining. The team only holds 1.45% of the tokens. Unlike in the early days when most public chain tokens were held hostage by large capital, currently a large amount of $Ton is concentrated in the hands of early miners, and the distribution of chips is more dispersed. In order to solve the problem of most tokens being concentrated in the hands of early miners, TON launched a community proposal in February last year to freeze 171 inactive early wallets for 48 months, totaling 1.08B $TON (about 21% of the total). If this portion of frozen $TON is included, Ton’s total market capitalization will rank among the top 10 in the cryptocurrency market. After $TON is mined, it is converted from PoW to PoS. $TON’s annual token inflation of 0.6% (approximately 3 million coins) will be used to reward validators who maintain network security. However, if the validator behaves inappropriately, the $TON they staked will be slashed. According to information revealed at the Dubai Conference, TON intends to increase staking rewards to promote further increases in the TON chain’s staking rate.
The token $TON has multiple usage scenarios, such as transaction fee payment, staking, cross-chain transactions, etc. on the TON chain. In the future, $TON can also be used to pay for TON agency services, etc. The positioning of $TON is also similar to the legal currency on Telegram, and the application of $TON on Telegram is particularly worthy of attention. For example, $TON can be used to pay for Telegram Premium membership fees at a more favorable discount. The Telegram wallet can currently directly use a credit card to purchase $TON, and then use $TON to purchase virtual goods such as anonymous accounts. According to statistics, all anonymous accounts worth a total of 50 million US dollars have been sold within one month of going online. So far, anonymous accounts have sold 130 million US dollars. $TON has huge payment potential in this area. In the future, $TON may also be used for Telegram promotion, and advertising services can also be paid for using $TON.
Additionally, the $TON token will likely deflate as network usage increases. Because, in June last year, the TON Foundation proposed the introduction of a burning mechanism: 50% of the transaction fees generated by transactions on the TON chain, domain names, and number auctions in the TON network will be used to burn $TON.
TON Token Analysis
As of March 20, 2024, the total supply of $TON is 5.104 billion tokens, with a circulating supply of 3.469 billion tokens. The token price is $3.8 per token, resulting in a Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of $19.276 billion and a Market Cap of $13.101 billion, ranking 13th. Currently, $TON is listed on exchanges such as Bybit, OKX, Kucoin, Bitget, and has been listed on Binance futures. $TON has also become the highest-ranking token not listed on Binance spot. Given time, if TON’s visibility and user traffic experience explosive growth, $TON will also become the preferred choice for listing on Binance. Looking at the distribution of tokens, the top ten wallets hold 38% of the total $TON supply, while the top 100 wallets hold 49% of the total $TON supply, indicating relatively dispersed token distribution, which helps to avoid potential selling pressure from large institutional investors and project parties. Additionally, TON has launched the TON Believers Fund, which locks in over 1.317 billion $TON (approximately 25% of the total supply). The TON Believers Fund allows any $TON holder to donate or lock their tokens for 5 years: a 2-year lock-up period followed by a 3-year vesting period, during which donated tokens will be rewarded to all depositors starting from the 3rd year. According to current public information, 10.54% of the tokens were donated to the TON Foundation by the community in 2022.
Compared to existing public chains with a vision of Mass Adoption, if we evaluate the TON chain based on the commonly used metric “Market Cap/TVL,” it is not difficult to see that TON has the highest “Market Cap/TVL” ratio, indicating a risk of overvaluation of the TON token price. However, as will be discussed below, the value of TON cannot be assessed using traditional public chain valuation methods. Instead, it should be evaluated from the grand narrative of TON’s integration with Telegram and from perspectives such as trading volume and protocol revenue from Dapps. Because achieving Mass Adoption solely relies on the profit effect of DeFi may not retain traffic in the long term (this can be seen from the bearish TVL of chains like Avalanche and Fantom in bear markets), the key lies in low-threshold user experience, integration with daily high-frequency life scenarios, and huge traffic entry points. And this is also TON’s core competitiveness—deep integration with the Telegram ecosystem. The application experience brought by the deep integration of TON and Telegram is far superior to that of most Web3 products, and the comparable valuation of TON can also be benchmarked against WeChat and WhatsApp in Web2 with similar ecosystem experiences. From this perspective, the current valuation of TON, which is only $7-8 billion, is still undervalued. However, although we are optimistic about the long-term development of TON and its vast potential, achieving 5-10 times returns for $TON tokens will require the arrival of a major bull market.
