TON has finally landed on Binance. From now on, the TON ecosystem has the largest liquidity pool in the market as the value support of the ecosystem.
However, if we look at the overall situation of the TON ecosystem, it is still an ecosystem that is hot outside but still in its early stages. It is difficult to find potential project targets in such an ecosystem, and we cannot "look for swords on the boats" or follow the map. Abandoning the complicated methods, if we follow the simplest selection logic of "attention economy", in this article, we will try to find potential projects through the "open league" of the TON ecosystem, or use it to find the growth inertia of this early ecosystem.
Basic background of TON
The TON ecosystem started to grow at full speed after the Dubai Summit.
First, the price of TON tokens stabilized at around $7 after a correction. Subsequently, Notcoin attracted millions of users, was successfully listed and simultaneously landed on all centralized exchanges, triggering a new round of "Click Summer" and creating a development benchmark for the TON ecosystem. Under the high praise of practitioners, in June, the price of TON surged to a maximum of $8.2, which made everyone have higher expectations for the future development of the TON ecosystem.
Notcoin has a viral ability to attract fans, and has successfully spawned a niche track called Clickcoin, but this track seems to only exist on Telegram and TON, and is very dependent on Telegram interactions. Therefore, Notcoin's phenomenal performance also fully reflects TON's influence on the entire cryptocurrency industry.
For this reason, almost all centralized exchanges are listing Notcoin tokens at the same time to compete for precious new user resources. The listing results are also obvious. The trading volume of NOT tokens ranked first in the currency arrangement in the pull-up stage, and also ranked among the top in the daily stage. The excellence of the token traces the "value" back to the price and ecology of TON, and a new high of TON has been achieved.
Before TON tokens were listed on Binance, the locked-in amount in the ecosystem had exceeded 700 million US dollars, and the token market value ranked in the top ten. In this cycle, the concept of "full circulation" is popular, and the more competitive data is that TON's circulation volume is much higher than other public chains, and the circulation rate accounts for nearly half of the total. A small change in the token price can lead to a large change in the overall market value, which also makes some users have expectations for TON's future ranking (currently 8th).
In the past two years, TON has also laid the foundation for its ecological development under high circulation and relatively precise market value management. Therefore, these achievements today can be said to be the result of TON's long-term operation and precise control of the rhythm. It also proves the long-termism of the public chain ecological growth and some key factors necessary for ecological growth.
For example, at the beginning of the article, we mentioned that TON began to accelerate its growth after the Dubai Summit, which is closely related to the pace of the TON Foundation's promotion of the TON League competition.
In early March 2024, TON started an open league to promote ecological growth, but first conducted a test season lasting about one month, and then another one-month official season. The results were remarkable, the number of project participants soared, and almost most of the important basic projects and active tokens in the ecosystem were included.
From May 1st to May 15th, the second season was held. Although the season prize money decreased, it still maintained excellent data, with daily active wallets (DAW): 311,900 (+725%); weekly active wallets: 999,600 (+540%); monthly active wallets: 1,700,000 (+325%).
It can be said that TON used the two competitions to revitalize almost the entire ecosystem.
On May 15, the third season started. In this competition, some details were adjusted. The first was to support DEX tokens and Meme tokens. The second was to change the competition rules. According to the ranking list, there are more than 60 tokens involved, including projects that use their own tokens as activity incentives and general application projects. Both types of projects can participate in the A-League and the B-League, and the final list is also classified into App, token, etc. according to growth data and interaction data.
From the entire open league, it can be clearly seen that the TON team has made major progress and fine-tuned the ecosystem. In today's industry where development and efforts are unclear, rapid response and continuous efforts are the foundation of the ecosystem. This requires not only huge investments, but also the guidance of the ecosystem's heat and concentration of efforts, which will eventually form an "attention economy" that is effective for investors.
Highlights in the Open League
According to statistics from TON’s official website, the entire ecosystem currently includes more than 1,000 projects, which are divided into centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, Staking, wallets, browsers, bridges, utilities, channels, NFT collectibles, chats, social networking, games, Jettons, NFT services, VPNs, development tools, Shopping, Launchpads and other categories.
In terms of specific numbers, the number of on-chain applications is about 300, and the application types are mainly games, Bots, and Defi. This does not count the number of pure token projects such as Meme projects, and also represents the growth foundation of the entire public chain ecosystem, because applications are a stable source of token value capture.
With the recent price performance of TON, the performance of these types of applications is highly correlated, such as Dex, Launchpad, Lending, etc. For example, TON tokens soared at the beginning of the year, and TonUP tokens, which are the golden shovel attributes of the ecosystem, also completed a short-term increase of about 500%. During the competition, STON, as the main DEX, rose by about 1000% in 2 months.
Defi Token STON Price Performance
In fact, if we further classify the categories of participating competition projects, we can divide them into Meme, Defi, Gamefi, etc., but if we use a more vague classification, it can almost be divided into two categories: Defi and Meme.
The projects that have appeared in the previous competitions have achieved some results in line with their own roadmaps during the competition period, or these projects have been discovered by users and investors during the competition and have gained new opportunities for growth. As mentioned above, DeFi projects directly capture ecological value, and Meme tokens also directly use the short-term "attention economy" to assist market value management actions to increase prices.
For example, in the third quarter, Meme tokens were represented by ARBUZ, KINGY, WEB3, durev, DFC, DYOR and other projects, while Defi tokens were represented by STON, RAFF, SCALE, GRAM and UP.
In the latest fourth and fifth seasons, new projects have emerged, such as NOT representing Gamefi, REGI, COFE, TONG, and RECA representing Meme, and Defi representatives are still STON, SCALE, UP and other tokens.
