Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
"More than 500 people registered for the event, and the event venue, which can accommodate about 200 people, was packed. The corridors were filled with participants, and many users even spontaneously organized branch venues on the grass outside the venue, in the nearby Starbucks and KFC. Users' fomo enthusiasm for the TON ecosystem seems to bring people back to the grand ICO on Ethereum in 2017." A crypto OG who returned from the TON Shenzhen Developer Event on June 22 described to ChainCatcher.
Not only users are paying attention to the development of the TON ecosystem, but many top crypto investment institutions have publicly expressed their optimism and have already laid out TON tokens. After Pantera Capital publicly announced that it would raise funds for a new fund to invest in more TON tokens, on June 30, the founder of Kingsway Capital disclosed that the largest token currently held by his institution is TON.
Ryan Barney, investment partner of Pantera Capital, explained the investment in TON by saying that 99.9% of blockchain projects are trying to create community technology from scratch, but this is a difficult road. Telegram has 900 million daily active users, which is conducive to TON's user acquisition.
Driven by popular mini-games such as Notcoin and Catizen, the "TG+TON ecosystem" has become the new mainstream narrative in the crypto market, and a large number of Web2 and Web3 developers have flocked to the TON ecosystem in search of new opportunities.
Vivi, head of Research at the TON Foundation, revealed in an interview with ChainCatcher that there are now more than 2,000 projects scheduled in the TON mini-program store.
TON is the best way for Telegram to commercialize
TON is essentially the commercialization of Telegram, and Telegram is completing its own commercial deployment through TON.
Jerry, who has studied the traditional Internet commercialization model, explained that Telegram has actually been facing tremendous survival pressure. Although Pavel Durov founded Telegram with the original intention of providing users with a private and free instant messaging tool and regarded it as a public product, as the number of users grows exponentially, the operating costs such as servers and money transfers that need to be paid will become higher and higher, and it has to find a continuous source of income to maintain normal operations.
Since 2017, Telegram has actually been exploring its own business model, whether it is payment services, advertising, or ICO financing that was paused by the US SEC, but the final result was not ideal.
Last year, Pavel Durov revealed that the annual cost of maintaining Telegram's normal operation is about $630 million.
According to the Wall Street Journal, by April 2021, Telegram had accumulated debts of more than 100 million US dollars. Therefore, since the beginning of 2021, Telegram has publicly issued excess bonds worth hundreds of millions of US dollars many times, and in March this year, it also obtained 330 million US dollars in funds through the sale of bonds.
Telegram is often seen as the Web3 version of WeChat. From the perspective of active users, there is not much difference between Telegram and WeChat. WeChat has about 1.2 billion active users, and Telegram has 900 million and is still increasing, but their profit methods are very different.
Payment is the main commercialization path of WeChat. Compared with WeChat, Telegram will also choose payment. However, since Telegram is not regulated and cannot obtain mainstream financial regulatory licenses, it only has the Web3 payment path, and its founder Pavel Durov entered the Crypto industry very early.
Therefore, whether from a business perspective or from the background of the founding team, TON is the best choice for Telegram's commercialization.
Steve Yun, chairman of the TON Foundation, said that there is a collaborative business agreement between the TON Foundation and Telegram, similar to how Google is the default search engine on Apple devices.
"TON has unlocked multiple ways for the Telegram community to make its business profitable, shared, and grow. For example, Fragment, a virtual digital product trading market developed based on TON, supports users to trade NFT products such as virtual phone numbers and TG usernames, and has facilitated sales of more than US$350 million," Pantera Capital wrote in its reasons for investing in TON.
Regarding the relationship between TON and Telegram, Vivi, head of Research at the TON Foundation, told ChainCatcher that although TON and Telegram are two independent legal entities in terms of organizational form, the relationship between the two is becoming increasingly close, and sometimes TON can even be regarded as Telegram's blockchain department.
Since last year, TG founder Pavel Durov has repeatedly publicly expressed his support for TON and its ecosystem. The Telegram platform has provided a number of enabling measures for TON tokens, including TG advertising, creator economy, and value-added services such as Stars virtual points, which can all be paid with TON tokens.
In Pavel Durovâs recent personal TG channel, he has released TON ecosystem products such as the click game Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and the DEX platform TapSwap many times, expressing his optimism about them.
In March, Pavel Durov wrote in the channel that the Telegram advertising platform is open to all advertisers, and all owners of TG channels will receive 50% of the revenue from ads displayed in their channels, which will be paid in TON tokens.
Web2.5 product form under the combination of "TG+TON"
"TG's 900 million daily active users + TON's Web3 technology" have enabled the two to form a Web2.5 product form, which not only inherits the traffic advantage of Web2, but also incorporates the technical characteristics of Web3.