The Important Position of TON in Telegram’s Web3 Vision
Telegram Possesses Inherent Web3 Genes
Telegram is a cloud-based free instant messaging software founded in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the founders of VK, one of Russia’s mainstream social media platforms. Telegram’s commitment to free speech and privacy protection has attracted a large number of global users, with over 1.3 billion registered users and nearly 800 million monthly active users (MAU). The relaxed speech atmosphere and regulatory environment on Telegram have made it an “important battleground” for Crypto—almost all Web 3.0/Crypto projects have Telegram communities used for project promotion, news announcements, and community interaction. The activity level of Telegram communities has also become an important indicator of project marketing capabilities. Moreover, more than half of the most subscribed Channels and Groups on Telegram, with the highest number of subscribers/members, are related to Crypto content (as shown in the figure below, the two largest Groups on Telegram are both related to Crypto). More importantly, according to statistics from the TON Chinese channel, Telegram has over 37,000 active crypto communities.
Due to regulatory reasons and other factors, a large number of genuine users have migrated from Slack and WeChat groups to Telegram. This trend has led to a significant demand for services beyond group chatting, such as news, announcements, and notifications of large transactions. Telegram has timely responded to these user demands by reshaping its platform’s emoji system, introducing Story video sharing, and launching blockchain-driven anonymous number login services (e.g., virtual phone numbers starting with +888). Furthermore, the immense success of WeChat as a widely used social platform has prompted Telegram to move closer to WeChat, aiming to transition from a communication protocol to a social platform, ultimately transforming into a large integrated super app.
Additionally, Telegram’s open-source, open API, and rich database have made it a developer-friendly platform, attracting a large number of developers to build apps on it.
Based on the above discussion, it is evident that Telegram has accumulated a broad base of active users and developers, fully equipped to build its own public chain or even a unique Telegram ecosystem—a blockchain kingdom—with users and developers. In this scenario, coupled with the support of Telegram’s founders for blockchain technology and the commercialization of Telegram through blockchain, TON and Telegram Bot have emerged.
The Telegram Web3 Triangle: Wallet, Dapp/Bot & TON
Wallet
The success of WeChat is not only due to its social attributes but also its financial attributes. WeChat facilitates various aspects of daily life, including transfers, mobile payments, taxi hailing, ticket booking, online shopping, and recharging, thereby becoming indispensable in China. Similarly, many crypto enthusiasts use Telegram as one of their core communication tools. With the expansion of the crypto world, network effects will also occur here, and the Telegram platform has become an essential communication tool for crypto enthusiasts and project teams, showing a trend towards becoming the WeChat of Web3.
Just as the widespread development of mobile internet in China is inseparable from the emergence of WeChat Pay and Alipay, the transition of Web3 from attracting new users to massive adoption also relies on traffic ports—the crypto digital wallet—a simple and secure encrypted digital wallet! Of course, this encrypted digital wallet not only allows free trading of various crypto assets like most existing wallets but also needs to be linked with traditional currencies, allowing users to easily exchange and convert between fiat and cryptocurrencies. The introduction of the @Wallet non-custodial wallet within Telegram allows users to access and use @Wallet without leaving the Telegram platform, meeting the needs of Web2 users. Its convenience and ease of use reduce the barriers to entry and learning costs for new Web2 users, making it the preferred wallet for Web2 users transitioning to Web3. Additionally, since @Wallet can operate within the Telegram app on mobile phones, where people use their phones more frequently and for longer durations compared to computers, its presence also facilitates the transition of PC Web3 to mobile Web3. One challenge in the massive adoption of Web3 solutions is that users must first have an app, which is often the most difficult step. The core logic of the integrated wallet within Telegram is that users no longer need to download a separate app, as it naturally inherits the trust users have in Telegram, making the final step much simpler.