Meme Token REGI Price Performance
Another obvious feature among these projects is that most of them may have cooperative relationships with each other to complete shared ecological development. For example, we have seen that Jetton, Ton Diamonds, Dedust, Tonraffles, Gram, TonUP, etc. all have various cooperative relationships. This is also the characteristic of the TON ecosystem itself: there are many small and medium-sized projects in the ecosystem, and projects that are good at sharing resources with each other to gather attention and potential will proceed more smoothly.
The future of TON belongs to the builders
The TON Foundation is the largest and most powerful promoter and builder in the ecosystem. Unlike traditional public chain teams, TON has clearly completed a long-term layout. It is the long-term construction that has enriched and developed the value of the TON ecosystem.
TON will be listed in Q2 2022. The ecosystem was very weak in the early stage, but the circulation of TON was large, while the trading volume of the exchange was not large. In the early days, there was almost no TON chain and related Telegram construction.
Today, the TON ecosystem is booming and the token market value is stable, all thanks to two years of steady progress.
First of all, TON's technical layer, the main network launch and technical stability. Secondly, the ecological construction, which is almost a long-term operation practice. Teams familiar with TON know that TON operates on both developer and ecological enthusiasm. In the past year, the investment made to stabilize the market value can also be seen from the stability of token prices. The final result is a nearly 5-fold increase in ecological value today, and there is still room for higher expectations in the future.
Similarly, in the TON ecosystem, teams that can complete long-term construction have also made great contributions. It is precisely because TON is very different from the "Ethereum system" promoted by the industry in terms of underlying language, development methods and other dimensions that the overall construction must be planned for the long term.
In the TON ecosystem, there are three types of projects. The first is the main push of the foundation, which we can find a lot on the official website. The second is incubated by large teams, such as the TOPLabs team, which has built more than 30 high-quality projects for the ecosystem, or the Asian team Microcosm Labs, which has also built more than 10 projects for the ecosystem. The third is the newly emerging small and medium-sized projects developed using public tools or open source projects in the industry.
Among the second and third categories of projects, many star projects will develop, such as the ecological projects established by these two key teams. The STON mentioned above is promoted by TOPLabs and is currently one of the most core DEXs on TON. The Notcoin mentioned above is also an unprecedented phenomenal project, also promoted by TOPLabs.
Compared with TOP, Microcosm Labs pays more attention to projects in Asia. Its main projects include TonUP, which is relatively mature and has a certain scale, and PixelSwap, which is supplementing the DEX function of the ecosystem.
These projects are very effective in capturing value because they will actively design their own routes in line with the development progress of the TON ecosystem. For example, starting in early 2024, during TON's rising cycle, the TonUP token UP completed an increase of approximately 500%, and the STON.fi token STON completed an overall increase of 3,000%.
The reason why these projects can accurately capture the value of the ecosystem, in addition to leveraging the attention economy of the ecosystem, is that the types of projects promoted by these teams are rich and their functions can not only complement each other, but can also be used by ordinary projects in the ecosystem. This is how these projects grasp the overall narrative of TON and how to closely associate the value of the ecosystem with their own projects.
Taking TonUP as an example, its roadmap is to create a "supply chain" for issuing and trading projects based on Launchpad's "Golden Shovel" business, and to achieve ecological linkage between various businesses.
Another important attempt of Microcosm Labs is the modular DEX PixelSwap, which is the first DEX on TON that supports weighted pools and can complete the LBP issuance on TON.
Currently, TonUP has launched the "Move to TON" funding program in cooperation with Pixelswap to attract and support high-quality projects and developers. The portfolio now includes SocialFi, GameFi and AI projects.
List of Microcosm Labs related projects
In addition to DEX, as shown in the figure, Microcosm Labs has also invested in and incubated several products focusing on the TON ecosystem, including games, GameFi, DeFi, etc. In addition to TonUP and PixelSwap, the specific portfolios that can be found include: DetectiveTON, Bot Gameyard, Cwallet, CCPayment, etc.
If we look at more project types, like Microcosm Labs, TOPLabs has established a very coherent business line, from the officially recommended applications Getgems and Tribute, to the essential wallet Tonkeeper, Launchpad's TonStarter, decentralized exchange STON, and liquidity supplier Tonstakers. It has built an entire business chain in the ecosystem, which is also the most basic tool for the development of the entire ecosystem.
List of TOP Labs related projects
However, the maturity of TON's entire ecosystem tools is still a certain distance away from that of projects such as Ethereum or Solana. As for TOP Labs and Microcosm Labs, the projects done by the former are closer to basic functions, while the latter is more focused on complementary function development. In other words, the two target different project users. The former shapes large projects and benchmark projects, while the latter assists small and medium-sized projects and creates a small and beautiful ecosystem. For example, TOPLabs' DEX focuses on token acceptance and the establishment of AMM liquidity pools, while Microcosm Labs promotes the construction of Pixelswap, oracle tools, and even the middleware platform LayerPixel.
Therefore, in the subsequent development of the project, Microcosm Labs will also work with other partners to provide marketing, business development, exchange listing, tokenization support and other supporting services.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of the type of team, what they ultimately add is the richness of the ecosystem and form the most stable ecological value support. Just like in early March, there were only about 500 ecological projects, of which less than 30% were actually used. Now the total number of projects has exceeded 1,000. In just 5 months, the number has doubled, and the number of tokens has increased several times. Games, Gamefi, and Defi projects are all growing steadily.
Therefore, the entire open league is like a heroic gathering of the TON ecosystem. With the help of attention, it not only attracts talents from all over the world, but also earns the "attention" of the industry. By observing the price changes of the competition items, we can see the direct "monetization" ability of the value. This is the best screening method for practitioners who pay attention to TON, and it can support both short-term and long-term options.
In September, the sixth competition will begin. Will there be new opportunities? It will be worth waiting and seeing.
