Exploring the Development Context and Future Potential of the TON Ecosystem

1. Project Background

Basic Information

Name: TON( The Open Network )

Founders: Pavel Durov, Nikolai Durov

Operation Team: TON Foundation

TON is a decentralized first-layer public blockchain designed for billions of users, featuring scalability and sharding capabilities, aimed at addressing issues such as high transaction fees, slow transaction speeds, inter-chain communication, and scalability in blockchain. Currently, the main operating team of TON is the TON Foundation, a non-profit organization with the goal of enabling 500 million users to have their digital identity, data, and assets by 2028, while the TON chain, backed by Telegram, serves as an important means to achieve this goal.

Development History

• 2017: Project Launch
• 2018: Initial Coin Offering ( ICO )
• 2019: Introduced sharding technology and launched the testnet
• 2020: Telegram exited, the project was renamed "The Open Network"
• 2021: TON Foundation takes over the project
• 2023: Telegram announced that TON will be used as the Web3 infrastructure
• 2024: Ecosystem expansion, multiple projects attracting attention

User-Centric Core Narrative

The TON blockchain is backed by Telegram, which has 900 million monthly active users, leveraging user demand and convenience. Telegram is attempting to transform into a comprehensive platform, signaling limitless possibilities for the TON public chain in the future. The Web3 environment provided by Telegram offers significant support to the TON blockchain ecosystem, providing a community foundation for projects within its ecosystem from incubation to ICO.

Market Recognition

As of now, the market capitalization of the TON blockchain has reached $18.759 billion, making it the ninth largest cryptocurrency. The TVL of the TON blockchain has grown rapidly since April and currently stands at 605.72m USDT, ranking 15th among public chains. Although the TVL growth rate is fast, it has not yet caught up with its market capitalization, leaving significant room for improvement.

2. Financing Information

• 2018: ICO raised 1.7 billion USD, later refunded some of the funds.
• April 2022: Multiple institutions jointly invested $250 million to support the TON ecosystem.
• October 2023: MEXC Ventures invested tens of millions of dollars
• November 2023: Animoca Brands invests in and supports the TON ecosystem.

Telegram plans to go public in the next two years, and the company's valuation has exceeded $30 billion. Investing in the TON ecosystem is equivalent to having confidence in Telegram's potential to transform into a Web3 platform.

3. Technical Characteristics

programming language

The development of smart contracts on the TON blockchain mainly uses three languages: Fift, FunC, and Tact. In the future, Tact may become the mainstream development language.

frontier technology

• Asynchronous calls for smart contracts: enhance scalability, but increase development complexity.
• Infinite Sharding: divided into three types of chains: main chain, working chain, and sharding chain.
• Privacy protection: Use TON Proxy to hide node IP addresses

comparative advantage

TON surpasses Ethereum and Solana in multiple metrics, including transaction confirmation time.

4. Market Analysis

Token Economics

• Token functions: payment of fees, staking, cross-chain transactions, etc.
• Token Supply: Maximum supply of 5 billion, with an annual inflation of 0.6%
• Token Allocation: Team 1.45%, Miners 98.55%

Secondary Market Analysis

• Market Cap: $18.759 billion, Rank: 9
• Chip distribution: whales hold 68.68%, retail investors hold 31.32%
• Trend: The increase in the past year is over 400%

5. Ecological Construction

The TON ecosystem has over 500 Dapps and a large number of Telegram Bots, covering areas such as infrastructure, DeFi, GameFi, and NFTs.

Eco Assistant Telegram Bot

The Telegram Bot plays an important role in community building, asset management, etc., and is easy to develop and widely applicable.

DeFi leader STON.fi

STON.fi is the largest DEX on the TON chain, supporting trading of over 280 trading pairs. Its TVL reaches 262.2m USDT, ranking third in the TON ecosystem.

Launchpad leader TonUP

TonUP is a star asset issuance platform on the TON blockchain, backed by several well-known funds. 99.66% of the tokens are concentrated in the project's address, indicating significant potential for future development.

Telegram Wallet and Tonkeeper

The Telegram Wallet is expected to become an important interface for the flow of funds between Web2 and Web3. Tonkeeper, on the other hand, focuses more on security and privacy protection.

Notcoin and Catizen

Notcoin is a wildly popular Telegram game with over 30 million participants. Catizen is a metaverse game in the TON ecosystem, receiving investments from multiple institutions.

Hamster Kombat

Hamster Kombat has quickly taken over the Telegram gaming space, with the number of users surpassing 100 million, and is committed to creating a well-known brand image in Web3.

6. Conclusion

TON relies on the user base of Telegram, has advanced technology, and a rich ecosystem, which gives it great growth potential. However, its TVL and ecological construction still have room for improvement compared to mainstream public chains. Whether TON can become a public chain on par with Ethereum in the future remains to be seen.