Hi, I'm Max from StonFi and I don't know how I got to #TON
I am 25 years old, I graduated from MGIMO and the Higher School of Economics. I have been with StonFi almost from the very beginning, when I joined in 2022. Before that, I worked at the investment company Aton. I launched an online school, taught history.
When I came to StonFi, my tasks included creating and communicating on social media; at that time, there were only 30 subscribers in the Telegram group. And now almost everyone knows about us.
I participated in the account manager competition and took a prize place. I was helped to get a job. There were HRs who conducted interviews and recommended the guys who created DEX StonFi.
- When did #TON Labs appear?
Almost immediately. These were the founders of the project. Only 13 people.
3 co-founders - Slavik Baranov, Stas Bazelevich, Mikhail Fedorov.
There were also 2 backend developers, 1 frontend, 1 lead developer, 1 copywriter, DevOps. The most important thing is that only 1 person left the team during all this time.
- What is the background of the team, for example, Slavik?
Serious. Related to internet security. Once, in a podcast, he was called the best specialist in blockchain in the CIS.
- What were your first tasks?
Starting in a team that is just beginning is actually simple. You have to do everything! You are an account manager in the community, but you have almost none. Only 30 people.
We started testing hypotheses. Negotiating with channels to write about us. We held giveaways. A bot helped us where you had to guess riddles and for that, you received TON. In fact, several thousand people got involved in this.
Then we moved on to large companies with partners, referrals. The first company was with the guys from TonStarter. They liked the idea. They enhanced it and it turned into a good product to this day.
Then we held an AMA session on the TonNFT channel and the main core of the audience transitioned from there. It was a good AMA, many questions were asked. It can be found on the channel.
- Where do you look for employees and how many people work in the team?
On the Ton.org website, the job section. It works well now, as there is a lot of attention to TON from development. Many want to build their careers in TON. We currently have 45 people working with us.
- When the bull run started, what volumes did you see?
This is open information. The most active months were April and March. Most likely due to the League. The total trading volume per day was $30-40 million, of which our share was 0.01% or about $40,000 per day. Monthly it was about $1 million.
All the money is currently in the contract, not a cent has been spent. And this liquidity will go to Ston.
We are currently working on the whitepaper. If we spend this money, we may have problems with the legalization of our token in the future.
- How did the Ston token appear, then GEMSTON. How does staking work?
The token was launched in June 2023 and the tokenomics was developed for a year. Initially, it was assumed that Ston would be a governance token when DAO appears. It can be staked and possibly something else.
The only way to get Gemstone is to stake Ston. It's a cool contract. ARKENSTON and soul-bound NFTs are also minted there, and depending on the time, different pictures are generated.
- Is StonFi the main beneficiary of the league?
At first, it was great, liquidity appeared + people developed a competitive interest. People started to get interested in tokens on TON.
In DeFi, millions don't come in. It's such a specific audience. The previous league gave a good boost, and the pools inflated; it became clear that we needed an aggregator that searches for the best prices across several DEXs, making exchanges more profitable.
But this development is sporadic. We can stand still for a long time, then activity appears and we take off. At the beginning of the year, we started to grow not because of the League, but due to a large number of new tokens.
The guys came and began creating new tokens. For example, REDO, we thought, wow! They started trading and hit $1 million in trading volume for the first time.
And this coincided with the launch of #notcoin . And I will never forget this!
New Year - January 1st. We bought placement in Notcoin and waited for traffic. We constantly asked, well, when?! when is the launch?
They replied that January 1st!
I (smirked to myself 😊) - is this a joke, I asked in the chat?!
They sent me a smiley face 😜
And here I am, on January 1st, eating Olivier with one hand and looking at the chat with the other, and there are thousands of people coming in and asking questions about Notcoin!
We received record traffic of all time, but I don't want to repeat this. Everyone had a very heavy load.
It was a novelty and it was the highest quality audience that brought in 100k users.
End of the first part.
(In the second part, Meme - is it a kind-hearted joke or a way to take money from the population? RFQ - is a normal technology, while AMM - is crap.)
Subscribe and like so you don't miss part 2 🔥👍
