After Trump's victory, Bitcoin broke through $76,000, and the bullish trend is prevailing, but the most beneficial for the entire industry ecosystem growth is the altcoin season, and the industry is looking forward to more abundant growth. In the short term, we can see that the tokens in various tracks are closely following the market sentiment restart. Among these tracks closely following the market, the "TRON ecosystem" is still closely watched by investors.
Since the Durov Paris incident two months ago, the TRON ecosystem has fallen into a crisis, or entered a new adjustment stage. Although the various meme projects and mini-game projects in the ecosystem are constantly doing user acquisition and updating activity information, market-sensitive people seem to have felt the "limited faith" in the TRON ecosystem.
For example, from the market feedback, SOL has quickly rebounded and broken through $200 following BTC, but the increase in TRON is far less than that.
So for TRON, what is the most beneficial in this industry-focused election event? In Trump's top 10 promises for cryptocurrencies, we can find some answers. In the promises, we see that not only are there measures for Bitcoin, but more measures will represent the "unblocking" of the US dollar economic system for the cryptocurrency industry in the future, which will be a panacea for the long-obscured Telegram and TRON.
Under the smooth background expectations, if the market continues to rise, what specific development expectations can we have for TRON?
Favorable development background for TRON
Before Durov's news, the growth of the TRON ecosystem was strong. Led by the several-fold increase in TRON tokens, the majority of the ecosystem's DeFi tokens have increased by around 10 times. In addition to the token price increase, the attention is even more outstanding. First, various CEXes competed to list Notcoin before its launch to attract new TRON ecosystem users, and then DOGS once again mobilized the enthusiasm of all Telegram users, representing a huge market base. As long as the market rebounds, the rebound of TRON ecosystem tokens is bound to keep up.
It's just that under the past two months of sluggish conditions, the decline in TRON tokens has led to a decline in the ecosystem's TVL, DEX trading volume, and other data along with the cooling of enthusiasm.
But when we understand TRON from the perspective of long-term growth of the public chain, we may find that the current data performance is the data that inevitably appears in the process of public chain growth. This can first let us not worry about losing TRON's position in future public chain competition, but continue to look at TRON with a long-term perspective.
Just like the development trend of DEXes, the user education of the entire industry is paving the way for high-speed public chains like TRON.
On October 28, according to SolanaFloor, the weekly trading volume of Solana DEXes reached $15.78 billion, 77.91% higher than Ethereum's $8.87 billion, setting a new record high over Ethereum. As a result, Solana's share of total DEX trading volume reached 35%, a new high.
At the same time, according to data from The Block and defillama, the spot trading volume ratio of DEXes relative to CEXes reached 14.12% in October, a new high since May 2023.
This trend is constantly confirming a trend: with the popularity of high-speed chains, the boundary between user trading behavior on DEXes and CEXes is becoming increasingly blurred.
Under the multiple trends of mature on-chain liquidity supply, on-chain token market capitalization management, and the prevalence of small and medium-sized projects, as well as the comprehensive impact of the increasingly blurred user trading scenarios, we will ultimately see user behavior change: more trading behavior and interactive behavior will return to on-chain native trading and exchange, or trading behavior with DEXes and Web3-style interaction as the main approach.
Compared to the current hot spots in the infrastructure of various chains, TRON itself is an ecosystem where the boundary between DEXes and CEXes is more blurred. Its Web2 interaction mode first blurs the trading categories, and the TRON wallet on Telegram further lowers the entry threshold for Web3 native trading to Web2, which means simpler and more convenient on-chain native trading, or possibly exceeding the current level of trading convenience on Solana.
We can imagine that in the Solana environment, excellent DEXes can achieve a surge in trading volume in the short term. For example, Dune data shows that the Solana ecosystem DEX aggregator Jupiter has a total trading volume of nearly $334 billion, while Uniswap took several times longer to reach $100 billion.
In addition, the token price of Raydium, the most active DEX on Solana recently, has performed remarkably, maintaining an upward trend even as BTC, ETH, and most altcoins have pulled back. This fully demonstrates the stable advantage that DEXes and DeFi can have in token price fluctuations.
With such a development path, TRON already has the infrastructure and development ideas, it just needs a spark.
The growth history of public chains
TRON has been very eye-catching at the beginning of this cycle. But in the uncertain cycle rotation today, TRON is unlikely to have the previous time advantage and external momentum like Ethereum and Solana. Stabilizing, maintaining the improvement of the infrastructure, and waiting for opportunities to explode seems to still be the main task for TRON, just like preparing for the 2024 cycle development for a year.
Tracing the growth of Ethereum and Solana can find a clear development path for TRON.
First, for the economic model of a public chain to enter a positive cycle, the core is the continuous occurrence of transactions, representing the occurrence of all possible on-chain interaction behaviors.
