With the launch of the DuckChain mainnet, it is expected to accelerate the evolution of the Telegram ecosystem into a super application and open a portal connecting the Web2 and Web3 worlds.
Author: Soda
Last year, Georgios Konstantopoulos, the CTO of the well-known crypto investment institution Paradigm, complained on Twitter about the poor and fragmented experience of the existing Chain+Asset model, resonating with many crypto players.
In fact, the account model characterized by crypto-nativity is becoming an obstacle to the large-scale adoption of Web3, leading to a series of cumbersome operations when we want to achieve a simple transaction intention. For example, when I want to make a transaction on a new Layer2 or Layer1, I not only need to generate an account and save the corresponding private key or mnemonic phrase, but I also need to purchase some special assets as Gas from a CEX or cross-chain from other chains to initiate investments or trades in a new ecosystem.
It can be seen that to achieve intent, a series of on-chain operations will usually be derived. For traditional investors who are accustomed to 'fool-proof' operations, this will be a significant challenge. We see that in the early development of the Web3 world, the design of the vast majority of products is primarily based on 'making users think', meaning that users are not only the proposers of intents but also have to act as executors of those intents. The good side is that builders in the Web3 world are continuously proposing a series of 'thinking for users' solutions aimed at significantly lowering the threshold for users to access and use Web3 facilities.
DuckChain is one of them. As the first consumer Layer facility based on TON, it has innovatively proposed the concept of ISO (Initial Star Offering), allowing users to convert Telegram Stars into on-chain Star assets and participate in various on-chain interactions to bridge the user experience gap between Web2 and Web3 facilities.
At the same time, this program also brings a unique asset issuance model and user on-chain interaction model to the Telegram ecosystem, providing innovative solutions for mass adoption of Telegram users. Moreover, DuckChain is also using its series of technological innovations to capture liquidity value for Telegram in EVM systems and BTC ecosystems, providing a foundation for large-scale Web2/Web3 developers entering the TON ecosystem.
The market also recognizes the narrative direction and development potential of DuckChain. During the DuckChain testnet period, its MiniApp had over 2 million daily active users, with total transaction volume exceeding 29 million transactions, Web2 user deposits exceeding 2 million dollars, and over 1 million paid users, supported by more than 20 partners including Arbitrum and OKX.
With the launch of the DuckChain mainnet, it is expected to accelerate the evolution of the Telegram ecosystem into a super application and open a portal connecting the Web2 and Web3 worlds.
ISO program: Bringing Telegram Stars on-chain, providing a unified Gas experience
DuckChain is the first The Open Network (TON) Layer solution built on Arbitrum Orbit, defining itself as a consumption layer aimed at supporting the on-chainization of general scenario applications, bringing nearly one billion Telegram users from off-chain to on-chain.
At this stage, the vast majority of blockchain underlying systems choose their governance token as the Gas asset, so when we want to explore different on-chain ecosystems, we need to prepare Gas tokens in advance. The non-standardized Gas mechanism is discouraging users' enthusiasm for exploring different on-chain ecosystems.
To provide users with a good on-chain trading experience and simplify the complexity of on-chain transactions, DuckChain starts with the Gas mechanism to provide users with a unified Gas experience.
DuckChain's ISO program supports the seamless conversion of 'Telegram Star' in Telegram to on-chain Star assets and supports the use of these assets as unified Gas fees. In DuckChain's new mainnet, users can use various assets for on-chain activities, including TON, Jetton, BTC, ETH, USDT, and even Telegram Star. DuckChain also plans to support account abstraction functionality soon, even chain abstraction functionality, to further enhance user experience.
In fact, 'Telegram Star' is a new built-in universal token launched by Telegram, aimed at simplifying the payment for digital goods and services within the platform. Not only does it allow users to make payments in Telegram's mini-programs, but application developers can also convert it into Toncoin (TON). Holding 'Telegram Star' allows for extensive exploration within the Telegram ecosystem.
For users, the 'Telegram Star' asset supports users to purchase at any time through convenient payment solutions such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, without relying on third-party payment platforms, which aligns with the product usage habits of Web2 users and is widely accepted by hundreds of millions of Telegram users. Therefore, even for non-holders of 'Telegram Star' assets, they can easily explore the DuckChain world in just two simple steps.
Therefore, based on ISO, whether Web2 users or Web3 users will be able to seamlessly access the on-chain world, greatly enhancing the user trading experience and efficiency, and further providing a foundation for the vast Telegram user base to expand from off-chain to on-chain. Likewise, ISO has also brought a unique asset issuance model to the Telegram ecosystem, laying an early foundation for the ecosystem's expansion into broad DeFi scenarios and prosperity.
DuckChain, empowering Telegram to become a super application
With the deep integration with the TON network and the launch of mini-program features last year, Telegram's ambition to create a Web3 super application is becoming increasingly evident.
In fact, for a mature Web3 ecosystem, user traffic, good liquidity, and a prosperous ecosystem are all essential.
But the current situation of the Telegram ecosystem is:
Among nearly one billion users, the vast majority of ecological numbers are off-chain
The 300 million dollars in TVL is mainly concentrated in TON and stablecoins, indicating a lack of liquidity
The complex development framework has become an obstacle for developers to enter the TON ecosystem
Regarding the first question, as mentioned above, DuckChain's ISO program is providing a foundation for users to expand from off-chain to on-chain.
