Author: 0x1331, TON Foundation Researcher

Dear TON community members, we have just successfully concluded an amazing 2024 TON Shenzhen Developer Conference. This event was created by the TON Foundation and supported by many well-known institutions and communities, including TownSquare Labs, TON xFans, OpenBuild, Techub News, MetaEra, Kenetic Capital, Shenzhen University Chain Association and Shenzhen Blockchain Technology Application Association. In this exciting conference, participants have deeply discussed the innovative technologies and product forms of Telegram & TON ecosystem, and jointly painted an exciting blueprint for the future.

We were fortunate to have invited many industry leaders in the TON ecosystem to give wonderful speeches.

TON Foundation — Vivi

First, Vivi opened the speech. Vivi said that the TON ecosystem is booming, attracting many games, e-commerce, and life service projects, which cover the experience of different stages from Web2 to Web2.5 to Web3. Recently, many game applications with hundreds of millions and tens of millions of user bases have emerged, which not only capture the lasting attention of users, but also show extremely high user stickiness.

These applications not only build sustainable business models centered on user demand and payment, but are also actively exploring advertising-supported profit models. It is worth noting that the user groups attracted by these applications are mainly ordinary users in non-Web3 fields, highlighting that the "fat application + thin protocol" model centered on user demand is gradually becoming the focus of the market.

By providing a gaming experience and seamless user interface that is in line with popular habits, Telegram and TON are working to lower the threshold for traditional users to transition to blockchain projects, thereby promoting the mass popularization of encryption. This strategy not only accelerates the acceptance of blockchain technology by traditional web2 players, but also injects new vitality into the TON ecosystem, heralding the in-depth integration and widespread application of blockchain technology in the Internet industry.

TON is also steadily expanding its influence in the crypto space, especially in the stablecoin market. Recent data shows that the authorized issuance of USDT on the TON chain has increased to approximately US$580 million. This significant milestone has promoted TON to the sixth largest blockchain platform in the world in terms of USDT issuance. TON is by far the fastest growing network among all the networks that support USDT. This trend not only reflects the market’s trust and demand for the TON platform, but also reflects the maturity of its underlying infrastructure and the expansion of its user base.

TownSquare Labs: Universal Accounts: Realizing Chain Abstraction in the TON Ecosystem

Then, Maxwell from the TownSquare Labs team brought us a solution for implementing chain abstraction in the TON ecosystem. TownSquare Labs is the official partner of the TON Foundation and is committed to promoting the construction of TON's technology ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific region.

The essence of chain abstraction is to solve the problems of fragmentation and degraded user experience caused by the parallelization and modularization of multiple chains in the current web3 industry.

Looking back at IT history, several large-scale technology adoptions were driven by user interface innovations. In 1973, Xerox PARC launched the graphical user interface (GUI), which realized the interactive experience of what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) in the operating system, and promoted personal computers to enter thousands of households; in 1993, the first web browser Mosaic was released, allowing ordinary computer users to access the World Wide Web, promoting the popularization of the Internet; in 2007, Apple released the iPhone, which opened the prelude to the mobile Internet era with its simple and intuitive touch-screen operation interface. The success of each product is inseparable from the shielding of the underlying technical details, abstracting a friendly user interface to impress consumers, and realizing the large-scale application of new technologies.

Maxwell believes that the current web3 ecosystem is experiencing a narrative shift from Fat Protocol to Fat Account. The traditional Fat Protocol narrative emphasizes that the underlying protocol will capture most of the value, motivating VCs and project parties to invest a lot of resources in duplicate infrastructure construction, resulting in liquidity fragmentation and deterioration of user experience. The Fat Account narrative is user-centric and provides solutions including customizable fees, social recovery, permission management, liquidity aggregation, fast confirmation, and better privacy protection.

The integration of Telegram and TON is the iPhone moment in the web3 field. With Telegram's 900 million user base, TON has been based on large-scale application scenarios since its inception. Telegram has built-in custodial wallets including @Wallet and self-custodial wallets TON Space. Users can seamlessly experience DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi, etc. Ecosystem participants can also enjoy revenue sharing from advertising, creation, and physical goods transactions through incentive plans. Due to its privacy-focused product genes and open platform ecology, Telegram is also the user entrance for many public chain applications besides TON, and is naturally suitable for bridging the gap in user experience between web2 and web3.

Currently, the account abstraction natively supported by TON can realize functions such as fee-free transactions and customized fee tokens, which greatly improve the user experience, but it is still not enough to solve the current fragmentation and user experience problems. TownSquare Labs has launched a chain abstraction solution based on the TON ecosystem, Universal Account, which will bring major feature upgrades to the TON ecosystem, including full-chain accounts, full-chain gas abstraction, full-chain liquidity aggregation, etc.