In the view of Vivi, head of Research at the TON Foundation, TON is no longer just a Web3 product. Backed by the big tree of TG, its ecological products can penetrate into various Web2 businesses.
Compared with traditional Layer 1, TON is more like a functionally enhanced Layer 1 platform and can be regarded as a Web3 product matrix based on specific Web2 applications.
In the past, Web3 practitioners mainly focused on products such as the DeFi three-piece set (DEX, Lending, and machine gun pool). However, with the increase in conference activities held by TON, more and more Web2 users have begun to build and develop various applications and projects on the TON platform, covering foreign trade, payment, e-commerce, small games, artificial intelligence tools and other fields.
With the help of TG's Mini Dapp (applet), products and business forms that have mature operating models in the Web2 world can also be realized on the TON platform. At present, there are many applications based on e-commerce, air ticket booking and hotel booking on the TON platform.
Vivian, founder of Web3 accelerator Starbase, who has participated in organizing many TON offline events, said that from the participants in recent events, it can be seen that TON has successfully produced a breakthrough effect. Previously, most of the participants in Web3's offline events were Web3 practitioners, but in TON's offline events, you will see many Web2 developers from major Internet companies and traditional game companies.
Chris, founder of TonArk, the oracle and lending protocol of the TON ecosystem, revealed to ChainCatcher that Sanqi Interactive Entertainment, a well-known company that has developed many Web2 games, has participated in the development of many small games on TG.
Andrew, the founder of TONxFans community, who came from a Web2 Internet giant, added that most of the previous Web3 products were complex in design, lacked real user scenarios, and had unfriendly user experience, making it very difficult to use encrypted DApps. Take a wallet for example, if you want to use it, you need to write down a password that is a random combination of letters and numbers. Forgetting the password means losing your assets, and most encrypted applications are operated on the PC.
The integration of TON and TG has brought Web3 into the mobile Internet era. All Web3 operations can be completed through only one TG APP and personal chat page, from easily buying, selling or managing tokens and NFTs.
The relationship between the project party and the user will also be more proactive. In previous Web3 applications, the connection between the two was one-way, and developers could only wait for users to come to Discord or the community to find them. However, for applications built on TON, developers can set up their own Telegram groups and frequencies when creating products, actively push messages to users, perform some wake-up actions, etc. The two have a more proactive two-way relationship.
Comparing with WeChat Mini Programs
The popularity of click games such as Notcoin and Catizen has ignited the TG+TON mini-program entrepreneurial boom, attracting a large number of Web2 and Web3 developers to flock in looking for new opportunities.
Andrew analyzed that both Web2 and Web3 are now facing growth bottlenecks and trying to find new growth breakthroughs. TG's 900 million daily active user base provides the basis for it to become an incremental market.
For Web2 products, TG's global market layout enables it to find new growth points in different regions; for Web3 projects, the huge user traffic pool behind TG has user demand for chain access, etc.
The co-founder of the sliding casual game Yescoin said that when the launch of the Mini DApp was announced, it meant that TG had transformed from a simple chat communication product into a super application.
In Chris's opinion, the product integration of TG+TON is simply the second WeChat ecosystem. The success of WeChat ecosystem has set a benchmark for it. The TG+TON ecosystem is just getting started, which means that there are huge Alpha opportunities hidden in this ecosystem, and early products or projects can gain huge benefits.
The user base of TG is not much different from that of WeChat, but because TG is global, its potential opportunities may be even greater than WeChat.
Vivian shared the same sentiment. She introduced that the social form of the TG product behind TON is currently moving closer to the WeChat Mini Program. In line with the WeChat Mini Program ecosystem, Web2 project parties that have had successful experience in WeChat Mini Programs, whether they are games or any products and tools for generating traffic, are suitable for transplantation to the TG ecosystem and redoing it.
TG applet supports developers to carry out a series of Web2 businesses. With the help of TON payment, even if there is no token issuance, no listing on exchanges, and no financing, the project party can still realize its own business model and monetization path. For example, it provides cross-border services, in-game purchases, and in-app advertising. Products such as the pet training game Catizen and the social product UXLINX have accumulated a large number of users in TG in the early stage.
Vivi revealed that the development cost of deploying mini-programs on TON is low, and a series of technical development documents and templates are provided, so that developers can complete the deployment without writing code from scratch. According to feedback, project parties with a Web2 background can complete the deployment of a mini-program within two or three days.
In addition, Andrew and Vivi both mentioned that TG mini-programs adopt a post-review mechanism for online release, while Tencent WeChat mini-programs adopt a pre-review mechanism. This means that to develop mini-programs on WeChat, you need to submit a series of materials such as company licenses and developer information for filing, and the application can only be released after passing the review. However, there is no need for pre-review to develop mini-programs on TG, and developers do not need to submit any materials, only a post-review system.