As for the latter two points, DuckChain is also helping to solve problems for the Telegram ecosystem.
An important hub for capturing liquidity in the TON ecosystem
We see that the TVL of EVM-compatible chains is currently around 80 billion dollars, while the total TVL of the DeFi market is 100 billion dollars, so we can consider that EVM-compatible chains hold about 80% of the liquidity in the on-chain world. Similarly, in this market cycle, the market capitalization of BTC assets reached 1.8 trillion dollars, with only about 240,000 BTC currently in circulation, accounting for about 1.2% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin. As a series of BTCFi applications expand, it will also unlock a larger liquidity value for the crypto market. Therefore, for the liquidity-scarce TON ecosystem, establishing good interoperability with the external market to capture liquidity from the outside is particularly crucial.
In fact, DuckChain, as the first consumer Layer based on the Arbitrum Orbit stack, can maintain good interactivity with the TON ecosystem while also maintaining good interoperability with any EVM-compatible ecosystem. At the same time, DuckChain is actively integrating with the BTC mainnet, numerous BTC Layer 2 solutions, and the Babylon ecosystem. Therefore, DuckChain is becoming an important hub for establishing value interactions and liquidity interactions between the TON ecosystem and EVM systems, as well as the BTCFi system.
Currently, in the newly launched DuckChain mainnet, through the introduction of a series of chains and liquidity abstraction solutions, DuckChain supports users to use TON as the native Gas fee while also allowing the use of various tokens for Gas fee payments.
At the same time, DuckChain is also becoming an important hub for TON users to capture yields. When users bridge TON to DuckChain or other EVM networks through DuckChain, the locked TON will be staked in the PoS protocol to earn yields.
This setup provides annual returns and significantly promotes liquidity in TON, allowing large amounts of capital to flow freely between TON and DuckChain. During the DuckChain official token generation event (TGE), users will be able to receive airdropped tokens equivalent to accumulated interest based on the amount and duration of their cross-chain TON, and the rewards from these TON tokens will also be added to the liquidity pool to further enhance the ecosystem.
Through the new expansion, not only has the cross-chain interoperability of the TON ecosystem been greatly enhanced, but also long-term support for liquidity capture in the TON ecosystem has been provided.
Providing a series of modular tools, DuckChain is a driving force for the early prosperity of the TON application ecosystem
Mini-programs are the killer feature for Telegram to expand ecological scenarios and build a super application system. In the form of mini-programs, users can seamlessly experience various dApps, whether it's payments or using other features within dApps, without having to jump to third-party applications. This approach lowers the entry barrier for Web3 applications, making them more lightweight, and also aligns with the usage habits of Web2 users.
However, the main factor for the prosperity of the Telegram Web3 mini-program ecosystem lies at the TON end. In fact, TON uses a virtual machine called TVM (TON Virtual Machine), whose supported smart contract programming languages are primarily FunC and the TVM instruction set (which most developers are not familiar with). These languages and virtual machine architectures differ significantly from Ethereum's EVM and Solidity programming language. At the same time, TON's design includes a multi-threaded blockchain architecture, allowing different shard chains to run in parallel. This architectural design can enhance network performance but also increases the complexity of development. Developers need to understand how to effectively coordinate data and logic across multiple shards, which is more challenging than traditional single-chain architectures. Therefore, whether for Web2 developers or Web3 developers, facing the underlying TON will inevitably involve certain developmental thresholds.
In this regard, DuckChain has already embarked on in-depth cooperation with Arbitrum, and the two are working together to provide developers with a familiar EVM-compatible development environment. By integrating the EVM development framework with TON, developers can more easily build, deploy, and even migrate applications within the TON ecosystem. This will not only provide a foundation for the prosperity of the TON ecosystem on the dApps side but also allow these applications to connect with a large number of Telegram ecosystem users through Telegram mini-programs.
At the same time, DuckChain will also provide developers and ecological projects with modules such as staking, markets, joint curves, and DID, allowing developers to easily integrate more application modules on-chain and enhance on-chain activities through offering an open-source community, supporting better development of applications within the Telegram system. Currently, DuckChain has attracted nearly 50 ecological projects to connect to the TON ecosystem.
Overall, DuckChain not only provides support for hundreds of millions of Telegram ecosystem users to come on-chain from off-chain, but also brings external market liquidity into the TON ecosystem and launches a new development framework to lower the threshold for developers in the market, all of which will provide strong support for Telegram's evolution into a Web3 super application ecosystem.
From the perspective of the Web2 world, mini-programs have already been widely validated as an application form, while for the Web3 world, mini-programs still have the potential to become a gateway for large-scale traffic from Web2 to Web3. With the launch of the DuckChain mainnet, the portal connecting the Web2 and Web3 worlds is also being opened.
After the launch of the mainnet, the DuckChain ecosystem will serve as an important booster and value hub for the development of the Telegram ecosystem. As the Telegram ecosystem becomes increasingly prosperous, DuckChain will become a new intersection of attention value, liquidity, and user traffic in the Web3 market, and become the first consumer-level Layer unicorn.
