TON + Telegram: Making Cryptocurrency at Your Fingertips

Author: Dynamo DeFi Source: dynamodefi Translation: Shan Ouba, Jinse Finance

If we were to choose the most important applications in the crypto industry, Telegram would definitely be in the top five:

1. Business is conducted on Telegram

2. Almost every new token will set up a Telegram group for its community

3. On-chain players explore in-depth in Telegram group chats to find inside information

Telegram, which is vital to the crypto economy despite not being a crypto app itself, has recently begun embracing this synergistic relationship.

In April, Telegram announced that Telegram channels will be able to receive a share of advertising revenue through TON, with all payments made on TON:

TON was originally a blockchain built by Telegram, but was later spun off into an independent decentralized organization (more on that below), but it remains tightly integrated with the Telegram platform. After taking a deep look at the TON ecosystem, I think the network has a lot of potential. Many of the protocols I’m going to cover can be used directly within the Telegram app — through actual mini-apps — and the mobile interface is a huge improvement.

The TON ecosystem — decentralized exchanges (DEX), perpetual contract trading, lending, games — can be easily accessed and managed directly from your phone. TON has the technology, social coverage, and interface to bring decentralized finance (DeFi) directly to Telegram's 900 million monthly active users.

This article will introduce several airdrop opportunities for many of the fast-growing top projects on TON:

This comprehensive deep dive also covers the history of TON, from initial setbacks and regulatory challenges to its current resurgence driven by a dedicated team of developers.

Telegram’s massive distribution network

More than 10% of the world's population uses Telegram at least once a month. Business is conducted on Telegram. News spreads quickly on Telegram, and it is a trusted medium of communication between parties.

Telegram is currently the fourth most used messaging app, between Facebook Messenger and Snapchat.

This built-in distribution network gives TON an advantage that other blockchains do not have.

TON’s bumpy start

Telegram reportedly raised $1.7 billion for its own blockchain (then called "Gram") in 2018. The fundraising included funds such as Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Russian oligarchs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged that the fundraising was an unregistered digital token offering in violation of federal securities laws. Telegram was punished for violating securities laws by returning $1.22 billion to investors and paying a civil penalty of $18.5 million. Telegram was also required to notify SEC staff before participating in any digital asset offerings for the next three years.

By early 2021, Telegram had almost paid off its investors and had new goals in mind. In February, Telegram raised $1 billion through a bond sale. Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Telegram was planning an initial public offering (IPO) in 2023.

Eventually, the idea was abandoned and the Telegram team stopped developing TON. A small team of open source developers and community members resumed active development of TON based on the original design details and continued with Testnet 2.

After TestNet 2 remained stable for a long time, it was renamed Mainnet and the new TON team was renamed TON Foundation.

One point worth adding is that in 2022, 2023 and early this year, TON raised more than US$500 million through more than 15 rounds of fundraising.

All of these recent fundraising rounds show that funds are starting to take notice of TON’s success and potential as a platform — this new firepower will help jump-start TON’s development. Pantera, one of the top funds in the space, made a new investment in TON almost a month ago. Pantera is known for its long-term vision, and this is an encouraging fundraising, especially given TON’s non-predatory token economics, which we’ll cover in more detail below.

Toncoin’s Token Economics

From June 6, 2020 to June 28, 2022, users mined approximately 200,000 TON tokens per day through the Proof-of-Work smart contract. As of the end of June 2022, 98.55% of Toncoin tokens have been in circulation. 1.45% of the supply was allocated to developers and testnet 2 users.

The TON blockchain is somewhat special in that it is a Proof-of-Stake chain, but the tokens are fairly mined through a Proof-of-Work contract (similar to Ethereum). This makes TON a fast and cheap PoS chain while providing a decentralized launch through PoW. Some call this combination Initial Proof-of-Work (IPoW). IPoW is unique because all tokens are distributed without an ICO or any token sale, similar to the organic growth of Bitcoin.

Currently, approximately 0.6% of TON’s total supply is created each year to reward validators who secure the TON chain.

Currently, TON ranks 10th in market capitalization on Coingecko, surpassing Cardano.

TON’s circulating market capitalization is approximately $17B and its FDV is $36B.