Loop, the founder of Builder House, a studio focused on Dapp development, has a deep understanding of this. The mini-programs on TON support uploading part of the product data to the chain, which greatly saves costs for developers. Even if problems arise, they can be quickly resolved in the TON developer community.
In addition, the TON Foundation will also provide support to outstanding project parties. For example, The Open League will provide substantial economic incentives and resource support to selected project parties. The Yescoin project selected as the winner of the fourth season of The Open League can receive a bonus of US$500,000 with its team members.
Web3 Mini Programs Become a Blue Ocean for Entrepreneurship
Vivi revealed in this interview that the number of queued projects for Mini Dapp (Mini Program Store) has now exceeded 2,000.
How can developers seize the traffic advantage when participating in the "TG+TON" ecosystem?
Vivi, Chris, and Yescoin co-Founder all reminded developers that although mini programs on TON are often compared to WeChat mini programs, in fact there are significant differences in the ecological models between the two.
Vivi said that WeChat focuses on a single domestic market, while Telegram is mainly oriented to overseas markets, and the user preferences of Telegram in different regions are also different. For example, there are obvious differences in the product models familiar to Russian and Indian users, their willingness to pay, and the depth of their platform participation.
The co-founder of the sliding casual game Yescoin has a deep understanding of this. Yescoin game users are mainly distributed in North America and Europe, and the needs of these users are completely different from those of domestic users. He gave an example, saying that a Yescoin player is a teenager from Northern Europe, and the purpose of playing the game is to value its social function, and he can chat with other players on TG while playing.
Chris, Andrew, Loop, ViVian and others reminded developers that the TON public chain is different from the familiar EVM Layer1 public chain. First of all, the development language used is FUNC and TACT, which has certain requirements on the technical capabilities of developers.
When developers enter the TON ecosystem, they need to understand that whether they are making a Web2 product, a Web3 product, or a Web2.5 product, there are differences between them, and the integration with TON will also be different.
Chris and ViVian both emphasized that developers need to distinguish between TG and TON, and the two are separate. Developers need to understand whether they want to make products based on TG or TON. Many developers actually attract customers for products made by TG, and only a certain proportion of developers will choose to access TON. If you want to develop based on TON, if you need to access the payment function provided by TON or need to use the Web3 Token economic incentive mechanism, etc., the project party needs to overcome the difficulty of TON development language.
For entrepreneurs who want to build projects on TG+TON, Kenetic Capital, a deep participant in the TON ecosystem, said that in addition to the various TAP games and socialFi games that have already been released, various projects at the protocol and infrastructure levels will gradually receive more attention and have good growth space, such as the NFT fragmentation protocol TRC404 project, the TON EVM Layer2 project Atlas, etc.
Chris agreed. Most of the entrepreneurial teams on TON are now working on application layer projects, but the application layer has become very inward-looking. Developers need to consider whether they have enough resources to make a name for themselves. For example, small games need to think about how to stand out from star projects such as Notcoin and Catizen.
At present, the DeFi and infrastructure products of the TON ecosystem are still in the early stages of development, especially DeFi applications that can carry more funds. However, due to the incomplete infrastructure functions of TON in DeFi, the development of related products is difficult and slow.
Kenetic Capital stated that, from the current perspective, SocialFi, e-commerce, and DeFi projects are the types of projects that the TON Foundation is currently focusing on.
Vivi believes that with the increase in TON ecological projects, the main task of the TON Foundation is to identify which projects are long-term projects. The foundation's support strategy is to decide what kind of resource support to provide after the project is launched. However, based on his experience in connecting with developers on the front line, he believes that developers can follow the principle of "I have what others don't have, I am better than others, I am cheaper than others, I leave if others are cheaper" when building projects.
In terms of track selection, Kenetic Capital suggests two ideas to developers. One is to quickly follow up on similar popular projects, and the other is to predict in advance the projects that will be needed in the future. Which track to choose depends on the capabilities of your own team.
In terms of technology, priority should be given to the implementation of technologies officially supported and recommended by TON. In terms of operation and promotion, full use should be made of the fission effect of Telegram ecosystem users. You can also participate in TON official hackathon competitions to obtain more support and help from the TON Foundation.
ViVian is optimistic about projects that can directly generate cash flow, such as fission tools and infrastructure. She gave an example, such as game projects with prop assets, which can directly generate positive ROI.
However, she also reminded entrepreneurs that when entering the TON ecosystem to develop products, they must first consider whether they have the ability to acquire customers independently and solve the problem of the source of the first batch of seed traffic and users.
