Original title: Apps on the TON Blockchain Have Become Extremely Popular. Is It Sustainable?
Original source: Unchained
Original translation: Ismay, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: This episode invites Alena Shmalko, head of the TON Foundation ecosystem, and Jack Booth, marketing director of the TON Foundation, to discuss the current status and future prospects of TON. The two talked about how the open league can help TON increase TVL and other key indicators, and how Telegram’s collaboration with TON has evolved and deepened over time.
In addition, the discussion also touched on the mechanism of Notcoin and the reasons for its success, as well as whether the rise of games like Hamster Kombat can continue. The importance of USDT in the TON ecosystem and its contribution to the growth of TVL were also highlighted. Jack mentioned To the upcoming trustless bridge to Bitcoin, he explained its possible importance and whether TON has plans to integrate with applications other than Telegram.
TL;DR
1. TON was originally created 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 team of developers, attracting a large number of investors through the promotion of gamification mechanisms and reward programs. Users and attention.
2. Although the cooperation between Telegram and TON is limited, the relationship between the two has gradually become closer over time, especially in the Mini Apps and wallet integration launched on Telegram. However, TON still operates independently, and some countries Users 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 adopted the game mechanism of Tap To Earn and quickly attracted a large number of users through viral communication and recommendation system. In addition, its reward mechanism stimulated user interest and participation. Although these games successfully attracted a large number of users in the short term, users, but the long-term user retention and continued popularity of the game remains to be seen.
5. USDT plays an important role in the TON ecosystem, providing a stable digital dollar option that enables 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 decentralized Bitcoin asset to 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 ways to reduce the reliance of rewards on TVL to ensure the long-term sustainability of the ecosystem. steady development.
The following is the original content:
Ton's origins and milestones
Laura Shin: Today's topic is the recent rise of TON. We have invited Alena Shmalko, head of ecosystem at 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 on a strong run since the end of February. Its TVL has grown 34 times to about $750 million, and its price has also risen from about $2 to about $7 at the time of writing, 5 The number of daily active addresses in January and June even exceeded that of Ethereum. And there are many interesting games such as Hamster Kombat and Catizen that are gaining attention. In addition, the well-known crypto venture capital firm Pantera Capital announced its largest ever investment in TON. The largest investment. But before we dive into these latest developments, let’s talk about your background. Alena, can you first talk about your role and how you came to TON, and then we’ll hear Jack’s story.
Alena Shmalko: Okay, I'd love to. First of all, thank you very much for having us. It's a pleasure. Speaking of myself, I have a few years of experience in the crypto space, initially involved in some startups, in some operational roles, and later I started running my own Web3 startup accelerator. It was during this process that I got connected with TON because I had the opportunity to learn about cryptocurrencies at a broad and high level, and engage with different blockchains and ecosystems. As a result, I chose TON because, in my opinion, it has the greatest potential among all other L1 and L2, and that’s why I joined this ecosystem and now I am the head of the ecosystem, responsible for supporting startups built on TON. company.
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 for a startup in the UK. When the epidemic broke out, I lost my job and received a government subsidy. I invested the money in Bitcoin and had a very interesting crypto journey. This small investment doubled in a few months, and I thought, what a magical world this is, so I decided to start in 2020. He started his career in the crypto space in 2017, first working at Oasis Protocol and then joining TON a few years later.
I am very happy to be working on TON and very pleased with the development of the ecosystem. What we are seeing now is that through tap-to-earn games, many games are allowing new users to earn cryptocurrency for the first time. This reminds me of my first The feeling of getting into the crypto space when I bought my first Bitcoin in 2020, when you first own a little cryptocurrency, you start to understand what it means, why it’s important, why it’s a Interesting thing.
This is not something you can easily explain to someone, and I think that’s what TON and our ecosystem really contributes to the whole space, by giving people some initial cryptocurrency, they start to get interested and excited and start to understand What ownership on the blockchain really means. That’s exciting for me, and for the millions of people who are playing these games right now. That’s my background, and why I’m so excited to work here. Very excited.
