The blockchain of TON continues to attract the attention of the crypto market thanks to the success of the numerous gaming projects developed on top of it.
Since the beginning of the year, the chain has recorded an increase in TVL of over 550 million dollars, driven by the appreciation of Toncoin and the expansion of the tap-to-earn narrative.
Let’s delve into this article on the best decentralized applications for locked capital and the most popular games of the moment.
TON blockchain: crypto gaming sets the rules
The narrative of crypto gaming continues to besiege the Ton blockchain, with numerous mini apps emerging every day on Telegram, attracting more and more on-chain activity.
The ease with which these games are developed, their relatively low weight, and the simplicity of access are among the factors that led to their popularity in 2024.
Think that until March of this year, the cryptographic activity on the Ton network was almost low, with few capitals settled and few exchanges between users.
In the last 6 months, however, the growth of the gaming meta on Telegram has led to a real boom on the blockchain.
At the peak of the chain’s success, the TVL exceeded 770 million dollars while the daily trading volumes in TON approached the threshold of 1.5 billion dollars.
Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON?volume=false&developers=false&chainTokenVolume=true
The positive impact on the Ton blockchain caused by the mainstream spread of mini apps focused on gaming is also visible from the data regarding active users and transactions on the network.
In fact, if until February 2024 the 7-day average of active users on Ton was around 30,000 units, from May onwards we have not dropped below the level of 200,000.
The maximum of August 1st marks a value exceeding half a million users: a true success for a last-generation layer-1.
Even on the blockchain transactions front, the positive impact of the gaming sector is clearly noticeable. Until the end of 2023, the 7-day average of daily tx has almost never exceeded the limit of 200,000 requests.
With the advent of 2024, the numbers have increased dramatically: already from January, under the wake of the success of Notcoin, the Ton network experienced the first overload of activity.
On that occasion, the record of 7.7 million transactions was reached, with the metric remaining high up to the present day, with various bull and bear movements.
The hype phase for tap-to-earn crypto gaming continues
Among the myriad of mini gaming apps developed on the Ton blockchain, those connected to tap-to-earn practices with economic incentives draw particular attention.
The users in the crypto world are indeed constantly searching for opportunities to earn money, sometimes without wanting to invest resources to achieve the goal.
These projects allow participation in the distribution of an airdrop, simply by “clicking” on specific buttons and participating in free social tasks.
On one hand, the game gains users in record time, on the other hand, the user gains a share of the prize at stake, a true win-win for both parties.
In recent months, the engagement for this type of gaming application has reached very high levels on Ton, thanks especially to the popularity of the social media Telegram.
Ecosystem Spotlight: how @ton_blockchain is driving Web3 mass adoption and onboarded 1,000,000 users in a single day$TON is showing remarkable progress in the Web3 space, fueled by its integration with Telegram Mini App Games and impressive growth across the board.
Let’s look… pic.twitter.com/PC16MyNbgJ
— Lunar Strategy (@LunarStrategy) August 21, 2024
In particular, the tap-to-earn games that have received the most hype since February are Hamster Kombat, Notcoin, Catizen, Dejen Dog and Tapswap.
Among these, Hamster Kombat is the one that has absolutely brought the most numbers, boasting a top active user base of 200 million units.
Even Tapswap, with 56 million users, has achieved remarkable success, bringing the gaming narrative on Ton to high levels.
Catizen is currently one of the games with the most expectations, given the TGE around the corner and the 10 million users who have quickly taken the application by storm.
Honorable mention also for Dogs, which although not being a tap-to-earn, has all the characteristics of games with token incentives.
This one is about to launch its own token DOGS on all major exchanges, airdropping 73% of the supply to users who participated in the game on Telegram.
Among the exchanges preparing to list the cryptocurrency is also Binance, which for the occasion has launched a launchpool program for its customers.
The listing is scheduled for Monday, August 26.
https://twitter.com/binance/status/1825940220807618802
The best projects for TVL developed on TON
Within the Ton blockchain, we do not find only the meta of crypto gaming: the cryptographic ecosystem is continuously expanding and presents various use cases.
Not by chance, the 3 best decentralized applications of the chain for locked capital (TVL) belong to the DeFi sector and have nothing to do with Telegram games.
According to the data from DefilLama, the DEX STON.fi is currently the project that sees the most wealth in terms of value deposited on the platform.
The exchange, which allows the exchange between TON and other cryptocurrencies, has a TVL of a whopping 238 million dollars.
In second place we find another DEX, DeDust, which is close to the top seed with 219 million dollars.
Both dapps have seen a downsizing of over 30% in the last month, reflecting the recent bear of the Toncoin currency.
Despite this, they maintain a good share of daily volumes and still present various growth opportunities. Especially in a context of infrastructural development for the Ton blockchain.
Closing the podium of the best dapps in the crypto ecosystem is Tonstakers, a liquid staking platform that offers a yield on the TON deposited by users.
In this case the TVL is 214 million dollars, decreasing by 7.7% compared to the last month of trading. The decline is not due to user withdrawals but rather to the retracement of TON which in the same period saw a drop of more or less the same percentage points.
Among the other interesting projects to mention, we find Bemo, Cygnus Ginance, EVAA Proocol, Stakee, Storm Trade, Hipo, and Megaton Finance.
To highlight the positive momentum of Cygnus Finance and EVAA Protocol, which have brought a lot of activity to the blockchain.
Source: https://defillama.com/chain/TON?volume=false&developers=false&chainTokenVolume=true
