TON ecosystem stands out from the crowd. Here are some facts you must know

Author: Chain Master

The Ton ecosystem is gaining unprecedented attention, and the biggest promoter is none other than Binance:

On May 9, Binance announced that the new Lanchpool project is the TG mini-game Notcoin

On July 23, Binance announced its investment in Pluto Studio, the publishing platform for the TG mini-game Catizen

On August 8, Binance announced the launch of Toncoin (TON)

On August 13, Binance officially announced that Binance Launchpool and Super Earn will launch Toncoin (TON)

On August 20, Binance announced that the new Lanchpool project is the Ton ecosystem Memecoin DOGS

In fact, there is no right or wrong in this debate, and there will be no answer in the short term. If the timeline is extended to 3-6 months later, many things may be self-evident. Before that, we should think more about why TON has become the chosen one? What facts should we recognize?

1. The past and present of Ton

Many newcomers may not know that the now prosperous Ton once encountered its darkest moment: regulatory blockade, investors chasing debts, Telegram withdrawing...

This should be told from 2017, when Telegram took the lead in launching its own L1: Telegram Open Network (later renamed "The Open Network", that is, Ton), raising more than 1.7 billion US dollars through ICO.

This move quickly attracted the attention of regulators. The US SEC accused them of issuing securities without registration. Telegram was forced to refund + pay fines + withdraw from the TON project and return the development work to the community.

At that time, industry media gathered together to sing the bad news of TON. No one would have thought that Ton would one day become the darling of Binance, let alone believe that Ton could attract tens of millions of users in a short time.

Between 2020 and 2021, the NewTON team (now TON's core team) restarted the development of TON and renamed it The Open Network, aiming to become a global distributed supercomputer with cross-chain interoperability, high performance, and Turing completeness.

Last September, Telegram announced its cooperation with TON to integrate TON into the Telegram App. So far, TON has become a Layer1 deeply integrated with Telegram, providing a fast, secure and scalable blockchain environment, processing millions of transactions per second, and becoming the largest channel for Web2 users to enter Web3.

Since the beginning of this year, small games deployed based on TON have become popular, with millions of users participating. With the slow entry of incremental users, Binance quickly smelled the opportunity of the TON ecosystem and frequently made efforts in listing and investment.

It is worth noting that after Binance launched $TON on August 8, it quickly listed TON as a Lanchpool project and launched Toncoin (TON) on the Super Earn section:

①Lanchpool: The total mining volume is 7.65 million. Users can pledge BNB or FUUSD for mining, which will last until September 3

②Super Earn: Users subscribe to the newly launched tokens through the principal-guaranteed earning regular product and enjoy a limited-time special annualized rate of return; As expected, the TON quota was snapped up instantly after it was opened

2. Several facts behind the outbreak of TON

The outbreak of TON is not accidental. As the only public chain officially supported by Telegram, TON is backed by TG's huge user base and is highly integrated with TG to achieve smooth mini-program operation. It can be called a phenomenal entrance connecting Web2 and Web3. Exchanges will naturally not miss this overwhelming traffic.

Apart from the external factor of the exchange, the TON ecosystem has indeed sent some positive signals this year:

① The number of developers has soared

According to Howard Peng, director of TON's Asian development relations, the number of developers of the TON blockchain increased rapidly in the first and second quarters of 2024.

At the same time, the number of downloads of TonConnect is growing rapidly, and more and more applications are being deployed on Ton. This not only reflects the expanding developer community, but also highlights the ease of use and powerful functions of the TonConnect SDK, making it the first choice for developers.

②TON ecology is becoming more prosperous

According to statistics from Ton.app, the TON ecosystem has more than 1,100 applications, covering multiple categories such as trading markets, wallets, games, NFTs, social networking, Launchpad, etc., of which games account for 26%.

③The number of users has soared, and Asia is the main market

According to statistics from TonStat, the number of active wallets on the TON chain has increased from 1.08 million at the beginning of the year to 13.1 million now.

TON Asia Development Relations Director further pointed out that Asia is the most important market for TON. It not only has a large number of experienced developers, but also a large and technology-savvy population, which adopts new technologies relatively quickly, and ultimately contributes to the overall success of TON.

④USDT issuance ranks fourth

Since Tether announced the issuance of USDT on TON in April this year, the current net circulation is about 600 million US dollars, ranking fourth, second only to ETH, Avax and Sol.

Stablecoins are a barometer of demand in the crypto market. The circulation of a large number of stablecoins means that there is a strong demand for crypto business on TON and high-frequency trading activities.

⑤TVL increased 55 times in half a year

Referring to Deflama data, the current TVL of the TON chain is US$522 million, ranking 17th among all chains.

Compared with other popular blockchains, TON's TVL is not high, but this does not hinder TON's explosive growth: since January this year, TVL has increased by 55 times at most.

⑥Some issues that should not be ignored

It is undeniable that TON's development this year is second to none, but it also exposes many problems, such as serious homogeneity of ecological applications, false prosperity created by studios' hair-raising and volume-brushing, short life cycle of most projects, poor user stickiness, and death as soon as the coin is issued...

At the same time, the integration of the TON network with Telegram, which focuses on privacy, is more likely to attract scammers. It is said that the TON scam script has derived a business, and scammers can easily commit fraud through various forms of phishing scripts.

In short, the outbreak of the TON ecosystem shows a good momentum, but there are indeed some problems behind the prosperity, which are worth thinking about and optimizing for all participants.