Laura Shin: So let’s talk about the origin story of TON. TON was launched by the company behind the messaging app Telegram, which conducted a $1.7 billion ICO in 2018. However, most listeners probably know this story: In 2019, the SEC A temporary restraining order was obtained to prevent Telegram from selling or distributing the tokens originally planned to be called GRAMs, and later court negotiations with the SEC were unsuccessful. As a result, the final result is that Telegram parted ways with the blockchain, but a group of developers in The decision to launch its own blockchain was made in March 2020. So, can you tell us about the progress of this effort and how TON has developed to where it is today?
Jack Booth: Yes, of course. Several of those developers won a competition to gain access to the keys to what was then called the Telegram Open Network, an open source software. That network was nothing like it is today, and those The developers have grown it to its current high-capacity, high-scalability state, which was not there when they took over.
The initial two developers formed a loose organization called NewTON, and they attracted other developers who were passionate about building TON and became core developers. Then in 2022, the TON Foundation was officially established, and it has been a Growth period.
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 done by the core developers, which was actually a catalyst for TON's growth.
Our integration with Telegram’s internal wallet means you can send crypto as easily as sending a text message in a DM. You can send TON, Bitcoin, USDT, and now Notcoin, instantly and for free using the wallet inside Telegram. The wallet is integrated into Telegram’s settings menu and is now available in all countries where Telegram users are located outside the United States.
In the next few years, most Telegram users will have a TON Wallet in their Telegram menu, which is a transformative collaboration for us and the entire ecosystem. This is our first milestone.
The second milestone was the launch of Notcoin earlier this year. Notcoin was launched globally on New Year’s Eve and grew rapidly, reaching 20 million users within the first month. This really made us understand, and the entire market understand Telegram’s distribution capabilities are real.
This integration has attracted attention because it has introduced millions of people to the crypto space. Although it is not a full-fledged cryptocurrency at the mining stage of Notcoin, it has given people a taste of earning some kind of yield through a simple mechanism and potentially having a future. The concept of return generated interest.
The third milestone I want to mention is the launch of Open League in March this year. Open League is the main catalyst for the growth of our on-chain metrics. It is a competition among the best projects on TON, and it is a competition for projects to acquire new users and It provides rewards to users who use these projects. This is a great competition project and one of the results of my close collaboration with Alena over the past six months. It currently accounts for about 60% of TON's daily active wallets, which is a great boon to our on-chain has made a significant contribution to the growth.
Laura Shin: Okay, Alena, do you have anything to add?
Alena Shmalko: The current role of the TON Foundation is to support this growth, especially supporting founders and builders in our ecosystem. As Jack said, we started with the initial core development team and now include people from the business We have a team of people in different fields, such as marketing teams, who are also responsible for promoting the blockchain brand. But our main task is undoubtedly to further enhance and support the various tools, projects and initiatives we launch for teams building on the chain. This growth.
Talking about Open League, this is an important project in the current ecosystem. It contributes about 60% of the users on the chain and about 15% in terms of TVL, which is, as you mentioned, growing very fast. Swift.
Open League is an open competition for TON teams, and the coolest thing is that you don’t need years of development experience, just build a Telegram Mini App on TON, implement some on-chain mechanisms right away, join the leaderboard and win big prizes.
These awards are distributed directly to the team on a quarterly basis. A quarter usually lasts about two to four weeks. At the end of the season, the team will receive these awards, which are similar to a grant that can be used for marketing, product development, or airdrops for the community. It's pretty remarkable, and it's something we haven't seen in any other ecosystem. These rewards are for major contributors to the growth of the ecosystem, really from projects that we build with, and that we support.
In addition, we have launched an incentive program 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 largest contributor to TVL growth. We are very much looking forward to future growth, and now our task is to maintain this growth and bring this value and Mobility leads to a variety of different plans and projects.