(Gate Learn reminder: @Wallet is deployed by Ton Foundation)
So what are the features of @Wallet? @Wallet is the built-in non-custodial wallet deployed on Telegram by the Ton Foundation, similar to Alipay and WeChat Pay. It can be opened directly in the Telegram chat interface without entering a password. Users can use bank cards to purchase, receive, trade, and withdraw cryptocurrencies. Moreover, users can easily pay for products and services on Telegram using $TON, $USDT, or $BTC through Telegram Bot. Additionally, @Wallet may also become a Telegram version of Yu’e Bao in the future, allowing users to flexibly manage their cash through assets such as government bonds.
In September last year, Ton Foundation newly launched TON Space, a self-hosted version of @Wallet. TON Space is directly integrated into the @Wallet interface within Telegram. Third parties cannot access user assets, and users can settle directly on the TON Space page without redirecting to third-party payment platforms. This enhances the security and privacy attributes of the wallet while also strengthening Telegram’s own encrypted financial attributes. Unlike existing wallets such as Little Fox Wallet and TP Wallet, TON Space allows users to recover the wallet using email and Telegram accounts in addition to mnemonic phrases, providing users with additional convenience and security. Currently, the user interface of TON Space resembles that of Little Fox Wallet, allowing users to accept, send, and exchange tokens, and the wallet page displays the NFT assets held by the wallet. However, Dapp cannot be accessed through TON Space at the moment, but this feature will be launched in the future. According to the team, the TON Space wallet will support projects within the TON ecosystem, allowing users to link their Telegram accounts to projects on the TON chain. The official version of TON Space is expected to be launched in November in regions other than the United States. In order to facilitate users in managing multiple wallet addresses simultaneously, TON Space plans to integrate multiple addresses in the future. Additionally, TON will support the transfer and display of NFT collections to meet the social needs of Telegram users. Furthermore, considering the density of information, Telegram has a higher information density than WeChat, and users are more immersed in information on Telegram, with a wider range of private traffic density. This will also drive the integration of TON Space with payment and social scenes within Telegram, achieving more refined and high-density transmission of value, traffic, and information through higher information density.
From the above, it can be concluded that the wallet is the traffic entry point of Telegram Web3. However, after attracting users, various entertainment facilities are still needed. This leads to the provision of existing Web2 Dapps in a Web3 manner, giving rise to Telegram mini apps (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bots.
Telegram Mini Apps and Telegram Bots
Telegram Mini Apps are web applications running within the Telegram Messenger, launched by the TON Foundation, aiming to meet users’ needs for games, content sharing, productivity tools, etc., and can be easily accessed from Telegram chats or group conversations. Telegram Mini Apps include bots, games, and web applications, divided into four categories: management, Web3, utilities, and games based on their functions. Telegram Bots are automated programs running through the Telegram chat program, allowing users to access information and market data without leaving the Telegram platform and interact with smart contracts.
At this point, readers may wonder what the connection between Telegram Mini Apps and Web3 is. These Telegram Mini Apps can be built on the Ton chain using the infrastructure provided by Ton and made available to users through Telegram Bots in the Telegram interface. This allows app developers not only to use Ton’s infrastructure to develop projects, reducing the difficulty of project development, reducing development time, and obtaining Ton grants for financial support, but more importantly, developers can quickly reach Telegram’s extensive user base and monetize in various ways within Telegram (such as through in-app purchases, subscription models, or advertising).
The bridge between Telegram Mini Apps and Telegram is Telegram Bot, which can be seen from its “cumulative trading volume exceeding $190 million as of last July, with a peak daily trading volume of $10 million,” indicating the popularity of the Telegram Bot track and its vast demand from real users. From the user’s perspective, they can use these bots for DEX trading, participating in airdrops, or tracking transactions in specific wallets, among other operations. Through interaction with Telegram Bot, users can easily connect to the entire blockchain within the Telegram interface by paying a certain fee.
