This episode invites Alena Shmalko, head of the TON Foundation ecosystem, and Jack Booth, marketing director of the TON Foundation, to discuss the development status and future prospects of TON.
The two talked about how public leagues can help TON improve TVL and other key metrics, and how Telegram’s partnership with TON has evolved and deepened over time.
Additionally, the discussion touches on the mechanics of Notcoin and the reasons for its success, as well as whether the rise of games like Hamster Kombat can be sustained. The importance of USDT in the TON ecosystem and its contribution to TVL growth were also highlighted.
Jack mentioned the upcoming trustless bridge for Bitcoin and explained its possible importance and whether TON has plans to integrate with applications other than Telegram.
Summary
1. TON was originally established by the Telegram team, but after a legal dispute with the SEC, Telegram separated from TON. Since then, TON has been managed by an independent developer team and has attracted a large number of users and attention through the promotion of gamification mechanisms and reward programs.
2. Although the cooperation between Telegram and TON is limited, the relationship between the two has gradually become closer over time, especially in terms of Mini Apps and wallet integration launched on Telegram. However, TON still operates independently, and users in some countries cannot use TON wallets.
3. TON is exploring the possibility of integrating with applications other than Telegram to expand its user base and application scenarios.
4. Notcoin adopts the game mechanism of Tap To Earn and quickly attracts a large number of users through viral spread and recommendation system. In addition, its reward mechanism stimulates user interest and participation. While these games have successfully attracted a large number of users in the short term, long-term user retention and the continued popularity of the games still need to be seen.
5. USDT plays an important role in the TON ecosystem, providing a stable digital dollar option, allowing users to make fast and free payments around the world.
6. The Bitcoin Trustless Bridge is expected to be launched this year. Its importance lies in introducing a trustless Bitcoin asset into TON’s DeFi ecosystem, increasing the diversity of users and assets.
7. The TON Foundation plans to continue to increase TVL by rewarding liquidity providers and developers, introducing new DeFi products and use cases, and expanding community participation. The foundation is also studying to reduce the reliance on TVL for rewards to ensure the long-term stable development of the ecosystem.
The following is the original content:
The origin and milestones of Ton
Laura Shin: Today’s topic is the recent rise of TON. We invited Alena Shmalko, head of ecosystem of the TON Foundation, and Jack Booth, marketing director, to discuss this topic. Welcome Alena and Jack.
Jack Booth: Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having us, Laura.
Alena Shmalko: Yes, totally agree.
Laura Shin: The Open Network, also known as TON, has been performing strongly since the end of February. Its TVL has increased 34 times and is currently about $750 million. The price has also increased from about $2 to about $7 at the time of recording. The number of daily active addresses in May and June even exceeded Ethereum. And there are many interesting games such as Hamster Kombat and Catizen that are gaining traction.
In addition, Pantera Capital, a well-known crypto venture capital firm, announced its largest-ever investment in TON. But before we dive into these latest developments, let’s talk about your backgrounds. Alena, you first talk about your role and how you came to TON, and then we'll hear Jack's story.
Alena Shmalko: Yes, my pleasure. First of all, thank you so much for having us, it's been an honor. Talking about myself, I have a few years of experience in the crypto space, initially involved in a few startups in some operational roles, and later I started running my own Web3 startup accelerator.
It was during this process that I connected with TON because I had the opportunity to learn about cryptocurrencies broadly and at a high level, and to be exposed to different blockchains and ecosystems.
So, I chose TON because in my opinion it has the greatest potential among all the other L1 and L2, that's why I joined this ecosystem and now I am the Ecosystem Lead, responsible for supporting building on TON of startup companies.
Laura Shin: What about you, Jack?
Jack Booth: I am the chief marketing officer of the TON Foundation. I have been working in the marketing field for many years. In 2020, I was working at a startup company in the UK. When the epidemic broke out, I lost my job and received a government subsidy. gold. I invested the money in Bitcoin and had a very interesting crypto journey.
At that time, this small investment doubled in a few months. I thought, what a magical world is this, so I decided to start developing a career in the encryption field in 2020. I first worked at Oasis Protocol and joined TON a few years later.
I am very happy to work at TON and very satisfied with the development of the ecosystem. What we are seeing now is many games allowing new users to earn cryptocurrency for the first time through tap-to-earn games.
It reminds me of how I felt when I first got into crypto, when I first bought Bitcoin in 2020, when you own a little bit of cryptocurrency for the first time, you start to understand what it means, understand why it Important and why it is an interesting thing.