On Ethereum and Solana, the behavior of DEXes and DeFi occupies the mainstream, all of which are brought by users using DApps. So the development idea of bringing rich and diversified application types to the ecosystem is suitable for TRON.
Summarizing Ethereum and Solana, they have experienced these steps:
1. Rapid increase in the number of ecosystem project tokens
Simply put, it is to take advantage of the good cycle, a large number of ecosystem projects issue tokens, and list on DEXes or start DeFi businesses.
Ethereum started this stage in 2018, and formed a wave before the DeFi Summer, which included the appearance of Uniswap, the emergence of various wallet applications, the issuance of tokens by various EVM projects, DEXes, and DeFi to stimulate business growth.
Solana appeared as a challenger to Ethereum during the DeFi Summer, and the early ecosystem was driven by a large number of project token generation events (TGEs) by the foundation. Even though the chain was not perfect at the time and there was not much on-chain interaction, Solana's stimulation to the ecosystem has been ongoing, and the impact of the SBF incident has not completely stagnated.
At the beginning of this cycle, the token volume in the TRON ecosystem has surged, and the token heat and price increase have also been eye-catching, which is very similar to the corresponding stage of Ethereum and Solana.
2. Growth of DeFi TVL
The most direct impact after the large-scale ecosystem project token TGEs is the TVL. The native applications of public chains are all related to token trading, and DeFi categories occupy 90%, so the token listing on DEXes and the opening of DeFi businesses will bring staking, so TVL data is the second necessary data for public chain growth.
The first pool of staked funds will be the addition of trading pools for each token listed on a DEX. If there are DeFi business interactions such as lending and staking, this will also necessarily generate token staking, which is the second basic action for TVL growth. Incentives such as token airdrops, mining, and staking interest will be the stimulants for this action.
Ethereum experienced about a 100-fold increase in TVL during the DeFi Summer, driven by the double stimulation of TGEs and the skyrocketing of DeFi tokens. In the later stage, as the price rose, the TVL soared again. Solana's growth in this part all came from the ecosystem heat in 2023 and the airdrops and TGEs of ecosystem projects in 2024.
In the past half year, TRON's TVL has risen to $700 million but has not broken through $800 million before starting to pull back, which is the result of the cooling of ecosystem enthusiasm. At the same time, just like Ethereum and Solana, it needs to return to enrich the ecosystem application projects after the first growth, and Ethereum and Solana took another 2 years, how long will TRON take?
3. Accumulation of Richness in DEX and Defi
Ethereum and Solana have completed the accumulation of richness in 2 years, one in the 2018 bear market winter, and the other in the retreat of the heat after the Defi Summer.
At this stage, Uniswap V1 on Ethereum matured, MakerDAO and AAVE appeared, Cruve and Compound started, and SushiSwap also quickly followed up, with Farm-type mining projects appearing one after another. These projects all contributed to the maturity of DEX and Defi, and by the second round of application development, DEXs like Uniswap had iterated at least two versions, and Defi like AAVE had expanded from a single chain to almost all EVM-based chains.
In the process of accumulation, Solana also saw the emergence of DEXs like Raydium and Jupiter, as well as a large number of Defi projects that stake SOL tokens, so the maturity of these applications is necessary, as they represent more convenient and faster use of business for users, which will lock users' real money on the public chain.
The maturity of TON is still early, with DEX functions relatively simple and a small number of Defi. The first step before the explosion opportunity is to increase the diversity and maturity of Defi.
The First Step of TON's Growth
Over the past year, TON has experienced the first growth in the number of ecosystem project tokens, with a large number of tokens and small and medium-sized projects starting to list, airdrop, and IEO, followed by a rapid growth in TVL, but after this TVL and price decline, the heat has dropped, and the ecosystem projects will also be affected as a result, and in the future, trust needs to be rebuilt. At this time, more concrete help is needed for the diversification of the ecosystem, which requires the maturity of DEX and Defi.
In reality, TON is also at this stage, which is the first step of TON's growth.
We can see that the DEXs of Ethereum and Solana have become very mature through the cycle, so how is the situation of TON now? How much difference is there, and where is the difference?
TON's performance and pressure resistance are the only ones among all the public chains that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Solana, but the DEX of TON's ecosystem is not a good match.
Telegram has built-in a centralized trading pool to complete the deposit of stablecoins and TON, and then complete the exchange of TON and other tokens, with an operational experience consistent with the flash exchange of CEX. This function is the first function of Telegram's Wallet, and the second function is to interact with the on-chain wallet TONSpace, with an experience basically the same as using MetaMask on PC and mobile. If you need to exchange tokens, STON and Dedust are more commonly used in the ecosystem, but the functions are basically similar to Uniswap V1.