Currently, the main functions provided by Telegram Bot are: 1) Trading: directly buying and selling tokens; 2) Sniping: monitoring token launches and setting automatic purchases in advance; 3) Copy trading: follow others’ strategies; 4) Airdrop farming: automatically executing a series of operations to increase the chance of receiving airdrops; 5) Finding the best liquidity pool for a specific token, and more. According to a Binance research report, Telegram Bot profits from collecting trading fees and “taxes” on token transactions, with Telegram bots collecting over 15,000 ETH (approximately $28.7 million) in revenue as of last July.
According to the Binance Research Report, the number of daily active users of Telegram Bot peaked at more than 6,000 in July last year. The most used ones are Maestro (about 2,000-3,000 daily active users) and Unibot (about 1,700 people).
Of course, there are also hidden concerns about project security and privacy when using Telegram Bot: 1) Like all Web2 applications, the user’s Telegram account is at risk of being stolen, and a Telegram account does not require a password to log in to the Telegram Bot, so the Telegram Bot is also exposed to the Telegram account password Under security risks; 2) Through Bot transactions, Bot will access the private key, and there is a risk of private key leakage; 3) Like all crypto projects, the interaction between Bot and smart contracts exposes the wallet to smart contract risks; 4) Most people worry about transferring money to a robot. Although Telegram Bot has risks, compared with the existing DeFi front-end, Telegram Bot provides a more friendly and convenient user experience, has real practical and large demand, and is backed by Telegram’s 800 million daily active users, making the Bot track full of imagination. Using Blueprint under the Telegram TACT language has also reduced the difficulty for developers to build and maintain Bot projects, spawning the emergence of a large number of Bot projects. The following “Investment Opportunities-Bot” chapter will try to analyze the investment opportunities in the Telegram Bot track.
TON: The only blockchain supported by Telegram
TON has been inextricably linked to Telegram since its inception, and Telegram executives have not hesitated to support TON. For example, Telegram CEO Du Rove publicly stated in a statement in July last year that he held $TON.
(from public social media)
At the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore last September, Telegram publicly stated that it will now rely entirely on TON as its blockchain infrastructure. $TON and its Web3 ecosystem will enjoy promotion on Telegram and have priority access to Telegram’s global advertising platform Telegram Ads. The goal is to cultivate and promote a TON-centric Web3 ecosystem in Telegram and develop the Telegram integrated wallet into an all-in-one platform that meets all user needs.
Readers may be confused. Since Telegram Bot already provides users with a convenient and fast Web3 experience, why does it need TON? The main role of Bot is to guide traffic and link users with Dapps. As a TON Foundation representative said, TON allows developers to create products with real-world needs that can be deployed on the Telegram platform. As a public chain, TON can not only provide tools and infrastructure for blockchain construction, but Dapps built on TON can also be used on the Telegram interface, which will empower Telegram and form a powerful flywheel effect. In other words, TON can promote the use of Dapps. For example, using a TON wallet to open Telegram Mini Apps can enhance users’ sense of safety. Because TON has launched TON Connect, a technology based on modern cryptography that allows users to log in to services and applications with one click through the TON wallet, which means that the user’s key will never leave the user’s device and the user’s privacy will not be violated. Using TON Connect can reduce users’ worries about entering private keys when using Telegram Bot, thereby promoting the usage of Telegram Bot and Mini Apps. On the other hand, the token $TON provides Telegram with a path to commercialization - due to historical sensitivity, Telegram’s single profit model and limited sources of operating funds (the founder’s personal funds and 2 bond issuances raised a total of approximately $1.2 billion US dollars), causing Telegram to turn to looking for decentralized commercialization methods. In addition, the $TON token provides the public with technology to protect their rights and freedoms, adding a new dimension to communication between users on the basis of transactions. For example, in July last year, the TON Foundation announced the introduction of encrypted messaging functionality on the TON chain, using end-to-end encryption to ensure that only the sender and receiver can see the message content, and the transaction fee for each message sent is 0.006 $TON. TON’s infrastructure and its financial properties are indispensable and important components of Telegram’s Web3 landscape.