It’s not something that you can easily explain to someone, and I think that’s what TON and our ecosystem really contributes to the entire space, is by giving people some initial cryptocurrency, they start to get interested and excited and start Learn what ownership on the blockchain really means.
That's exciting to me, but also to the millions of people who are playing these games right now. That's my background and why I'm so excited to work here.
Laura Shin: So let’s talk about the origin story of TON. TON was launched by the company behind messaging app Telegram, which conducted a $1.7 billion ICO in 2018. However, most listeners probably know the story: In 2019, the SEC obtained a temporary restraining order to prevent Telegram from selling or distributing a token it originally planned to call GRAM. Later court negotiations with the SEC also failed.
So, the end result was that Telegram parted ways with this blockchain, but a group of developers decided to launch the blockchain on their own in March 2020. So, can you tell us about the progress of this endeavor and how TON got to where it is today?
Jack Booth: Yes, of course. Several of that group of developers won a contest and received keys to what was then known as the Telegram Open Network, an open source software. The network is nothing like it is today, and those developers took it to a high-capacity, high-scalability state that it didn't have when they took over.
The initial two developers formed a loose organization called NewTON. They attracted other developers who were passionate about building TON and became core developers. Then the TON Foundation was officially established in 2022, and it has been a period of growth since then.
With the launch of the TON Foundation, we had a partnership with Telegram, and they decided to continue building on TON because of the great work the core developers did, which was actually a catalyst for TON's growth.
Our integration with Telegram’s internal wallet means you can send cryptocurrencies as easily as sending a text message in a DM. You can send TON, Bitcoin, USDT, and now Notcoin, instantly and for free using your wallet within Telegram. The wallet is integrated into Telegram's settings menu and is now available in all countries where Telegram users are based, except the United States.
Within the next few years, most Telegram users will have a TON Wallet in their Telegram menu. This is a transformative collaboration for us and the entire ecosystem. This is our first milestone.
The second milestone was the release of Notcoin earlier this year. On New Year's Eve, Notcoin was released globally and grew rapidly, reaching 20 million users within the first month. This allowed us to really understand, and let the entire market understand, that Telegram’s distribution capabilities are real.
The integration attracted attention because it introduced millions of people to the crypto space. Although Notcoin was not exactly a cryptocurrency during its mining phase, it created interest in the concept of a simple mechanism to gain some kind of yield that might pay off in the future.
The third milestone I want to mention is the launch of the Open League in March this year. The main catalyst for our on-chain metric growth is the Open League, a competition between the best projects on TON that provides rewards for projects that gain new users and users who use those projects.
This is a great competition project and one that Alena and I have been working closely with over the past six months. It currently accounts for approximately 60% of TON's daily active wallets and contributes significantly to our on-chain growth.
Laura Shin: Okay, Alena, do you have anything to add?
Alena Shmalko: The current role of the TON Foundation is mainly to support this growth, especially to support the founders and builders in our ecosystem. As Jack said, starting from the initial core development team, we have grown to now include different people from the commercial field, such as the marketing team, etc. These teams are also responsible for promoting the blockchain brand.
But our main mission is undoubtedly to further enhance and support this growth through the various tools, projects and programs we launch for the teams building on the chain.
Speaking of Open League, this is an important project in the current ecosystem. It contributes about 60% to on-chain users and about 15% in terms of TVL, which, as you mentioned, is growing very rapidly.
The Open League is an open competition for the TON team. The cool thing is that you don’t need years of development experience. You just need to build a Telegram Mini App on TON, immediately implement some on-chain mechanisms, join the leaderboard and win big prizes.
These awards are distributed directly to teams on a quarterly basis, which usually lasts about two to four weeks. At the end of the season, teams receive these awards, which are similar to a grant that can be used for marketing, product development, or airdrops for the community. This is pretty remarkable and something we haven’t seen in any other ecosystem.
These rewards are for major contributors to the growth of the ecosystem, literally from projects built with us, and our support.
In addition, we have also launched reward programs for LPs on DEX, such as STON.fi and DeDust. LPs will be rewarded for putting Jettons (ERC-20 standard tokens on TON) and Toncoin into the pool.
In addition, we also have an amazing project after launching native USDT on TON, which is almost the biggest contributor to TVL growth. We are very much looking forward to future growth and now our task is to sustain this growth and channel this value and liquidity into a variety of different programs and projects.
The relationship between Ton Foundation and Telegram
Laura Shin: Before we dive into the changes over the past few months, I also want to get into the details of the foundation. Who are the main members of the TON Foundation? How did they get to where they are?