The relationship between the Ton Foundation and Telegram
Laura Shin: Before we dive into the changes over the past few months, I would also like to get some details about the foundation. Who are the main members of the TON Foundation? How did they get to their current position?
Jack Booth: The main members include Steve Yun, who is the chairman of the foundation. He was actually one of the early community members of TON, and was involved even before the SEC issue came up. So he has been pushing for the establishment of An official non-profit foundation that brought together the core developers and started hiring on the growth side, such as Alena’s team, including ecosystem development, developer relations, and my marketing and business development team.
There are five directors now, and I am one of them, responsible for the market. Our mission is to achieve the goal of the TON ecosystem, which is to allow everyone to own cryptocurrency. We have a very ambitious goal to achieve 500 million by 2028. Bringing 500 million Telegram users onto the blockchain.
Laura Shin: What is the current number of Telegram users?
Alena Shmalko: 900 million users per month.
Jack Booth: Yes, 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 would like to ask more about the relationship with Telegram. As we just mentioned, TON was originally initiated by Telegram, and then due to the SEC's actions, TON developed into an independent project. However, in September last year, Telegram chose TON as The only encrypted network built into its app, how did this happen?
Jack Booth: Actually, Telegram had already developed on TON before this. They bought fragment.com, which is a major use case of TON. On this platform, you can buy and sell social media usernames as NFTs for the first time. Actually own and use it. They had built this platform and seen it succeed, netting $150 million in NFT username sales. It was a very successful project, and then they naturally started working with the TON Foundation and TON Blockchain is engaging in more cooperation and trying to establish a close relationship that is beneficial to both parties.
For Telegram, this is helpful for them because we are helping them grow the Mini Apps ecosystem.
Telegram has an open third-party Mini Apps program, and anyone can come and build a Telegram Mini App. And for us, this helps the distribution of our project, because our current project is building Telegram Mini Apps, these applications Now distributed on a large scale to the Telegram user base.
Pavel Durov announced in his channel a few days ago that they will create an app store within Telegram and promote Web3 applications for TON. We are very excited about this, we don’t know the details yet, but I guess it will be the main The part of the user interface where you can find applications, Mini Apps, and use them directly within Telegram.
Nikolai Durov and Pavel Durov are the creators of the TON whitepaper, 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, then they integrated the wallet, and now they continue this This is a collaboration to try to integrate more ways for blockchain to actually interact with the Telegram app.
Telegram also uses TON for creator payments. You can advertise on Telegram by paying TON, and then the owner of the Telegram channel will also receive TON payment. 50% of the advertising revenue belongs to the creator.
Telegram is looking for multiple ways to work with TON, and we are not directly involved in their decisions on how to work with them, they are more like a third-party developer. In fact, the only part where we really work with them is the wallet integration, and we jointly decide how it will look and feel. Way of working.
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 does Pavel and Nikolai Durov hold?
Jack Booth: I'm not very clear about this question, so I can't comment or answer the specific number, but I don't want to be wrong.
Laura Shin: Okay, but even if you guys are working on this decentralized network, because it’s focused on this particular application, you mentioned that you’re primarily responsible for the wallet, but there are no other integration points or partnerships. , it feels like there should be fairly regular communication and cooperation, right?
Jack Booth: Actually no.
Alena Shmalko: Yes, we get most of our news from Durov's channel like everyone else, right Jack, we just follow his channel and learn something new.
Jack Booth: Yes, that's true. For example, the news that they use Toncoin as payment for the advertising platform, I also learned about it from Pavel's channel.
This was huge news, and we had no idea about it, no one knew about it. They didn’t discuss anything with us at all, in fact they only talked to the wallet team because the wallet was the only real integration point. And this was not Our team is a completely different company called TOP (The Open Platform), which is responsible for running the wallet, operating STON.fi, one of the DEXs on TON, and many other great TON projects. TOP investment and construction.
