Written by: Frank, PANews
TON ecosystem MEME project DOGS has recently become a hot commodity in the market. Many mainstream exchanges such as Binance, OKX, Bitget, Bybit, Gate.io, etc. have announced that they will soon launch DOGS token trading. Among them, OKX and Bitget have already started pre-market trading of DOGS. This situation is rare before, especially since DOGS is a MEME project that has only been created for more than a month. Many people believe that DOGS will soon replicate the grand occasion of Notcoin and bring considerable new users to major exchanges, which has triggered a scramble among CEXs to list the token.
Give up the click game, Telegram users can directly receive airdrops
DOGS is a dark horse in the TON ecosystem since July. Unlike “click games” such as Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, DOGS does not require users to participate to obtain points to determine the airdrop share. Instead, it directly determines the number of points through an algorithm based on indicators such as the user’s Telegram usage time and activity.
This free airdrop naturally quickly attracted the attention of the community, and within less than 10 days of its launch, it attracted more than 10 million users to the community channel. As of August 22, the number of users of the channel has exceeded 16 million, ranking fourth among Telegram's global channels.
In addition to the unique airdrop calculation method, DOGS is also the project with the fastest airdrop distribution speed among the recent Telegram ecological mini-games. According to the official announcement, the DOGS airdrop application period will be extended to August 23, and the TGE and listing will be held at 12 noon UTC time on August 26. In contrast, the TGE time of previously popular mini-games such as Hamster Kombat and tapsswap has not been announced after attracting user interaction for several months. Hamster Kombat was even exposed by Russian media for internal strife in the team, and the article was deleted later.
According to the official announcement, the total amount of DOGS tokens is limited to 550 billion, 81.5% of which belong to the community (no lock-up period), 10% are used for the team and future development (12-month lock-up period), and 8.5% are used for CEX and DEX liquidity and listing-related activities.
The market value after listing may exceed Notcoin
With the announcement of the token plan, mainstream exchanges such as OKX and Bitget have also launched pre-market trading of DOGS. As of August 22, the pre-market price of OKX was about $0.0032. Based on this price, the market value of DOGS may reach $1.76 billion. If this market value can be maintained until the token is launched, it will exceed the market value of approximately $700 million when NOT was first launched. And it will directly enter the top 50 of the crypto market value. According to official data, there are currently 43 million users who are eligible to receive it. The top-ranked user can receive 23,787,023 tokens, which may be worth more than $76,000.
But this price is not ideal for some DOGS holders. In addition to claiming DOGS through airdrops, users can also purchase DOGS through Telegram’s built-in points Stars, and the exchange rate is calculated based on the exchange rate of 1Stars = 1DOGS.
The price of 1 Star is about 0.01932 USD. According to this price, investors who directly purchased DOGS through Stars have lost 83%. However, the official seems to have compensated this group of people who tried it out. Of the 81.5% of the airdrop, 73% will be given as normal airdrops, and the rest will be used to reward traders, sticker creators, and future community members. The official direct sale of coins has also aroused some doubts in the community. In response, the official said that 100% of the proceeds from using Telegram Stars to purchase DOGS points will be donated to charities, and the specific charities will be selected through community voting.
Major exchanges are doing everything they can to attract users
Since the beginning of this year, the mini-games in the TON ecosystem have allowed the market to see the potential brought by the 900 million users behind Telegram. Since Notcoin successfully launched on Binance in May and attracted market attention, click-based mini-games such as Hamster Kombat and tapsswap have successfully attracted a large number of users, and the popularity of DOGS has also triggered a wave of listings on major exchanges. The main reason behind this may be the optimism about the new users brought by Telegram.
According to Colin Wu, “Notcoin’s listing has attracted tens to hundreds of thousands of new users to each of the first- and second-tier exchanges, mostly from Russian-speaking CIS countries.” In the current market where there is a lack of hot spots, this level of user growth has become a size that cannot be ignored by each exchange.
However, for click games such as Hamster Kombat and tapsswap, although the number of users has achieved a huge breakthrough. Hamster Kombat announced that its number of users has exceeded 300 million, but the airdrop plan is still far away. The main reason is that there were no restrictions on the volume-brushing robots during the initial design, making it difficult to identify the number of real users. The project team has also postponed the project several times, saying that more time is needed to deal with the technical problems of the airdrop.
In addition, the market is skeptical about users who are attracted purely by clicks, questioning whether the users attracted by this mechanism really have purchasing power and can bring real funds to the crypto market. This statement has also been confirmed by senior executives of the exchange.
He Yi, co-founder of Binance and head of Binance Labs, said in an AMA: "We have recently cooperated with some Web3 projects on cross-games, attracting 1.3 million users, but only 56 of them became trading users because they mainly came for the free money."
The DOGS airdrop method, which is calculated by the depth of Telegram users, is considered by the community to be able to bring in a more valuable user base. In this regard, Mike, the founder of GoPlus, commented on X: "Dogs' airdrop corresponds to the depth of TG usage. Users do not need to click, but only need to check their TG to get the airdrop. Through this simple and direct method, the distribution of Dogs' coin holders is closer to the distribution of TG's core users, that is, those who hold more coins are more likely to be real TG users. These users will go to Binance to sell coins, and Binance can evaluate whether TG is an effective channel for new users, thereby determining the subsequent support for TG or the Ton ecosystem."
Perhaps because of the above reasons, all exchanges have high expectations for DOGS. In addition to simply listing the token, they have basically launched special activities to attract users. Binance launched an activity to obtain DOGS tokens by staking BNB and FDUSD. OKX launched DOGS pre-market futures as early as August 5, and Bitget launched a forwarding activity with a total of 13,600 TONs. Bybit launched an activity where new users can get 150,000 DOGS by depositing. Faced with such a competitive landscape, Gracy of Bitget Exchange said in the community: "DOGS's traffic is really huge", "It seems that Binance can't sit still."
Currently, 20 million users have connected their wallets and 43 million users are eligible for airdrops. As of August 22, DOGS officially announced in the community that more than 8 million verified users have requested to deposit their $DOGS directly into exchanges and Telegram wallets. Notcoin's previous data showed that 11.5 million users hold tokens. DOGS seems to be about to break this record. Faced with such a good opportunity to attract new users, it seems reasonable for various exchanges to be impatient.