Trinity
As @Wallet COO Halil Mirakhme clearly pointed out when talking about its competitor Signal, @Wallet’s advantage over Signal is that it is supported by a platform like Telegram that supports social interaction and discussion of cryptocurrencies. The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp/Bot and TON provides Telegram users with a complete closed-loop Web3 experience: starting from getting messages and communicating through Telegram group/channel, to conducting Token transactions with Telegram Bot through Telegram Mini Apps, and then to Use @Wallet and TON Space to participate in TON ecological projects.
At this point, we can describe the grand layout of Telegram Web3: Wallet serves as the traffic entrance for Telegram Web2 users to enter the Web3 world, Dapp handles traffic and retains users, Bot bridges Wallet and Dapp to provide users with a simple and convenient operation process, and TON chain provides the foundation Facilities and $TON tokens provide commercialization avenues, and Dapps developed on TON can empower Telegram to form a powerful flywheel effect. The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp/Bot and TON can provide users with a simple, convenient, free Web3 experience without censorship or external control, and also create a Web3 Mini Dapp development platform for developers that can quickly reach a wide range of users. The organic combination of Wallet, Dapp/Bot and TON enables Telegram to not only become a network, but also a decentralized digital kingdom with its own economy, citizens, digital property rights, currency, free market and communication infrastructure and many other services.
TON’s framework and technology development
Understanding TON first requires breaking free from the design framework of existing public chains led by ETH. TON is a public chain designed from the outset by a team experienced in handling giant platform businesses (such as VK, Russia’s largest social network), with the goal of massive application adoption. Although the team eventually ceased development due to regulatory reasons and the project was taken over by the community, as a project contemporaneous with Ethereum, TON even proposed the concept of sharding earlier than Ethereum 2.0 to support more complex business operations. TON’s underlying architectural design logic differs significantly from Ethereum, and the design of the underlying architecture to some extent determines whether the public chain can meet its goal of supporting a large number of users. Even WhatsApp and WeChat cannot support synchronous message synchronization across multiple devices (e.g., phones and computers), which is a problem of architectural design.
The core design of the TON blockchain includes “resource payment” and “asynchrony.” “Resource payment” means that unlike other public chains like Ethereum and Solana, where users need to pay transaction fees, every smart contract on TON requires a certain amount of $TON tokens to pay fees. If the token balance of a smart contract is depleted, the contract will eventually be deleted. This design introduces an automatic cleanup mechanism to prevent data inflation on the blockchain. “Asynchrony” means that calls between smart contracts are asynchronous—when two contracts are involved in a call, the call is not executed immediately but is processed on a future block after the transaction is completed. The advantage of this design lies in the higher scalability and flexibility, but the downside is the increased difficulty and slowness in developing and maintaining applications on the TON chain, leading to challenges in DeFi development on TON.
TON’s architecture is divided into three layers: masterchain, workchain, and shardchain. The masterchain serves as the coordinating hub, while workchains and shardchains handle actual transactions. Therefore, TON has a main chain (masterchain) that can accommodate up to 232 workchains, each of which can be further subdivided into up to 260 shardchains. TON claims to support millions of TPS and applied for the Guinness World Record for the “fastest blockchain” in October last year. However, the true TPS of TON may only be validated once the TON chain ecosystem thrives and experiences significant traffic running on the TON chain.