So frankly, as a foundation, we don’t get a lot of information from Telegram. Even when Pavel announced USDT on TON at the TOKEN 2049 conference, we knew it was going to happen, but we didn’t know he would announce Telegram stickers. The TON blockchain will be launched at the meeting, as well as other things he mentioned at the meeting. So, although there is cooperation, it is mainly on the wallet side, not on our foundation side. 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 TOKEN 2049 conference, which was also a complete surprise. Although we knew that USDT would be launched on TON, the other news was a complete surprise. There's the upcoming app store that Jack mentioned, but we don't have any details on that either.
There is also a separate team building the Telegram App Center, which they have been working on for over a year, and it is now the main directory of TON apps, not only Web3 apps, but also Web2 apps. It is still the place to discover different apps on TON. The main path, we certainly strongly recommend exploring it.
One more thing to add is that Telegram Mini Apps are still the main way to integrate different Web3 elements into the messaging app.
We also learned about Telegram stars, a new in-app purchase method, where Web2 developers can now learn more about cryptocurrencies by withdrawing their earnings as Toncoin. They let users pay with Telegram stars, but developers withdraw The income is Toncoin, which is like the revenue sharing for community creators and channel owners mentioned by Jack, and is a way to guide more people into the crypto field.
Laura Shin: Hearing 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 have another question, the current TON block Chain is very focused on the Telegram platform, but do you have plans to integrate into other applications?
Jack Booth: That’s a good question, do other chains have plans 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 also an open platform with millions of users. An open platform with millions of users.
Therefore, we chose and pursued a strategy of placing our application frontend inside a messaging app that will always be around. We hope that Telegram will continue to grow, just like other chains that rely on Google Chrome and Chrome extensions as their frontends. The same platform.
We want to put our apps in a place where they can be easily shared, so that they can become very viral and easy to use. Telegram’s Mini Apps platform makes this very easy to do. So we encourage projects to launch there, As the main interface for interacting with the blockchain in the Telegram Mini App, this does not mean that they cannot create a website.
The DEXs we have now, like STON.fi and DeDust, they both have Mini Apps, but they also have websites that can be accessed through any web browser, so I think it is more of a platform choice issue, I wouldn’t say this makes TON is centralized by relying on Telegram because it is just another interface on which applications can be displayed.
This makes life easier for app developers, as they don’t have to develop a full app themselves and then have users download it. Instead, you just tap a button in Telegram and the Mini App pops up, allowing users to start messaging right away. Use it without downloading anything and without leaving the Telegram app itself.
We made these choices and strategic design decisions because of the user onboarding challenges facing cryptocurrencies. Getting people to set up an exchange account, fund their account with their bank account, then install a Chrome extension and sign in with their exchange account It’s just too hard to fund your wallet and start participating in the blockchain, learning the different steps and nuances of each chain.
On TON these problems do not exist. You can start using any application, you don’t need anything, and then you are educated step by step in the process, and finally you create a wallet, which can be created in just two clicks in Telegram, and then It will then be permanently in your settings menu.
By the end of the year, most users who have Telegram will already have a wallet in their settings menu, which makes the registration process very painless and adds virality to all apps, which is why we see so many users now on The reason Telegram uses TON apps internally is because it is a better design decision.
Laura Shin: Yes, there is a real convenience advantage to doing this. Even though I am in the US, I can access some of these features.
Jack Booth: That was lucky.
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 is very clear is its distribution capabilities, which is what we have discussed today. Of course, TON is very scalable, thanks to its inherent architecture, and it is very fast. We set a speed of 100 million last fall. Record.
Laura Shin: Yes, can you tell us more about the architecture and speed?
Alena Shmalko: Yes, thanks to sharding, which is the main element of the architecture, the TON blockchain is considered one of the most scalable, and we are continuing to work on further improving scalability. , probably in October or November, we hit the fastest record, 100,000 transactions per second. Jack, correct me if I'm wrong.
