Will TON become the first blockchain with 1 billion users?

Author: Aylo, alpha please author; translation: Jinse Finance xiaozou

In this article, we will take a deep dive into TON. For a token currently ranked in the top ten, I still feel that most people don’t understand what is happening on this blockchain.

Pantera, the oldest fund in the cryptocurrency field, recently announced that they have made their largest investment in TON ever.

This article will examine the genesis story of the TON ecosystem, the current significance of indicators, and the opportunities of the ecosystem. There are many incentives now, so you may want to find your alpha through this article.

1, Genesis Story

The story of TON began in 2017, when the Durov brothers, founders of Telegram, began to explore blockchain solutions for their business. But because they could not find any L1 blockchain that could carry Telegram’s 1 billion-level user base, they challenged the status quo and designed their own L1: Telegram Open Network, or TON (later renamed "The Open Network").

On December 3, 2017, the team released the TON whitepaper, and a few weeks later, they launched the largest closed ICO ever, raising $1.7 billion by selling TON tokens, called “Grams.” Now with all that money, there was only one thing left to do: build. And they did just that, releasing their first two testnets and making their code open source in 2019.

However, they ran into trouble with the SEC, as they were accused of conducting an unregistered securities offering in their ICO. This delayed the launch of TON tokens until the legal issues were resolved. Telegram was forced to return ICO funds to investors, pay an $18.5 million fine, and stop supporting TON in 2020. That’s how TON was renamed “The Open Network.”

But that didn’t kill the OG blockchain, and another entity — TON Labs — decided to continue the project independently.

2、TON’s rebirth

While all these regulatory issues have brought a lot of obstacles to TON, the team has not stopped providing services, and only recently, when Telegram officially announced its cooperation with the blockchain again in September 2023, the discussion around TON has become lively. From that moment on, the momentum began to pick up, and TON climbed to become the ninth largest crypto project with a current FDV of about $25 billion.

（1）Overview of the technology stack

The Open Network (TON) protocol consists of different components. Mainly: TON blockchain, TON DNS, TON storage and TON payment. Let's take a quick look at the components:

• TONBlockchain

TON aims to be a blockchain in the blockchain. It is an L1 Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain built for high performance and scalability, distributing workloads and interactions between accounts through its dynamic sharding mechanism. This ensures that as the scale increases, the network will be able to process millions of Turing-complete smart contract transactions per second to meet the development requirements of the next generation of the Internet.

• TON DNS

TON DNS (Domain Name System) is a service that assigns human-readable domain names to accounts, smart contracts, services, and network nodes. This is similar to website domain names on the Internet, except that it is on a decentralized blockchain. This brings more privacy and security to domain name owners, and also facilitates the interaction between blockchain smart contracts and Internet resources, and vice versa. Currently, more than 70,000 DNS have been sold, and the momentum is still rising strongly.

• TONStorage

Data is the blood of the Internet. Every person and every service needs to store more and more data. While the first iterations of data storage took place on centralized servers, a strong case has been made that a fully distributed storage system on a decentralized network makes perfect sense. This is exactly why TON Storage was developed - a general technology for storing any file in a decentralized, secure and private way on the TON network.

• TON Payments

TON Payments is a micropayment channel platform. It allows instant payments without submitting all transactions to the blockchain, paying associated fees, and waiting for block confirmations. This feature can be used in APIs, off-chain apps, or games.

(2) A Promising Network State

From a high-level perspective, the value of a blockchain infrastructure is directly related to the strength of its network. Without participants, there is no network, and without a network, there is no value in the blockchain. Therefore, the biggest challenge facing a new blockchain project is to overcome this "cold start" problem. In other words, how to attract enough contributors and users to make the network essentially useful and self-sufficient. In this regard, the early story of the Internet shows that even small frictions can hinder the adoption of a particular network.

This is exactly what makes TON exciting - it avoids this "cold start" problem by working directly with Telegram. With over 900 million monthly active users, Telegram is the perfect funnel for the TON blockchain. This means they don’t have to chase users, users will come to them in a seamless way. How important is that.

So, while everyone is focusing on which chain between Ethereum and Solana will hit 1 billion users first, TON seems to be a quiet dark horse that has emerged as a really strong contender with everything it takes to become one of the largest blockchain networks: a strong Web 3 ethos, innovative technology, and massive distribution.

• Active Wallets

TON has experienced tremendous growth over the past year, and we’ve noticed that the number of monthly active wallets has been on the rise, up 1900% year-over-year.

• TVL

The total locked value (TVL) is also showing great momentum. While its TVL is still relatively low compared to other major blockchains, it has grown by more than 1,200% year-to-date, with TVL reaching approximately $180 million. With all development happening on-chain, TVL has even more room to grow.