Jack Booth: Key members include Steve Yun, who is the chairman of the foundation. In fact, he was one of the early community members of TON and had been involved even before the SEC issues arose.
Therefore, he has been pushing for the establishment of an official non-profit foundation from the beginning, gathering core developers, and starting to recruit on the growth side, such as Alena's team, including ecosystem development, developer relations, and my market and business development teams.
There are now five directors, and I am one of them, responsible for the marketing side. Our mission is to achieve the TON ecosystem's goal of making cryptocurrency accessible to everyone. We have a very ambitious goal to bring 500 million Telegram users into the blockchain by 2028.
Laura Shin: What is the current number of Telegram users?
Alena Shmalko: 900 million monthly users.
Jack Booth: Yeah, so we hope to convert 30% of Telegram's monthly active users into TON users by 2028.
Alena Shmalko: And we also expect growth in the number of monthly active users of Telegram.
Laura Shin: I want to ask more about the relationship with Telegram. As we just mentioned, TON was originally launched by Telegram, and then developed into an independent project due to the SEC's actions. However, last September, Telegram chose TON as the only built-in encrypted network in its application. How did this happen?
Jack Booth: In fact, Telegram had been developed on TON before this. They purchased fragment.com, which is a major use case for TON. On this platform, for the first time, you can purchase social media usernames as NFTs and actually own and use them. They've built the platform and seen its success, netting $150 million in NFT username sales.
This was a very successful project, and they naturally began to cooperate more with the TON Foundation and the TON Blockchain to try to establish a close relationship that would benefit both parties.
For Telegram, this helps them because we are helping them grow the Mini Apps ecosystem.
Telegram has an open third-party Mini Apps program, and anyone can build Telegram Mini Apps. And for us, this helps with the distribution of our projects, because our current project is building Telegram Mini Apps, which are now being distributed to the Telegram user base at scale.
Pavel Durov announced on his channel a few days ago that they will build an app store within Telegram and promote TON's Web3 applications. We're very excited about this, we don't know the specifics yet, but my guess is that it will be part of the main UI, where you can find apps, Mini Apps, and use them directly within Telegram.
Nikolai Durov and Pavel Durov were the creators of the TON white paper, and the technology has come a long way since then. They used it to launch the Fragment app, which was a huge success in terms of revenue, and then they integrated the wallet, and now they're continuing that collaboration by trying to integrate more ways for the blockchain to actually interact with the Telegram app.
Telegram also uses TON for creator payment. You can pay TON to advertise on Telegram, and then the owner of the Telegram channel will also be paid in TON, and 50% of the advertising revenue goes to the creator.
Telegram is looking for multiple ways to cooperate with TON. We are not directly involved in their decision on how to cooperate. They are equivalent to third-party developers. Really, only the wallet integration is the part where we really collaborate and we decide together how it will look and work.
Laura Shin: From what I understand, Toncoin seems to be the largest asset on Telegram’s balance sheet. What percentage of Toncoin do they hold? How much do Pavel and Nikolai Durov hold?
Jack Booth: I don’t know much about this question, so I can’t comment or answer the specific number. I don’t want to get it wrong.
Laura Shin: Okay, but even though you're working on this decentralized network, because it's focused on this specific application, you mentioned that you're primarily only responsible for the wallet, but there are no other integration points or collaborations. In this case, it feels like there should be quite regular communication and cooperation, right?
Jack Booth: Not actually.
Alena Shmalko: Yes, we get most of our information from Durov's channel like everyone else, right, Jack, we just follow his channel and learn something new.
Jack Booth: Yes, it is. For example, I also learned about the information that they use Toncoin as payment for their advertising platform from Pavel's channel.
This is huge news. We didn’t know this news at all in advance. No one knew it. They don't discuss anything with us at all, in fact they only talk to the wallet team because the wallet is the only real integration point. And this is not our team, it is a completely different company called TOP (The Open Platform). They are responsible for executing the wallet, operating one of the DEXs on TON, STON.fi, and many other good TON projects. The projects are all invested and constructed by TOP.
So frankly speaking, as a foundation, we don’t actually get much information from Telegram. Even when Pavel announced that USDT would be listed on TON at the TOKEN2049 conference, we knew it would happen, but we did not know that he would announce that Telegram stickers would also be listed on the TON blockchain, as well as other things he mentioned at the meeting. Therefore, although there is cooperation, it is mainly with wallets, not with our foundation. They are more like third-party developers.