Jack Booth: 104,700 transactions per second, that's the highest record.
Alena Shmalko: This is done in an isolated environment, and we still need to improve this in a real environment. There are many teams working on this problem now, and as Jack said, TON's distribution capabilities are unparalleled. You can't find anywhere else where you have so many people in one place at the same time. So we have 900 million monthly active users all in one place, 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 focus only on the Telegram Mini App. This can essentially be seen as an onboarding tool, Developers can build a Telegram Mini App to attract users on Telegram, and then guide them to the original web application, because all our DeFi protocols, including DEX, started as web applications, and they continue to Working in this space, as people are used to participating in DeFi using a browser, rather than through the Telegram Mini App.
A new example is BLUM, a hybrid trading platform for building cross-chain, multi-chain products, focusing mainly on TON, and they are now attracting users through a very simple click game. There is no core functionality in this application yet, But they have already introduced millions of users to Mini App through very simple and easy-to-use mechanisms. Then they will educate these users and guide them into more complex areas such as trading on the chain, cross-chain swaps, etc.
Ton's mini-game ecosystem and conversions
Laura Shin: So now let's talk about these Mini Apps, or games, because that's what all the buzz is about on Telegram. The first really popular game you mentioned is Notcoin, which is a clicker game. But for those who are less familiar, especially in the U.S. because 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 did a great job. The reason it became popular is very simple, it's virality. They had a referral system and incentive mechanism from the beginning. If you are an application If you can master these two concepts and promote them on Telegram, you will find thousands of users.
I say this without a doubt and it’s all because of the referral mechanism in Telegram. Notcoin’s referral process 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 I make a list of people and they will receive a referral link which at the time will earn me Notcoin.
Now, all tap-to-earn projects have copied this referral mechanism. It’s extremely powerful because the friend who receives that link can jump right into the game with just one tap. No need to deal with wallets, no need to set up anything, no need to download new apps , everything opens up immediately.
Virality is the first element, and then the incentive mechanism. Another project that is bigger than Notcoin is called Hamster Kombat, where you are the CEO of your own cryptocurrency exchange platform.
Unlike Notcoin, in addition to click-to-earn, they also include a click-to-earn mechanism where you can use these coins to buy things that are profitable every hour. The airdrop of HMSTR tokens will be based on the profit every hour, which is interesting and it is more Like a measure of engagement, how engaged are you in the game, and your hourly profit is basically reflected in that.
In Telegram Mini Apps, virality and incentives are key. If you can introduce these in a simple, fun way that keeps people engaged and coming back every day, your app will reach millions. This is a very simple truth and it has been proven 10 or 15 times in different projects.
Laura Shin: I wanted to ask you about the quality of these users, because honestly, this viral recommendation mechanism reminds me of FarmVille on Facebook.
Jack Booth: Yeah, I used to play FarmVille.
Laura Shin: Right? At the time, the game was very popular on Facebook, and the mechanics were very similar. But in this case, Notcoin seemed to attract a lot of users who didn’t necessarily stay long-term or didn’t play very often. Similarly, Hamster Kombat In the first three months, it attracted 200 million users, an achievement the team hopes to record in the Guinness Book of World Records. Its YouTube channel gained more than 10 million subscribers in a week and currently has 34 million subscribers. But as far as I know, This is largely to earn tokens, and users need to watch these videos. So this reminds me of the question we see over and over again: are these users loyal or are they just "mercenaries" chasing short-term benefits? If there is more Good incentives, will they leave immediately? What do you think about this?
Jack Booth: I can answer that and then I'll let Alena go. Projects have two choices, they can launch the project and then expect users to join automatically, or they can build a community first and then work hard 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, building a community around the incentive first, which is different from past airdrops. In the past, in order to qualify for the airdrop, you needed to take a series of steps, such as opening an account, getting the Chrome extension, etc. This method eliminates the need for a community to participate in the airdrop. After completing these steps, you can directly do something valuable for the project.
