After Trump's victory, Bitcoin broke through $76,000, and the bullish trend is prevailing, but the most beneficial for the overall industry ecosystem growth is the altcoin season, which the industry is looking forward to for more abundant growth. In the short term, we can see that tokens in various tracks are closely following the market sentiment revival. 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 phase. Even though various meme projects and small game projects in the ecosystem are constantly doing user acquisition and updating their 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 of TRON is far less than that.
So, what would be the most beneficial for TRON in this industry-focused election event? In Trump's ten promises for cryptocurrencies, we can find some answers. In the promises, we see that not only 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 ecosystem 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 in the past two months of sluggishness, the decline of TRON tokens has led to a decline in the TVL and DEX trading volume within the ecosystem, which is the most worthy of consideration at the moment.
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, which can first let us not worry about losing the position of TRON in future public chain competition, but continue to look at TRON with a long-term perspective.
Just like the development trend of DEX, 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 DEX 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 chain DEX trading volume reached 35%, a historical high.
At the same time, according to data from The Block and defillama, the spot trading volume ratio of DEX to CEX reached 14.12% in October, a new high since May 2023.
This trend is constantly confirming a trend: as high-speed chains become popular, the boundary between user trading behavior on DEX and CEX 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 and interaction behavior will return to on-chain native trading and exchange, or trading behavior with DEX 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 DEX and CEX 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 cross over Web2, which means simpler and more convenient on-chain native trading, or possibly exceeding the current trading convenience achieved on Solana.
We can imagine that in the Solana environment, an excellent DEX can achieve a surge in trading volume in the short term. For example, Dune data shows that the total trading volume of the Solana ecosystem DEX aggregator Jupiter is close to $334 billion, while Uniswap took several times longer to reach a hundred billion dollars.
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, fully demonstrating the stable advantage that DEX and DeFi can have in token price fluctuations.
This development path, for TRON, has already laid the foundation in infrastructure and development ideas, just lacking a spark.
The growth history of public chains
TRON has been very eye-catching at the beginning of this cycle. But in the unclear cycle rotation today, TRON is unlikely to have the previous time advantage and external momentum like Ethereum and Solana. Stabilizing and maintaining the improvement of the infrastructure, 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 DEX and DeFi occupies the mainstream, all 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 TGE
Simply put, it is to take advantage of the good cycle, a large number of ecosystem projects issue tokens, and then list on DEX or start DeFi business.
Ethereum started this phase 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 TGEs by the foundation, even though the chain was not perfect at the time and there was not much on-chain interaction, but Solana's stimulation to the ecosystem has been ongoing, and even the impact of the SBF incident has not completely stagnated.
TRON was very eye-catching in terms of the rapid increase in ecosystem token quantity and token heat and increase at the beginning of this cycle, which is very similar to the corresponding phase of Ethereum and Solana.
2. Growth of DeFi TVL
The most direct impact after the large-scale ecosystem project token TGE is the TVL. The native applications of the public chain are all related to token trading, and DeFi accounts for 90% of them. When tokens are listed on DEX and DeFi businesses are launched, they will bring locking, so TVL data is the second necessary data for the growth of the public chain.
The first locked capital is often the addition of trading pools when each DEX lists a token. If there is DeFi business interaction, such as lending or staking tokens, it will also inevitably generate token staking, which is the second basic action for TVL growth. Incentives such as token airdrops, mining, and staking/lending interest will be the stimulants for this action.
Ethereum experienced about 100-fold growth in TVL during the DeFi Summer, driven by the double stimulation of TGE and DeFi token skyrocketing, and then TVL soared again as prices rose. Solana's growth in this part came from the ecosystem heat in 2023 and the airdrops and TGEs of ecosystem projects in 2024.
In the past half year, the TVL of TON has risen to $700 million but has not broken through $800 million and has started to correct, which is the result of the cooling of the ecological heat. At the same time, like Ethereum and Solana, after the first growth, it needs to return to the richness of the growth of ecological application projects. Ethereum and Solana took another 2 years, how long will TON take?
3. Richness accumulation of DEX and Defi
Ethereum and Solana completed the 2-year richness accumulation, one was the bear market winter of 2018, and the other was the heat retreat after the Defi Summer.
At this stage, Uniswap V1 matured on Ethereum, MakerDAO and AAVE appeared, Cruve and Compound started, and SushiSwap also quickly followed up. Farm-type mining projects emerged 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 Solana's accumulation, DEXs like Raydium and Jupiter also appeared, as well as a large number of Defi that stake SOL tokens. So these applications' maturity is necessary, as they represent more convenient and faster business use for users, which will lock users' real money on the public chain.
TON's maturity is still early, and the DEX function is relatively simple, and the number of Defi is small. The first step before the outbreak opportunity is to increase the diversity and maturity of Defi.
The first step of TON's growth
In the past year, TON has experienced the first growth in the number of ecological project tokens, with a large number of tokens and small and medium-sized projects starting to list, airdrop, and IEO, and then the TVL grew rapidly. After this TVL and price decline, the heat has dropped, and the ecological projects will also be affected. In the future, trust needs to be rebuilt. At this time, more practical help is needed for the diversification of the ecology, that is, the maturity of DEX and Defi is required.
In reality, TON is also in 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 in the cycle, so how is the situation of TON now? How much is the difference, and where is the difference?
TON's performance and pressure resistance are the only ones among all public chains that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Solana, but the DEX of TON's ecology cannot match the good horse with the good saddle.
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 operation 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 through the TON public chain wallet TONSpace, with an experience basically the same as using MetaMask on the PC and mobile. If you need to exchange tokens, STON and Dedust are more commonly used in the ecology, but the functions are basically similar to Uniswap V1.
This reflects the shortcomings of TON in DEX. If Telegram Wallet has taken 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 of 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 Uniswap V1-like exchange capabilities, 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. After the initial iteration of Uniswap's design on AMM and LP, Ethereum's Defi had more new businesses or directly copied business models (based on liquidity mining, deposit interest, upgraded to multi-liquidity pool counter-attack, etc.), and it is the same on Solana. In the DEX, when LP and specialized liquidity platforms act as advanced liquidity providers, it is also one of the best options for asset holders today.
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 with 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 in the short term, just like Raydium.
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 the "Layer 1.5" of TON. 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. This type of Dutch auction issuance method is suitable for small and medium-sized projects with low FDV, and there are the most game/GameFi projects in the Telegram ecosystem, 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 rapid growth period, the ordinary DEX is the mainstream, but once the downward trend sets in, the token pricing in the DEX is more difficult to market-make than the CEX. At this time, the more refined the design, the more likely it is to 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 rate of funds and isolate risks, as well as price stability.
At this time point, when the growth has a correction, 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 project issues tokens, they cannot establish staking mining or multi-type deposit finance in most Defi.
One of the reasons for the rapid increase in the token lock-up volume on Solana is that the lending projects, staking and restaking projects are all following the popular projects to increase the projects, such as Marginfi and Meteora on Solana, which have actively added token pools for almost all the new tokens on Solana, although most tokens do not have financial income, but the platform provides integral 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 will have the same effect.
In the end
Before the Durov incident, our expectations for TON were very high, but the decline in ecological heat has made the ecological projects and investors suffer, but this is a familiar rhythm in the industry, and there are always investors who are surprisingly persistent in the project, and no matter when 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 ecology.
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 PixelSwap-like new DEX has already attracted a large amount of TVL and established a large number of staking pools, which will indicate that the ecology has been prepared for another round of growth, ready to cope with the growing trading volume, the continuous issuance of new projects, and the rapidly increasing liquidity pools and liquidity mining.