Alena Shmalko: I would like to add that I actually counted the number of times Pavel mentioned TON at the TOKEN2049 conference, which was also a complete surprise. Although we knew that USDT would be listed on TON, other news was completely unexpected. There's also the upcoming app store that Jack mentioned, but we don't have any details.
There is also a separate team building the Telegram App Center, they have been working on it for more than a year, and now it is the main directory of TON applications, not only Web3 applications, but also Web2 applications. It is still the main way to discover different applications on TON, and we certainly highly recommend exploring it.
One more thing to add, Telegram Mini Apps are still the primary way to integrate different Web3 elements into messaging apps.
We also learned about Telegram stars, a new in-app purchase method, and Web2 developers can now learn more about cryptocurrencies by withdrawing earnings as Toncoin.
They allow users to pay with Telegram stars, but the revenue extracted by developers is Toncoin. This is just like the revenue sharing between community creators and channel owners mentioned by Jack. It is a way to guide more people into the crypto field. .
Laura Shin: Listening to you say that, I think of the relationship between Ethereum and Consensys. But the difference is that you are more like Cosmos, and then there are many things like application chains. But I still have a question. Currently, the TON blockchain is very focused on the Telegram platform, but do you have any plans to integrate it into other applications?
Jack Booth: That's a great question, are there any plans for other chains to integrate into something other than the Google Chrome extension? What's the difference? Telegram is an open platform with millions of users, and Google Chrome is an open platform with millions of users.
Therefore, we chose and pursued a strategy of placing the front end of our application in a messaging app that is here to stay. We hope Telegram will continue to grow, just like other chains that rely on Google Chrome and Chrome extensions as their front-end platform.
We want to put our apps in a place where they can be easily shared, making them very viral and easy to use. Telegram’s Mini Apps platform makes this very easy to achieve. So we encourage projects to launch there as the main interface for interacting with the blockchain in the Telegram Mini App, that doesn't mean they can't build a website.
The DEXs we have now, like STON.fi and DeDust, they all have Mini Apps, but they also have websites that can be accessed through any web browser, so I think it's more of a platform choice issue, I wouldn't say This centralizes TON's reliance on Telegram, as it is just another interface through which applications can be displayed.
This makes the application developer's job easier because they don't have to develop a complete application themselves and then have users download it. Instead you just click a button in Telegram, the Mini App pops up, and users can start using it immediately without downloading anything or leaving the Telegram app itself.
We made these choices and strategic design decisions because of the user registration challenges cryptocurrencies face. Let people set up an exchange account, fund the account with their bank account, install a Chrome extension, fund their wallet with the exchange account, and then start participating in the blockchain and learn how each chain is different The steps and nuances, it’s just so hard.
These problems do not exist on TON. You can start using any app, you don't need anything, and then be educated step by step in the process, and finally create a wallet in Telegram in just two clicks, and then it will be with you permanently in the settings menu.
By the end of the year, most users who have Telegram will already have the wallet in their settings menu, making the signup process very easy and adding virality to all apps, which is why we see so many users The reason why users are now using TON apps inside Telegram is because it is a better design decision.
Laura Shin: Yes, it does have the advantage of ease of use. Even though I'm in the US, I have access to some of these features.
Jack Booth: What a blessing.
What makes Ton different?
Laura Shin: Let’s talk about the TON blockchain. What features do you think make this blockchain unique?
Alena Shmalko: I think what's very clear is its distribution capabilities, which is what we've discussed today. Of course, TON is a very scalable suite, thanks to its inherent architecture, and it's very fast, we set a speed record last fall.
Laura Shin: Yes, can you tell us more about the architecture and speed?
Alena Shmalko: Yes, thanks to sharding technology, which is the main element of the architecture, the TON blockchain is considered one of the most scalable, and we continue to work hard to further improve scalability. Last fall, probably October or November, we hit the fastest record, 100,000 transactions per second. Jack, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Jack Booth: 104,700 transactions per second, which is the highest ever recorded.
Alena Shmalko: This was done in an isolated environment and we still need to improve this in a real environment. There are many teams working hard to solve this problem, and as Jack said, TON's distribution capabilities are unparalleled. You can't find anywhere else where there are so many people in one place at the same time. So we have 900 million monthly active users all in one place, so to speak, ready to enter the crypto space.
I want to go back to the previous question, Laura, you asked why we are so focused on Telegram, we do not require every team in the TON ecosystem to only focus on the Telegram Mini App.