Smart contract development on TON can be done using three programming languages: Fift, FunC, and Tact. Fift has a lower-level difficulty and is rarely chosen by developers. Currently, the most widely used development language is FunC, which is a programming language similar to C. Tact is a new high-level language introduced by TON, designed to resemble popular programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Solidity, aiming to lower the development difficulty for a broader range of developers. Since this article is not a technical guide, the technical details of TACT are not elaborated here. Interested readers can refer to “Why TACT is the Next Big Breakthrough for TON.” However, noteworthy aspects of TACT include: 1) its support for Message-Oriented Programming (MOP) principles, simplifying the development process and enhancing efficiency, as well as facilitating the creation of contracts that easily interact through message passing, thereby simplifying the integration and interaction of different contracts; 2) the availability of the Blueprint framework, which provides a comprehensive set of tools for smart contract development, simplifying and streamlining the process of contract development and deployment. With Blueprint, developers can easily manage all stages of the smart contract lifecycle. Other Telegram bots like Unibot, which gained popularity last year, were developed using the TACT language and its Blueprint scripts. Although TACT is still undergoing auditing, its ease of development is expected to play a crucial role in the development of the Ton ecosystem and is expected to be widely promoted in the future.
TON Ecosystem and Opportunities
As of the end of September last year, the TON developer community had a total of 10,747 members, with 176 active developers on GitHub. Some well-known development teams include TonWhales, Orbs, and TON Tech. To attract more project teams to develop on TON, the TON community not only provides basic tools such as TON SDK, Ton Connect, TACT language, and the Blueprint framework but also offers TON blockchain courses, TON TACT Challenge to promote the TACT language, organizes Hack-a-TON x DWF x AWS hackathons with a prize pool of over $415,000, and establishes TON Grants and TON Bounties projects. The TON Bounties project has successfully processed over 155 proposals, with 40 new bounty tasks approved in the third quarter of last year, and 25 completed projects receiving approximately $53,000 in rewards. The TON Grants project has received 103 project applications and approved 10 projects. In addition, TON has established the $250 million TONcoin.Fund to invest in TON ecosystem projects, covering areas such as Infra, DeFi, NFT, gaming, and sociafi.
As of November 11 last year, the Ton ecosystem had a total of 551 Dapps, covering wallets, Defi, NFT, gaming, socialFi, etc. However, according to the Starbase article, the TON ecological project actually includes many Telegram groups. At present, overall, the TON ecosystem is still in a very early stage.
(from public social media)
The on-chain TVL of TON is $53.43 million USD, with 13 projects listed on DefiLlama. Among them, the projects with the highest TVL are Tonstakers ($105 million USD) and Bemo ($27.33 million USD). It can be seen that the TON ecosystem lacks popular DeFi projects. One reason is that existing DeFi projects support single staking assets with low yields. For example, the highest TVL project Tonstakers currently only allows staking of $TON with an APY of 4.64%.
Another reason for the low TVL on the TON chain is the lack of stablecoins. Currently, besides USDT, other stablecoins on the TON chain such as oUSDT, oUSDC, jUSDT, and jUSDC have low liquidity, high slippage, and lack the asset backing and audit support like USDT and USDC. This significantly reduces the incentive for users to trade on the TON chain. With more cross-chain bridges launching in the future, it is expected that stablecoins with liquidity other than USDT will appear on the TON chain to promote its ecosystem prosperity. Additionally, the native USDT on TON is expected to be launched this year, and TON is currently in talks with other stablecoins. The introduction of stablecoins is expected to continue to stimulate TVL growth on TON.
Currently, TON has only launched the eth cross-chain bridge, but mature projects in the Ethereum ecosystem have not yet migrated to the TON chain, such as AAVE and Uniswap. This results in a large amount of traffic on Ethereum not flowing into the TON chain. From the various activities launched by the TON Foundation and TON Society, the official stance on cross-chain and EVM is not very proactive. This may be because users’ cross-chain needs can be met through Telegram bots, Mini Apps, official and third-party cross-chain bridges. Moreover, with the massive traffic of Telegram, attracting traffic from other chains through cross-chain bridges to meet the needs of TON users is more urgent for other chains. Therefore, at this stage, TON can cooperate with mainstream DeFi protocols such as AAVE and Uniswap, and select suitable projects from numerous cross-chain cases for cooperation to achieve better benefits. However, it is worth noting that due to the different underlying architectures of TON and Ethereum, the atomicity of transactions on Ethereum cannot be achieved on TON, which will to some extent limit the richness of DeFi applications on TON. For example, it is difficult to implement flash loans on TON. Therefore, we need to pay more attention to DeFi applications and scenarios that are integrated with the Telegram ecosystem.