This reflects the shortcomings of TON in DEX. If Telegram Wallet takes on the CEX experience, TONSpace and DEX can interact on PC and mobile, and Telegram's MiniApp and Bot will also be the trading front-end for DEX or CEX functions. These designs satisfy the optimization of the trading experience, but the part of the native on-chain interaction is obviously lagging behind.
If the DEXs on Solana and Ethereum can only provide simple AMM pools and exchange capabilities like Uniswap V1, the richness of Defi on Ethereum and business on Solana will be reduced by at least 50%.
On Ethereum, most of the Defi is an extension of the financial scenarios outside the DEX function, and it was not until the initial iteration of Uniswap's design of AMM LP that Ethereum's Defi had more new businesses or directly copied business models (based on liquidity mining, deposit interest, upgraded to multi-liquidity pool counter-hedging, etc.), and it is the same on Solana, where LP in DEX and specialized liquidity platforms as advanced liquidity providers are now one of the best options for asset holders.
Therefore, from the perspective of project development, for the high-speed public chain DEX, the key is to provide trading liquidity, or to modularize the trading function, so that the advantage of liquidity becomes the reason for users to choose.
And for the trading on TON, its front-end entry must exist in large numbers within Telegram, the DEX still needs to increase the refinement of the business like Jupiter and Balancer, to achieve the balance of all users, whether users, token providers, liquidity providers, or platform developers, each role needs certain refined functions to cooperate.
Compared to DEXs like Uniswap, Balancer, and Jupiter, the DEX on TON has already become a potential necessity to develop in the direction of supplementing the DEX function or supplementing the Defi function.
The currently known on-chain trading middleware project LayerPixel has already launched the first step of DEX function repair PixelSwap based on Balancer's function, and for DEX, airdrop is the fastest way to attract users. In the new round of actions, LayerPixel said that PixelSwap has started the airdrop plan, and the TGE time of its token PIX is set for Q4. Facing the current changes in the TON ecosystem, PixelSwap may still be able to steadily advance like Raydium in the short term.
LayerPixel is a DeFi solution designed for Telegram Mini App, which can realize the seamless integration of Defi and Telegram Mini Apps. The official calls it TON's Layer 1.5. It can provide a modular combination of functions including wallet, DEX (multiple trading algorithms), oracle, etc. PixelWallet focuses on account abstraction, and Pixacle can provide fast and accurate price data for DApps and smart contracts within the ecosystem.
PixelSwap is a DEX based on weighted pools, with the same functionality as Balancer, supporting the LBP asset issuance method, and this type of Dutch auction issuance method is suitable for small and medium-sized projects with low FDV, which are the most common in the Telegram ecosystem, such as games/GameFi projects, which is why it can supplement the Defi demand of the TON ecosystem, and the LBP asset issuance method is more convenient for small and medium-sized projects to complete token issuance in the early stage and maintain a relatively reasonable trading price.
During the rapid development and growth period, the ordinary DEX is the mainstream, but once it enters a downward trend, the price of tokens in the DEX is more difficult to make a market compared to the CEX. At this time, the more refined the design, the more it can achieve a win-win situation, for the B-end, it is more suitable for control, and for the C-end, it also makes the unofficial LP in the DEX more like the mature LP in the centralized exchange, can actively guarantee the return on capital and isolate risks, as well as price stability.
At this point in time, when the growth has seen a pullback, this type of DEX appears just right.
In addition to PixelSwap, the liquidity sharing between TON's DEXs and the possible formation of a liquidity hedging structure between various Defi also need to be stabilized. Nowadays, after the issuance of project tokens, they cannot establish staking mining or multi-type deposit finance in most Defi.
One of the reasons for the rapid increase in the locked-up amount of tokens on Solana is that lending projects, staking and restaking projects are all following the popular projects to increase the project, such as Marginfi and Meteora on Solana, which have actively added token pools for almost all new tokens on Solana, although most tokens do not have financial income, but the platform provides point or airdrop expectation incentives, which also makes investors store a large amount of assets to gamble on the airdrop expectation. TON can do the same and have the same effect.
In the End
Before the Durov incident, our expectations for TON were very high, but the decline in ecosystem heat has made ecosystem projects and investors suffer, but this is a familiar rhythm in the industry, and there are always investors who persist in the project in a surprisingly long time, and whether the next ignition opportunity is in the future, a week or a few months, it is the time left for the builders to enrich the ecosystem.
At this stage of TON, users and projects will gradually realize the difference of the new DEX and new functions, or they may also discover one day that new DEXs like PixelSwap have already attracted a large amount of TVL and established a large number of staking pools, which will indicate that the ecosystem is ready for another round of growth, ready to cope with the growing trading volume, the continuous issuance of new projects, and the rapidly increasing number of liquidity pools and liquidity mining.