This can essentially be viewed as an onboarding tool where developers can build a Telegram Mini App to attract users on Telegram and then direct them to a web application in the original sense, as all our DeFi protocols, including DEX, Initially all started as web applications, and they continue to work in this space because people are accustomed to using browsers to participate in DeFi rather than through the Telegram Mini App.
A new example is BLUM, a hybrid trading platform that builds cross-chain, multi-chain products, mainly focusing on TON, and they are now attracting users through a very simple click game.
There are no core features in the app yet, but they have introduced millions of users to the Mini App through a very simple and easy-to-use mechanism. They will then educate these users and guide them into more complex areas such as conducting transactions on the chain, cross-chain exchanges, etc.
Ton’s mini-game ecology and conversion status
Laura Shin: So now let’s talk about these Mini Apps, or games, because that’s all the buzz on Telegram. First of all the first really popular game you mentioned was Notcoin, which was a clicker game. But for those who aren't as familiar, especially in the US since we don't have full access to everything, please explain how the Notcoin game works and why you think it's become popular.
Jack Booth: This is one of my favorite topics because Notcoin does such a great job. The reason for its popularity is very simple, it is the viral mechanism. They have a recommendation system and reward mechanism from the beginning. If you can master these two concepts as an application and promote it on Telegram, you will find thousands of users.
I say this without a doubt, and it’s all because of the recommendation mechanism in Telegram. The referral process for Notcoin is very simple, I go into the app, go to my friends tab, click share with friends and then I can select my entire contact list and they will receive a referral link which will earn me Notcoin at the time .
This recommendation mechanism is now replicated in all tap-to-earn projects. It's very powerful because the friend who receives the link can jump right into the game with just one click. No wallets to deal with, nothing to set up, no new apps to download, everything turns on instantly.
The viral mechanism is the first element, followed by the reward mechanism. Another bigger project than Notcoin is called Hamster Kombat, in which you serve as the CEO of your own cryptocurrency trading platform.
Unlike Notcoin, in addition to click-to-earn, they also include a click-to-earn mechanism where you can use the coins to buy things that make money every hour. The airdrop of the HMSTR token will be based on profit per hour, which is interesting, it's more of a measure of engagement, how engaged you are in the game, and that's basically how your profit per hour reflects.
In Telegram Mini Apps, virality and reward mechanisms are key. If you can introduce these mechanisms in a simple, fun way that keeps people engaged and coming back every day, your app will reach millions of users. This is very simple and has been proven more than 10 or 15 times in different projects.
Laura Shin: I wanted to ask you what you think about the quality of these users, because honestly, this viral recommendation mechanism reminds me a lot of FarmVille from the old days on Facebook.
Jack Booth: Yeah, I've played FarmVille before.
Laura Shin: Right? The game was very popular on Facebook at the time and the mechanics were very similar. But in this case, Notcoin seems to attract a lot of users who don't necessarily stick around long-term, or who don't play often.
Likewise, Hamster Kombat attracted 200 million users in its first three months, an achievement the team hopes to record in the Guinness Book of World Records, and its YouTube channel gained over 10 million subscribers in a week and currently has 34 million subscribers . But from what I understand, this is largely to earn tokens, and users need to watch these videos.
So this brings me to a question we see over and over again: are these users loyal or just mercenaries chasing short-term gains, and would they leave immediately if there was a better reward? What do you think about this?
Jack Booth: I can answer that and let Alena continue. Projects have two options, they can launch the project and expect users to automatically join, or they can build a community first and then work to convert and retain those community users.
The TON project chose the latter, while most Web3 projects tried and chose the former, but were not necessarily successful in attracting mass users.
This is a different strategy, starting with building a community around the rewards, unlike airdrops of the past. In the past, in order to qualify for air investing, you needed to take a series of steps, such as opening an account, getting a Chrome extension, etc. This approach eliminates these steps and allows you to do something valuable directly for the project.
Take Hamster Kombat for example, they designed a system to get people to subscribe to them on YouTube. What good does this do them? Apparently, this brings in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in advertising revenue.
So a great thing that happened here is that the community was established first, and they were full of great interest and expectations for the project, especially after the mining phase. The mining phase is only part of the launch, and unlike the high fully diluted valuations and low circulation that exist in many crypto projects, most of the tokens here are airdropped to the community at the beginning, and then the community decides whether they like it or not. Tokens and projects.
Notcoin has been transformed into providing traffic to new projects, and projects must use Notcoins to purchase this traffic, so Notcoin is now practical in its own right, and other projects may choose the traffic route, or they may choose a completely different route.