Take Hamster Kombat, for example. They designed a system to get people to subscribe to them on YouTube. What was in it for them? Apparently, it brought in hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in advertising revenue.
So a really great thing that happened here is that the community was built first, and they were very interested and excited about the project, especially after the mining phase. The mining phase is only part of the launch, and it is not related to Unlike many crypto projects that have high fully diluted valuations and low circulation, most of the tokens here are airdropped to the community at the beginning, and then the community decides whether they like the token and the project.
Notcoin has transformed into providing traffic for new projects. Projects must use Notcoins to purchase this traffic. Therefore, Notcoin is now practical in itself. Other projects may choose the traffic route or a completely different route.
For example, BLUM, which Alena mentioned, is a completely different case because they have already delivered their product roadmap, and they have stated that the click-to-earn phase is a phase, after which they will become a trading platform. As for the utility of the tokens they offer , it's not clear yet, but they chose 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: Many people speculate that a significant portion of these users are bots. In this case, do you think this is real activity?
Alena Shmalko: I can answer this question. According to official statistics, such as the one recently released by the Notcoin team, they announced that more than 30 million people played the game before the TGE and the token listing, 35 million to be exact, and 11 million people have received Notcoin, both in on-chain and off-chain accounts. Now Notcoin has more than 2.4 million on-chain holders, 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 received Notcoin overall received it both on-chain and off-chain, so the conversion rate is about one-third. One, that is 30%.
Laura Shin: Or if you calculate it from 11 million to 2.4 million, maybe 20%.
Alena Shmalko: No, 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 their accounts on the exchange. So 11 million people, we can say that is a conversion rate of one in three, 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 not just a clicker game but has implemented on-chain mechanics from the beginning.
Unlike Notcoin, which was implemented on-chain after the TGE, Catizen has been an on-chain game from the beginning. According to an article by CoinDesk, their conversion rate is around 6% to 7%, which is much higher than the market average. , proving once again that games on TON are possible even before TGE and token launch.
Based on these numbers, we are doing pretty well. Of course, there is still a lot of room for improvement. But it all depends on how well the teams set and design their complex roadmaps and show the community that they will continue to build interesting and entertaining games after the TGE is over. Or launch a trading bot, task platform or e-commerce platform, as Catizen plans to do.
We at the TON Foundation and others in the ecosystem are also committed to supporting them, Open League is a great example as we reward users for participating in other products and protocols in the ecosystem. For example, players of Notcoin, Gamey, or Catizen can now You can go to DEX to earn a lot of rewards and points.
It’s amazing 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 this growth, which is what we’re currently working on.
Laura Shin: USDT was launched on TON in April. There is now $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 of what this is, which is a conversion funnel.
The funnel is to convert Web2 users, people who don’t care about crypto, into Web3 users. I think this is what most blockchains and people in the space are trying to do in their own way.
We start from the most basic principles. If there is a potential market of 900 million users, we hope that they will do some on-chain activities, but we cannot force them to do it. We need to guide them. Therefore, click-to-earn is to get people involved and generate interest. An easy way for , let’s put some crypto in their pockets via airdrops.
As I said at the beginning, now I am a token holder, a holder of a project, I am interested and excited about it. And then we have Open League, which is the next step... Or, before Open League, we had USDT, which is now a digital dollar, which I can send to anyone in a private message globally for free and instantly. This is a global product, and if I have their Telegram, I can Use it to pay anyone.
Laura Shin: When you say global, does that include the United States?
Jack Booth: No, not the United States.
Alena Shmalko: I mean wallets through Telegram excluding the US, but you can use USDT on the TON chain through any browser extension like Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet, Tonhub and other self-custodial wallets.
Laura Shin: I assume, I don’t know if I understand it correctly, that Telegram and TON have been affected by regulatory issues in the United States, especially the SEC. If the situation at the SEC changes, will this restriction be lifted?