• Transaction Volume

We also noticed a huge change in transaction volume since the beginning of March 2024 when the transaction volume began to surge. This chain seems to have gone from dormant to a super active chain. A true rebirth.

 (3) Native Stablecoin Integration

TON’s final killer feature is the recent deployment of the largest crypto stablecoin, USDT, on its blockchain and Telegram wallet. This enables hundreds of millions of Telegram users to send and receive stablecoins directly on the Telegram app in a cheap, simple, fast, and secure way.

This is an interesting integration with real potential for global adoption, especially in developing countries that often lack access to proper banking services. As such, this is another big step forward for cryptocurrencies and peer-to-peer currencies.

(4) “Wallet Earnings Campaign

To kick off this new integration, the TON team has launched a campaign where users can earn up to 50% APY (Annual Percentage Yield) by storing USDT in their Telegram wallets. With a total bonus pool size of $30 million, this is an attractive opportunity, but it won’t last long.

It’s easy to participate. Users simply deposit USDT (up to $3,000) into a bonus account in their Telegram wallet and earn 50% APY in the first two weeks, and then 25% APY in the next two weeks.

You can use layerswap to bridge some USDT from Solana to TON. The bridging process takes a few minutes.

Layerswap has a Refuel function, from which you can get a small portion of TON to pay for your initial transaction.

3, Ecosystem Incentives - The Open League

The TON Foundation recently announced a new incentive program "The Open League", a competition designed to help users, teams, and traders, distributing 30 million TON tokens to its community from April to July. At the time of writing, 30 million TON tokens means more than $150 million in rewards. Prior to this, we held “The Open League Pilot” competition, which distributed 1 million TON rewards and set all-time highs (ATH) in all key growth indicators. This new season, with more than 30 prizes, could be one of the biggest catalysts for TON.

（1）How it works

The Open League is simple: TON projects compete every month to win huge prizes, and TON chain users can earn high rewards for their activities. The competition is open to everyone, from crypto newcomers to the most experienced veterans, providing users with huge profit potential.

The competition is divided into the following 4 categories:

• League

This is a comprehensive KPI competition where Web3 projects compete in two different leagues (the Big League and the Minor League) to try to win rewards. At the end of each season, the two best performing projects in the Minor League will be promoted to the Big League, while the two worst performing projects in the Big League will be demoted to the Minor League. All projects on TON can compete to enter the Minor League by gaining strong attention and strong community support.

• Minting

“The Open League” encourages projects to create their own incentive mechanisms and referral programs, giving every user the opportunity to earn free tokens.

• Tasks and Airdrops

Tasks introduce the on-chain usage of the TON project step by step. There are many tasks in the Community Bot, but more task activities will be listed on the TON Society. By completing these tasks, you can earn soul-bound tokens, which can bring many benefits in the future.

• Liquidity Pools and Boosts

The Open League introduces a boost mechanism for liquidity pools. This means that users will earn additional TON in addition to the rewards they earn from liquidity pool fees. The Boost pool can be found through The Open League Mini App.

(2) How to join The Open League>

Step 1: First, create a TON-enabled wallet on Telegram to participate in the ecosystem.

I think it's easiest to use Wallet because it's embedded in Telegram, but Tonkeeper seems reliable and has a great app discovery page if you want an alternative.

Step 2: Try some apps to get free ecosystem tokens. I tried the following two mini apps:

• Catizen -- This is a game that plays airdrops and seems to have millions of users. The initial game is simple, but Catizen is more than just a game, it’s a platform designed to continuously grow with its community of players.

• Pixels – The Pixels Battle is a competition between Telegram communities for space on a giant canvas of 1 million pixels (1024p × 1024p), and any Telegram community, whether a chat or a channel, can participate. Every Telegram user has the opportunity to form their own team based on any channel or chat of their choice.

Step 3: Next, try out the participation items of The Open League.

They are games, DEXs, NFT protocols, meme coins, liquidity staking services, and many other available apps.

Step 4: Use the Open League bot to provide liquidity to projects and earn more Toncoin rewards ($40 million distribution).

4 Conclusion

TON has overcome many technical and regulatory obstacles to get to where it is today.

The TON chain and ecosystem are starting to really attract the attention of users, developers, and institutional investors. They have a unique advantage in converting 900 million Telegram users into the ecosystem. That alone is reason enough to take TON seriously.

There are some promising apps, but it still feels very early days, and it will be interesting to see if the names we are familiar with in crypto start deploying or talking about plans to deploy on the chain.

The Tether integration is huge. Sending stablecoins around the world on Telegram on your phone is probably the easiest way to transfer value on the internet, with the most seamless user experience. I think there will be a lot of adoption.