For example, what Alena mentioned about BLUM is a completely different situation, because they have delivered a product roadmap, the click-to-earn phase they have announced is a phase, and after that they will become a trading platform.
As for the utility of the tokens they offer, it's unclear, but they have chosen to build an amazing community, I can't remember the exact number of BLUM players, but I think it's around 30 million...
Laura Shin: A lot of people have speculated that a significant portion of these users are bots, in which case do you think this is real activity?
Alena Shmalko: I can answer this question, according to official statistics, such as the statistics recently released by the Notcoin team, they announced that more than 30 million people played the game before TGE and the token was launched, 35 million people to be exact, And 11 million people have received Notcoin, whether it is an account on the chain or off the chain. Now there are more than 2.4 million Notcoin holders on the chain, so the conversion rate from off-chain players to on-chain holders is about 6 %.
Laura Shin: Sorry, did you say 6%?
Alena Shmalko: Yes, if we count the 2.4 million people who hold Notcoin now, then about a third of the 11 million people who have received Notcoin overall have received it on-chain and off-chain, so the conversion rate is about three points One, that is 30%.
Laura Shin: Or if you go from 11 million to 2.4 million, maybe 20%.
Alena Shmalko: No, one-third of the 11 million was claimed on-chain and off-chain, because Notcoin is listed on multiple centralized exchanges and people can transfer it from the game to accounts on the exchange. So 11 million people, we can say a one-third conversion rate, which is a pretty good conversion rate.
Yet another example is Catizen, one of the most successful and popular play-to-earn-airdrop games, which is more than just a clicker game and has implemented on-chain mechanics from the beginning.
Unlike Notcoin, which was implemented on-chain only after TGE, Catizen has been an on-chain game from the beginning. According to an article from CoinDesk, their conversion rate is around 6% to 7%, which is much higher than the market average, proving once again that gaming on TON is capable even before TGE and the token release .
Based on these numbers, we're doing well, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. But it all depends on how the teams set and design complex roadmaps and show the community that they will continue to build fun and entertaining games after the TGE is over, or launch trading bots, task platforms or e-commerce platforms, Just like Catizen plans to do.
We at the TON Foundation and other institutions in the ecosystem are also committed to supporting them, and the Open League is a good example of this as we reward users for participating in other products and protocols in the ecosystem. For example, players of Notcoin, Gamey or Catizen can now head to DEX to earn tons of rewards and points.
It's great that we've attracted such a large audience and created such a buzz in the Web3 space, but we need to understand how to sustain that growth, and that's what we're working on right now.
Laura Shin: USDT was launched on TON in April, and now there is $730 million worth of Tether on the TON blockchain. How is it being used here?
Jack Booth: Before we get into that, I want to give you a general overview, which is a conversion funnel.
This funnel is about converting Web2 users, people who don't care about cryptocurrencies, into Web3 users. I think this is what most people in blockchain and space are trying to do in their own way.
We start from the most basic principle. If there is a potential market of 900 million users, we hope that they will carry out some on-chain activities, but we cannot force them to do it, we need to guide them. So, Click and Earn is an easy way to get people involved, get people interested, and put some cryptocurrency in their pocket through airdrops.
As I said at the beginning, now I'm a token holder, a project holder, and I'm interested and excited about it. And then we have Open League, which is the next step... Or, before Open League, we had USDT, and now it's digital dollars that I can send private messages to anyone around the world for free, instantly.
This is a global product and I can pay anyone with it if I have their Telegram.
Laura Shin: When you say globally, does that include the United States?
Jack Booth: Excluding the United States.
Alena Shmalko: What I mean is that the wallet through Telegram does not include the United States, but you can use USDT on the TON chain through any browser extension, such as Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet, Tonhub and other self-hosted wallets.
Laura Shin: I assume, and I don’t know if I understand it correctly, that the reason is that Telegram and TON have been affected by regulatory issues in the United States, especially SEC issues. If the SEC situation changes, will this restriction be lifted?
Jack Booth: Absolutely. The problem is that Telegram and TON have been affected by the SEC in the past, and no one wants this to happen again, so we are currently focusing on the rest of the world. If the environment and atmosphere in the United States changes, this issue may be reconsidered. But currently, wallet integration within Telegram is not available by default for U.S. users unless there is a major change in U.S. regulatory attitudes.
Alena Shmalko: Not only the United States, but also other countries cannot use this wallet, such as North Korea and other sanctioned countries. For the sake of fairness I would like to add this. A very important point though, Laura, you mentioned that you're in the US and can't access certain features. It’s important to note that this only refers to the wallet functionality.