TON Trends, Metrics, Activity, and Data

We are in the attention economy , and when it comes to measuring attention, TON dominates:

Tonkeeper Wallet is the number one financial app on Google Play. It is higher than PayPal, Venmo, Binance

TonStat.com provides a great dataset for monitoring the TON token economy, user metrics, TVL, and more. Here are some highlights:

Accounts, daily transactions, and activated wallets have all grown 10x or more in the last year:

Monthly active wallets (MAW) refer to wallets that have sent at least one transaction in the past 30 days. MAW skyrocketed in May (note that there is definitely airdrop mining on the chain, so not every wallet is a unique user).

Telegram measures activity in MAUs (monthly active users, of which there are 900 million), so MAW/MAU will be a particularly important metric for TON.

Currently, MAW/MAU is:

4.9 million / 900 million = 0.5%

If the MAW/MAU ratio is 5%, then the number of wallets would be close to 50 million without any growth in MAU.

If each Telegram MAU creates a wallet, there will be more TON wallets than Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets combined.

TON Ecosystem

Here are some of the larger agreements - note the strong growth in 1 month.

Liquid pledge

Due to the low issuance rate of TON, the annualized yield (APY) of TON staking is not high. In most cases, it is less than 3%. However, 3% is still better than 0%, and using some liquid staking protocols can allow you to get additional rewards and prepare for potential airdrops.

Tonstakers

This is the largest liquid staking protocol on TON. The total value locked (TVL) has grown from less than $1 million in mid-2023 to $237 million.

• Current annual yield: about 2.5%

• Liquid Staking Token: tsTON

Tonstakers provide instant unstaked liquidity, or you can wait until the validation round is over to claim your unstaked tokens (validation rounds last 18 hours).

bemo

Liquid Staking Protocol. Although TVL is not growing as fast as Tonstakers, it is still close to $80 million.

• Current annual yield: about 3.5%

• Liquid Staking Token: stTON

bemo also offers the ability to unstake stTON tokens immediately (through an exchange, so you’ll need to pay transaction fees and potentially incur slippage), or you can choose a 68-hour cooldown period to unstake.

bemo is currently running a rewards program. Every time you stake, swap, provide liquidity or simply hold stTON tokens in your wallet through the platform, you can earn stXP. When one of the community milestones is reached, the earned stXP tokens will be converted to bemo's governance token BMO.

Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

STON.fi

It has long been the top-ranked DEX among TON applications. Its TVL has grown 60 times from $4 million in January to $240 million.

STON.fi has multiple stages of growth, with roadmap plans including limit order books, margin trading, and gas-free swaps.

Currently, in addition to exchanging almost any token in the TON ecosystem, you can also provide liquidity to nearly 400 different pools. You can also stake STON tokens to participate in governance, but STON tokens must be locked for at least 3 months.

Depending on the length of your stake, you will receive a certain amount of ARKENSTON tokens and GEMSTON tokens. ARKENSTON is a governance token that grants voting rights and appears in the form of a soul-bound NFT in the staker's wallet, so it cannot be transferred during the lock-up period.

The GEMSTON token is more “free” and STON.fi’s goal is to incentivize the STON.fi DAO to introduce mechanisms to remove GEMSTON tokens from circulation and increase demand for the tokens.

DeDust

DeDust is an automated market maker (AMM) DEX and liquidity pool. Its TVL has tripled in about 3 weeks.

If you hold TON tokens, DeDust offers a great TON/USDT pool with a 200% annual yield. You can "boost" pools, meaning LPs get additional tokens of your choice. An interesting fact is that when you boost a pool, you can exclude specific addresses from receiving rewards. You can stake DeDust's SCALE tokens to share in the platform fees, and a 29% annual yield is currently distributed to SCALE stakers every day. You can unstake SCALE immediately, paying a 5% penalty, or wait 72 hours to avoid the penalty.

Storm Trade

Storm Trade is a perpetual contract DEX that allows users to trade via a browser or the Telegram app. I opened the Telegram app and tried in-app trading, which was pretty smooth. Storm plans to eventually offer markets other than cryptocurrencies, such as stocks, forex, and commodities.

The STORM token is coming soon and claims to have multiple utilities and deflationary mechanisms. There will be an airdrop as well as an IDO token issuance. Currently, you can earn Reward Points (RP) by using the platform:

Additionally, liquidity provision on the platform currently comes with a generous APR.