TON’s community governance
At present, the TON community has not yet formed a state of complete autonomy, but this does not mean that community members cannot participate in the construction and governance of TON. Officially, Channel and Chat are provided for community members to subscribe and communicate. For developers, the official also provides relatively complete tutorials and developer documents to help developers develop. It also has a developer community and TON answer to help developers answer questions.
The general governance process of Ton is as follows: 1) First, the Author needs to submit the proposal content through TON Enhancement Proposal and pull the request, so that the proposal enters the review status; 2) Secondly, the Editor will verify the pull request and then assign Reviewers for review; 3 ) Subsequently, Reviewers will share their opinions or comments and vote for or against; 4) Once the majority of Reviewers unify the proposal, the proposal will enter a 10-day comment period; 5) When the comment period ends, the Editor will change the status of the proposal from Review to Active or Rejected;
Through the above process, community members and core contributors can more easily participate in Ton’s internal governance. However, considering that in the early stages of the development of public chains, too much decentralization of power and governance is often inefficient, therefore, the TON community has not yet reached a state of complete autonomy at this stage. As the TON chain gradually develops and matures, TON will gradually move towards a fully autonomous DAO management model.
TON TVL and Ecology
Typically, we assess the prosperity of a blockchain ecosystem using TVL as a judgment basis—the Lego effect of DeFi. However, in the saturated market of public chains, we feel that it is inappropriate to evaluate TON using traditional blockchain valuation methods. The core value of TON lies in its strong integration with Telegram. We should evaluate TON from the grand narrative of TON x Telegram, considering factors such as trading volume and protocol revenue from Dapps.
As Telegram rapidly evolves and attracts and accommodates a large number of real users, it is also expanding its functionalities and Dapps to retain users, attempting to upgrade from a communication protocol to a social platform and then to a super app platform. Its free and relaxed atmosphere, coupled with an increasingly diverse range of Dapps and services, is bound to attract more users. Moreover, considering Telegram’s status as a “critical territory” for Crypto, TON, the only blockchain supported by Telegram, is poised to benefit from this. As stated by the TON Foundation, the goal is to onboard 30% of Telegram’s active users to TON by 2028. According to this calculation, there will be 500 million Telegram users who will become users of the Ton blockchain by then. Therefore, we believe that the primary concern for TON at the moment is how to channel Telegram users to TON. In addition to continuously developing various categories of Dapps to meet the traffic brought in by Telegram, it can also integrate games, DeFi, creator economies, and crypto-commerce into high-frequency life scenarios using the TON wallet, thereby increasing the frequency and stickiness of users using TON. Furthermore, TON needs to conduct more extensive and intensive promotion on Telegram. From an investment perspective, the current price of $TON is $3.8 per token, with a market cap of $13 billion, ranking 13th. Currently, TON’s market cap is relatively high, surpassing that of Apt, Sui, and other public chains. Investors looking to achieve a 5-10x return on investment may need to wait for a major bull market. The price of TON six months ago was $2.48, and the current price is $3.8. Aptos’ price six months ago was $5.2, and the current price is $14.4. Solana’s price six months ago was $20, and the current price is $166. Sui’s price six months ago was $0.45, and the current price is $1.52. It can be seen that TON’s price increase over the past six months has not been significant, indicating potential for growth.
TON ecological project
Tonup
The Launchpad platform on the TON chain has received strong support from TONCoin.Fund and TON Foundation since its inception, and has completed a seed round of financing led by TONCoin Fund. Other investors include Foresight X, Waterdrip Capital, BitFund DAO, etc.
Fragment
Fragment is a non-custodial decentralized NFT trading platform on TON. It can currently trade Telegram-specific usernames and virtual numbers, and the transaction settlement unit is TON. There is no handling fee for listing NFT on Fragment, and a 5% platform fee is charged for each auction. Users can bid freely, and the highest bidder wins each time. It is worth noting that Pavel, the founder of Telegram, is also the co-founder of Fragment.