Jack Booth: Of course. The problem is that Telegram and TON were 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, we may reconsider. But currently, wallet integration within Telegram is not available to US users by default unless there is a significant change in US regulatory attitudes.
Alena Shmalko: It's not just the United States, there are other countries that can't use this wallet, such as North Korea and other sanctioned countries. I would like to add this point to be fair. However, a very important point is that Laura, you mentioned You are in the United States and cannot access certain features. This refers only to the wallet features. This is important. 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 the TON chain Just like using Metamask on Ethereum, this also works on other chains.
Laura Shin: Yeah. So, Jack, go ahead and describe your conversion funnel.
Jack Booth: Oh, thanks for reminding me. The wallet experience in Telegram is really nice, it pops up in Telegram, and you can store your Bitcoin, Notcoin, and USDT there, and you can send them instantly to friends around the world for free. , which is an excellent first step for anyone to get started with cryptocurrency.
When you start with click-to-earn, you may not necessarily want to participate in the complexity of DeFi, and the wallet in Telegram is the first step to attract people to start understanding. Oh, now I can send money to my friends in Telegram, it's very easy.
Then we have Open League, which is very easy to introduce to people. It's actually also in the Telegram self-custody wallet, and you can easily access the Open League pool through the Open League bot and start participating in providing liquidity for some of the projects in Open League. This is the last step, and usually there are more participants. We have click-to-earn for everyone, and then some people can convert to sending cryptocurrencies around the world in private messages, which is very easy.
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 strategy of the foundation is to help make that happen. We think this is the most effective route, we see ways that we can optimize the entire funnel, and we work with the community team and contributors to do that, and we see it's working. So we're excited about continuing to develop along that route.
Laura Shin: Yes, there is also an aspect about the trust bridge that users can use 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 do this. What happens when.
Jack Booth: I don’t actually know if I can reveal the release date, it’s still too early. But it will definitely be coming soon. I’m very excited about it because for me, this will be the next big thing after USDT. Assets are also the next focus in the user pool after tap-to-earn.
We believe Bitcoin can become a USDT-like asset in the TON ecosystem, it can grow very quickly, and we will do our best to help it achieve this. It is very valuable to the DeFi ecosystem inside TON because we suddenly have A Bitcoin asset that is 100% backed by Bitcoin assets on the Bitcoin chain is created. This asset is bridged to TON through trust, which is basically a better version of wrapped Bitcoin. This is a trustless wrapped Bitcoin. It is a version of the Bitcoin blockchain that does not involve an intermediary between the Bitcoin network and the TON network. It uses the validators of the TON network itself to verify the Bitcoin ledger.
So nobody holds the keys, everything is done through smart contracts. It's a completely trustless and transparent bridge, and unlike many other bridges on the market right now, it's 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 the TON DeFi ecosystem, allowing people to better utilize their Bitcoin through lending protocols, the DEXs we have, liquidity pools, and even Maybe more complicated situations. So yes, the bridge will be online very soon, definitely this year. We are very excited about it.
Laura Shin: Yes, it seems 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 want to ask about the Fortune article that mentioned The article also cited a criminology professor who said, “Creating a Telegram account is easier than creating a Facebook account.” He also said, "Telegram is now a paradise for criminals."
So I'm wondering if we've talked about ad networks where people can earn ad revenue from their content. Can criminals on Telegram also earn ad revenue from their content, and they can pay with cryptocurrency, or they can TON wallets are used to pay for illegal goods. I would like to know how the Foundation views these issues and whether there are any ways to prevent or mitigate the use of the TON network or TON wallets for illegal activities.
Jack Booth: Yeah, I think that's a legitimate question, and it's a legitimate question that we need to address at some point. We're focused on how to bring Web3 to the masses, and that's the focus of all our team's work. And so on, this happens on every chain. This is 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 Doing criminal transaction AI analysis, looking for these types of wallets and providing them to the authorities, and working with Telegram's wallet team to actually eliminate this activity.