Borrowing

EVAA Protocol

EVAA is the premier lending platform in the TON ecosystem. Similar to other decentralized applications, you can use it using the web app or through the Telegram app. Here are the markets where you can earn EVAA XP (shown in green), which is a bounty incentive program that will eventually lead to an airdrop of EVAA. The program started at the end of March and the Token Generation Event (TGE) has not yet been announced. To earn yield on your assets and earn EVAA XP, just provide and borrow assets with a green circle!

game

If there’s one area where TON excels, it’s gaming. Take a look at some of the games on TON:

Web3 games have long been promised but often fail to live up to expectations, with tokens sometimes launched months or years before the game launches. TON Games has already made some real progress, and with Telegram serving as a powerful distribution platform, more are coming. Here are some of the standout games:

Notcoin

Notcoin was launched on TON and already has over 10 million players. It is a simple "click to earn" game where you mine NOT by clicking buttons. Its token is ranked in the top 100 on Coingecko, the highest ranked token besides TON, and has a huge trading volume.

Hamster Kombat

Yes, you read that right, Hamster Kombat. 6.4M followers. Its YouTube channel has 19 million subscribers.

While I can’t confirm it myself, Hamster Kombat claims to have 100 million users, which is absolutely amazing. I assume that most of these are duplicate accounts created by airdrop farmers, but the actual number is at least in the millions, and possibly tens of millions. The theme of the game is to successfully run a cryptocurrency exchange and level up your hamster in the process. This game has become a sensation on the internet.

Here are the complete rules and how to play.

According to them: “At the end of the season, tokens will be released and distributed to players.” The details of the airdrop have not yet been announced, but it is expected to happen in July. This process will be very interesting.

Fanzee

Fanzee is a sports and entertainment casual game on Telegram that claims to be the largest prediction market on the super app.

The idea is to play a prediction game with friends:

Catizen

Another game on Telegram, Catizen lets users adopt virtual cats and is an active airdrop farm. They claim to have over 20 million users (many of which are likely fake accounts) and 500,000 paying customers.

TON Social Network

There are already several social-related applications on TON. They will naturally leverage Telegram's existing distribution and social graph.

Community

Telegram native community and Telegram group toolset

Moons Social

A decentralized social network that allows Telegram users to find and connect with the community

TonsOfFriends

Telegram app to help you discover communities and connect with others

TON Memes

Check out a TON of memes below.

DeFi strategy on TON

Due to the various yield and airdrop farming opportunities on TON, there are several good farming strategies on the chain.

Storm Trade

Offer TON in the Vaults section to earn earnings and points.

EVAA

Stake TON on bemo as stTON, and lend it on EVAA to earn bemo and EVAA points.

Stake TON as tsTON on Tonstakers and lend it on EVAA to earn EVAA points.

DeDust

Provide liquidity between TON and USDT to earn 94% annual yield.

in conclusion

The Open Network (TON) promises to make cryptocurrency accessible to the masses.

By leveraging Telegram's massive user base, TON has made significant progress in democratizing access to the cryptocurrency and Web3 ecosystem. Despite a turbulent start and challenges with regulatory compliance, TON has emerged as a strong and innovative blockchain platform. Various DeFi protocols (DEX, lending, gaming, a host of mini-app creation tool support) are integrated directly into the Telegram app, making blockchain technology more accessible and user-friendly. This approach lowers the barrier to entry for millions of users and abstracts the complex processes associated with digital ownership. The growth of the TON ecosystem is reflected in its improving user metrics, a slew of new protocols, and groundbreaking investments and partnerships. Its unique Proof of Stake and Initial Proof of Work mechanisms ensure that the network is decentralized and efficient, and while the market cap of the TON token is already quite large, the token economics are favorable for the average person.

Of course, there are still challenges ahead. The TON ecosystem is relatively new and has inevitably attracted a large number of scams, fake accounts, and outright frauds. The security of mobile wallets, especially the previous Telegram trading app, is generally not as well tested as classic hardware wallets in terms of protecting user funds.

TON’s integration with Telegram puts it on track to drive wider adoption of blockchain technology and enhance user participation in the digital economy. With its growth to date, TON could become the first blockchain to launch a killer app. In fact, it may already have one…