Telegram usernames are similar to the decentralized username ENS. As Telegram founder Pavel Durov said, this is the first open and transparent username market established on a social platform. This means that users have gained ownership of their usernames on the Web2 social platform for the first time. If Telegram can explore a points system that combines usernames with activities on channels/groups, and integrate participant to earn into Web2, it will definitely be possible. Attract more users to buy and use Telegram usernames. The virtual phone number starting with + 888 launched by Fragment can be used to register a Telegram account and bind a TON wallet. It is defined as an NFT and is recorded in the TON blockchain, which can protect privacy and highlight the user’s identity and personality. This virtual phone number has hype and collectible value, and the current floor price is 9$TON. In addition, Fragment also integrates Premium functions. Users can pay the subscription fee for Telegram Premium functions on Fragment or donate $TON to Fragment to gain the opportunity to promote channels on Telegram.
Bot track
As mentioned in the section “Telegram mini app (tApp Centre) and Telegram Bot” above, Telegram Bot provides users with convenient operations to seamlessly connect to the entire crypto world within the Telegram interface. There is a significant amount of genuine demand for this, and it has already widely penetrated various fields such as trading, DeFi, cross-chain, airdrops, and more. However, Telegram bots are still in a blue ocean market, with many new application scenarios such as Bot integration with Telegram payments and Bot integration with Ethsign yet to be developed. It is expected that Telegram Bots will integrate with other narratives and applications, and in the future, they will also transition into Telegram mini apps, providing users with a better Web3 experience.
Judging from the Dex 24-hour transaction volume, Unibot and Banana account for the majority of the Telegram Bot track transaction volume, accounting for 50% and 41% respectively. They are still in the stage of project competition for market share. In addition, according to CertiK research and analysis, nearly 40% of Telegram Bot projects are suspected to be dormant, may be fraudulent, or face the risk of being unable to recover from a sharp sell-off. One of the possible reasons for this is that Bot projects are built directly using the TACT language and Blueprint provided by TON. The development process is relatively simple and it is easy to copy successful projects on the market. However, these projects do not have the ability to continue to attract users after they are launched. Therefore, investors should also pay attention to its risks when paying attention to Bot track projects.
LootBot
Lootbot focuses on automating airdrop interactions, being able to filter out the most beneficial airdrop opportunities while implementing strong security measures to protect users from hackers and fraudulent activities. Currently ZkSync, Layerzero, Linea, Base, Taiko and Polygon chains are supported. The first 15 transactions on Lootbot are free, after which users are advised to purchase its Premium version for $30/month. At present, Lootbot has received $148,000 in subscription fees. $LOOT holders can choose to burn $LOOT to mint $xLOOT to obtain income. Currently, a total of 1.98 million loot has been burned.
WagieBot
WagieBot provides users with the ability to conduct due diligence and interact with any liquidity pool on Ethereum, Binance Chain, and Arbitrum on Telegram and Discord. Users only need to paste a contract and WagieBot will automatically obtain the maximum liquidity pool and all necessary information for the token and complete anti-rug checks. WagieBot’s interaction speed is dozens of times faster than Dex, and it also integrates GMX to allow users to trade with up to 50x leverage. As of now, the transaction amount on WagieBot is $7.17 million, with a total of 414 users.
Disclaimer：
This article is reprinted from MT Capital, and the original title is “MT Capital Research Report: TON: Telegram’s Necessary Path to Becoming WeChat of the Web3 World.” The copyright belongs to the original authors [Ian, Betty, Xinwei, Momentum Capital; Vivi, Ton Foundation]. The Gate Learn team has annotated and modified parts of the introduction related to @Wallet and Ton Space. If there are any objections to this repost, please contact the [Gate Learn team].
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article represent only the author’s personal views and do not constitute any investment advice.
Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.
Related articles
Detailed explanation of the social network platform Cardano combined with domain names
What are Mini Apps in Telegram’s Web3 ecosystem?