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-run, and these things happen there, and they are A problem, but it's actually the project that enables the problem to stop the illegal activity from happening. If it happens in a wallet, then it's up to the wallet team to deal with this, it's up to the compliance team of the wallet.
This is why Alena mentioned before that outside of the United States, there are other countries where users cannot use wallets, such as Iran and other sanctioned countries like North Korea. There is no service in these countries and users cannot use wallets. So these are needed There is no centralized team to solve the problem. For our foundation, we just focus on supporting the construction of the Web3 ecosystem.
Alena Shmalko: Yes, as you said, it is always a joint effort of different independent teams, for example we as TON Foundation and then Telegram, which plays an important role here. By the way, Telegram has not been There have been no formal charges, but people have always pointed out that Telegram presents this risk from the beginning.
The wallet team and project team can work with specific marketing and PR companies to run their advertising campaigns. Of course, their review team will never allow any advertising about illegal products. This is the responsibility of each team. It's good because there's no single actor responsible for making sure this type of activity never happens. It's a joint effort and we're certainly working on that.
Ton's next milestone
Laura Shin: TON has obviously made a lot of progress this year, and as we discussed, there are a number of ways that this flywheel effect has begun, so what are the next milestones you hope to reach?
Alena Shmalko: Yes, we have very clear and exciting milestones. We hope to reach $1 billion TVL by January 2025 and 100 million on-chain users and on-chain wallets by January of the same year. How do you 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 incentivized by the rewards we provide to liquidity providers on the DEX, especially after the launch of USDT. It's very attractive and we put a lot of effort into this plan.
We will continue to reward users for holding their liquidity on-chain while looking for and proposing new ways to bootstrap this liquidity, as the main incentive programs cannot last forever and the 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 bootstrap 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 where 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. A lot of complex DeFi products are coming online because we have a good foundation. We have good coverage in terms of DEXs, Perp DEXs and lending protocols, but we definitely need more use cases. This is exactly Open League is the direction of the main initiative. We will continue to provide rewards, but we will do it very reasonably and learn from the experience of other chains, especially those that have experienced a large drop after attracting a lot of liquidity. So the main effort now is It is to ensure that this does not happen on the TON chain. Then there are a lot of community activities, Jack, can you introduce this part?
Jack Booth: Yes, now on the community side, we have TON Society, TON Society is our grassroots sports structure, a bit like the way sports are managed in the UK, you have some small regional teams, they work hard to find and cultivate The idea is that we want to foster projects regionally and locally, hold events to get people involved and informed about blockchain in their local space, and do this in multiple regions around the world.
Currently, TON Society has nine regions around the world and will expand to five more regions in the next six months. This means there will be more local events coming to people’s regions, and we hope this will also bring more people to Centralization. We hope that more leaders will rise through the ladder of TON Society and eventually launch their own projects or contribute independently to TON’s ecosystem goals.
TON Society is very important to us and will be the core focus where we will invest a lot of time in the next six months. TON Society also organizes the Open League hackathon and training camp. We will have a new round of training camps in October. And a hackathon. It hasn't actually been announced yet, so this is a little reveal for those who stuck around until the end. The last hackathon was very successful. Seeing all these teams now contributing to the TON ecosystem That's great.
Last Friday, 23 teams prepared and presented their projects for a chance to win $2 million in prize money. The teams will move directly from the hackathon to the Open League, and if they win in the Open League, they will start receiving rewards. and attract users.
Open League is really working hard to attract users to new projects, which is very exciting for the project as we have seen a 13-15x increase in the number of project token holders in Open League since it started in March. It is thought that there were around 120,000 Jetton owners at the time.
Jetton is the token standard on TON, similar to ERC-20. Now, we have more than 1.6 million Open League token holders, so Open League is really a catalyst for attracting people to join and become users of new projects, which is very It’s 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 on the developer side to help them transform from Web2 developers to Web3 developers on TON, which is also a focus of our community. .