You can easily access any Telegram Mini App, such as making purchases or participating in DeFi activities within Telegram Mini Apps, and you can easily use any self-hosted wallet on the TON chain. Just like using Metamask on Ethereum, this will work on other chains as well.
Laura Shin: Yes. So, Jack goes on to describe your conversion funnel.
Jack Booth: Oh, thanks for reminding me. The wallet experience in Telegram is great, it pops up in Telegram where you can store your Bitcoin, Notcoin and USDT and instantly transfer these to friends around the world for free, this is a great way for anyone to start using cryptocurrencies An excellent first step.
When you start with click-to-earn, you may not necessarily want to participate in complex DeFi, and the wallet in Telegram is the first step to attract people to start understanding. Oh now I can send money to friends in Telegram, it's very easy.
Then we have the Open League, which is very easy to introduce to people. It is actually also in Telegram's self-hosted wallet. You can easily access the Open League pool through the Open League bot and start participating in providing liquidity for some Open League projects. And this is the final step, usually with more participants.
We have Click and Earn for everyone, and then for some people it can be converted to sending cryptocurrencies globally in private messages, very easily.
Then some people will start using more complex DeFi products on TON. That's the whole setup, that's the whole system, that's what we're trying to build.
The foundation's strategy is to help achieve this goal. We think that's the most effective route, we see ways that the entire funnel can be optimized, we work with the community team and contributors to make that happen, and we see it working. So we're excited about continuing down that path.
Laura Shin: Yes, there is another aspect about the trust bridge that allows users to cross-chain Bitcoin to the TON network. I would like to know when you expect to release this feature, and I am also curious when Bitcoin holders can What happens when you do this.
Jack Booth: I actually don’t know if I can say a release date, it’s too early. But it's definitely coming soon. I'm very excited about this because to me this will be the next big asset after USDT and the next focus in the user pool after tap-to-earn.
We believe that Bitcoin can become a USDT-like asset in the TON ecosystem, that it can grow very quickly, and we will do our best to help it achieve this.
It is very valuable to the DeFi ecosystem within TON because we suddenly have a Bitcoin asset that is 100% backed by Bitcoin assets on the Bitcoin chain, which is bridged to TON through trust, basically encapsulating Bitcoin A better version of the currency.
This is a trustless version of encapsulated Bitcoin that does not involve an intermediary between the Bitcoin network and the TON network. It uses validators from the TON network itself to verify the Bitcoin ledger.
So no one holds the key, everything is done through smart contracts. This is a completely trustless and transparent bridge that, unlike many other bridges on the market right now, is basically as close to real Bitcoin as possible, but on the TON chain.
So I'm really looking forward to the launch of this bridge because it has huge potential for TON's DeFi ecosystem to allow people to better utilize their Bitcoin through lending protocols, the DEXs we have, liquidity pools, etc. Possibly even more complex situations. So yes, the bridge will be online soon, definitely this year. We're very excited about this.
Laura Shin: Yeah, it looks like Bitcoin users have a lot to look forward to because even within their ecosystem, there will be new ways for them to use Bitcoin.
I also wanted to ask about some of the illegal activity on TON that the Fortune article mentioned, including channels selling everything from guns to drugs to stolen stimulus checks. The article quoted a criminology professor who said: "It is easier to create a Telegram account than a Facebook account." He also said, "Telegram is now a paradise for criminals."
So, I'm wondering about the ad networks that we talked about, where people can earn advertising revenue from their content. Criminals on Telegram can also earn advertising revenue through their content. They can pay with cryptocurrency or pay for illegal goods through the TON wallet.
I would like to know how the Foundation views these issues and if there is any way to prevent or mitigate the TON Network or TON Wallet from being used for illegal activities.
Jack Booth: Yeah, I think it's a legitimate question, it's a legitimate question that we need to address at some point. We're focused on bringing Web3 to the masses, and that's what our team is all about. As for issues such as illegal activities, this happens on every chain.
That's one possible use of blockchain, right? It can be used as a tool for illegal activities, which is why we have great partners like Elliptic who help with AI analysis of criminal transactions, finding these types of wallets and providing them to the authorities, and with Telegram’s wallets Work as a team to truly eliminate these activities.
On the foundation side, we work in a decentralized ecosystem, so we don't necessarily have control over what happens in any transaction on TON.
TON itself is self-enforcing, these things happen there, they are a problem, but it is actually the project that enables that problem to stop illegal activity from happening. If it happens in a wallet, then the wallet team is needed to deal with the issue, the wallet's compliance team is needed.