Imagine that users only need to hold the private key of Telegram's local self-hosted wallet to control accounts on other blockchains to initiate transactions. The transaction fees can be based on stablecoins or customized tokens, or paid by a third party, and enjoy liquidity from the entire chain.

The scenario of large-scale adoption of web3 in the future will be when users are insensitive to the complex underlying infrastructure, just like web2 users today do not need to care about which cloud service provider the server behind the Internet application they visit is deployed on, or what technology stack is used. In order to achieve a better user experience, it is necessary to build and integrate a series of infrastructure including the application layer, permission layer, matching layer and settlement layer. And this future is exactly the direction that TownSquare Labs and many web3 practitioners are striving for.

Kenetic Capital: "Thoughts on TON cross-chain bridge architecture"

Then, Liang, co-founder of TON xFans & chief researcher of Kenetic Capital, summarized three solutions for implementing cross-chain bridges, namely atomic swap, lock casting/unlock destruction, and liquidity replacement. Among them, lock casting is a common implementation solution for current Layer2 projects.

Liang also elaborated on the core ideas and related contract codes for realizing the cross-chain bridge between TON and EVM chain. Its core modules include the bridge contracts on the EVM side and TVM side, as well as the bridge service that bridges the contracts on both sides.

Liang also introduced the TON Layer 2 expansion solution invested by Kenetic Capital - Atlas Protocol, which has now opened testnet and cross-chain bridge services and is expected to be officially launched on the mainnet in the second half of the year, supporting developers to seamlessly migrate Ethereum applications to the TON ecosystem.

Junlv: "Thoughts on TON Ecosystem Entrusted Investment"

Then, as a speaker, Jun proposed and discussed the topic of "Thoughts on TON Ecosystem Delegated Investment". In his speech, Jun made an in-depth comparison between traditional funds and crypto-delegated funds, analyzed the user characteristics of different ecosystems, and proposed an innovative idea of ​​establishing a mini-fund similar to ETF in the TON ecosystem.

Jun first elaborated on the significant differences in management methods, transparency, liquidity and risk control between traditional funds and encrypted entrusted funds. It is pointed out that traditional funds usually have higher management fees and lower transparency, while crypto-mandated funds achieve higher transparency and lower management costs through blockchain technology, and have higher liquidity.

Jun analyzed the different user characteristics of the Telegram ecosystem, Solana, and Ethereum ecosystems. Telegram ecosystem users tend to be social and instant messaging, and focus on privacy and security; Solana users are more concerned about high performance and low transaction fees; Ethereum users are mainly interested in decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts. These differences provide important references for the design of investment products in the TON ecosystem.

On this basis, Jun introduced and elaborated on Blackstone’s two ideas for BTC spot ETF. First, Blackstone ensures the security and legality of the fund through strict supervision and compliance measures; second, they achieve stable returns and low risks through flexible investment strategies and risk management. These successful experiences provide valuable reference for the fund design of TON ecosystem.

Jun finally proposed the product idea of ​​establishing a multi-currency spot ETF mini fund in the TON ecosystem. The fund will provide investors with a more convenient and safe investment option through a diversified investment portfolio, matching the low-risk and medium-return of the TON ecosystem and a flexible entry and exit model. This innovative idea has received great attention, and Jun looks forward to working with all parties to jointly promote the realization of this innovative model and inject new vitality into the TON ecosystem.

TONARK: "Discussion on the technical path and use cases of ZK Oracle on TON"

Finally, TONark co-founder Chris talked about their technical path to implement ZK Oracle on TON. Chris said that ZK Oracle can not only replace traditional oracles to provide price feed functions, but also because of its zk characteristics, it can ensure the accuracy of its price feed and avoid liquidation risks caused by malicious attacks.

ZK Oracle can also effectively avoid the leakage of KYC information. Through zk calculation, the core information can be hidden while achieving decentralization and the data does not exist on the chain. There is no need to upload to any server, and verification can be completed locally. The risk of KYC leakage is greatly reduced, so that more users are willing to accept KYC.

At the same time, the Tonark team has also made corresponding designs for the recently popular TON game sector. Due to the immutable nature of zk, it is impossible to gain benefits through plug-ins. ZK Oracle can verify the authenticity of game events and social interactions without leaking specific data. It can help project parties analyze user data. At the same time, in some heavy computing environments, off-chain calculations can be performed to ensure speed while reducing costs.

Chris also said that ZK Oracle will first be used in the decentralized lending protocol on TON developed by Tonark, which will be officially launched in the near future.

The summit attracted many developers, entrepreneurs and investors from the Web3 field, and everyone's enthusiasm far exceeded our expectations. TON has taken a different approach and has become a shining star in the Web3 world. The packed venue shows the vitality that TON has brought to the blockchain industry. TON's vision is no longer an unattainable dream, but a rapidly growing ecosystem and expanding technological boundaries.

I sincerely thank every participant for their active participation. Let us work together with this passion and ideal to jointly create a bright future for Telegram & TON!