This is why Alena mentioned before that outside of the United States, there are other countries where users cannot use the wallet, such as Iran and other sanctioned countries such as North Korea, where there is no service and users cannot use the wallet. So these are centralized teams that need to solve problems. For our foundation, we just focus on supporting the construction of the Web3 ecosystem.
Alena Shmalko: Yeah, as you said, it's always a joint effort of different independent teams, like us as the TON Foundation, and then Telegram, which plays a big role here. By the way, Telegram has never been formally accused, but people have always pointed out that Telegram has this risk from the beginning.
Wallet teams and project teams can work with specific marketing and PR firms to execute their advertising campaigns. Of course, their audit team will never allow any ads for illegal products. This is each team's responsibility. This is exactly the benefit of it, as there is no single actor responsible for ensuring that this type of activity never happens. It's a joint effort and we're certainly working on it.
Ton’s next milestone
Laura Shin: TON has obviously made a lot of progress this year, and as we discussed, there are multiple ways that this flywheel effect has begun, so what are the next milestones that you guys hope to reach?
Alena Shmalko: Yes, we have very clear and exciting milestone goals. It hopes to reach a TVL of US$1 billion by January 2025, and reach 100 million on-chain users and on-chain wallets by January of the same year. How do we achieve this in terms of TVL? Laura, you mentioned that our current TVL is over $740 million or so.
I haven't checked today's data, but it's probably in this range. As I mentioned, this growth is obviously rewarded by the incentives we provide to liquidity providers on the DEX, especially after USDT goes live. We put a lot of effort into this program because the benefits are so attractive.
We will continue to reward users for holding their liquidity on-chain while finding and coming up with new ways to channel that liquidity, as major reward programs cannot last forever and rewards and incentives will end at some point.
Our goal now is to create a very prosperous and diverse DeFi environment where people see more opportunities to direct their liquidity within the ecosystem, such as lending protocols, Perp DEXs, DEXs, yield farms, liquidity staking etc. We are working closely with existing and new teams on TON and just concluded a hackathon in which we attracted over 1,000 teams to participate.
Jack Booth: To be exact, over 1,200 teams applied to participate in the hackathon.
Alena Shmalko: Yes. Many complex DeFi products are about to be launched because our foundation is very good. We have good coverage in terms of DEXs, Perp DEXs and lending protocols, but we definitely need more use cases.
This is exactly where the Open League is headed as a major initiative. We will continue to offer rewards, but do so very sensibly and learn from the experiences of other chains, especially those that have attracted large amounts of liquidity and then experienced significant drops. So the main effort now is to ensure that this does not happen on the TON chain. Then there are a lot of social activities, Jack, you can introduce this part.
Jack Booth: Regarding the community aspect, we have the TON Society. The TON Society is our grassroots sports structure, which is somewhat similar to the British sports management method. You have some small regional teams who work hard to find and cultivate athletes. Talent.
The idea is to foster projects and events regionally and locally to get people engaged and informed about blockchain in local spaces, and to do so in multiple regions around the world.
TON Society currently has nine regions around the world and will expand the suite to five additional regions in the next six months. This means more local events coming to people’s areas, which we hope will also lead to more decentralization.
We hope that more leaders will rise through the TON Society ladder and eventually launch their own projects or independently contribute to TON's ecosystem goals.
TON Society is very important to us and will be a core focus that we will spend a lot of time on over the next six months. TON Society also organizes Open League hackathons and training camps.
We will conduct a new round of bootcamp and hackathon in October. This hasn't actually been announced yet, so this is a little reveal for those who stuck around until the end. The last hackathon was a huge success. It's great to see all these teams now contributing in the TON ecosystem.
On Friday, 23 teams prepared and presented their projects for a chance to win a $2 million prize. These teams will go directly from the hackathon to the Open League, and if they win in the Open League, they will start earning rewards and attracting users.
The Open League is really trying to attract users into new projects, which is very exciting for the project because we've seen the number of project token holders in the Open League increase 13 to 15 times since it started in March. I think there were about 120,000 Jetton holders at the time.
Jetton is the token standard on TON, similar to ERC-20. Now, we have over 1.6 million Open League token holders, so Open League is really a catalyst for people to join and become users of new projects, which is very exciting, and it also increases competition in the ecosystem.
These new teams from the TON Society will enter the Open League and become major projects on TON.
We also have this path on the developer side. So we not only build a foundation on the user side, but also work hard on the developer side to help them transform from Web2 developers to Web3 developers on TON. This is also a focus of our community.
