Does TON have a chance to become the next SOL or ETH?
There has been a lot of buzz recently about TON and Telegram, and many people believe that TON will be the next SOL or ETH. Blockworks Research issued an article interpreting it, believing that TON's subsequent growth will be weak and may fail to meet expectations.
Telegram user stickiness is not high
Telegram has global influence and a considerable number of daily active users (DAU) that can divert users to TON. By this measure, Telegram is one of the most used apps in the world.
According to data provided by Telegram, Telegram is one of the most popular applications in the world. The total number of users reaches 900 million, ranking 8th among global applications.
However, measured by DAU, Telegram’s user stickiness is overestimated.
The DAU/MAU ratio of each social application in the figure below shows that although Telegram’s MAU (monthly active users) is high, its DAU is relatively low (around 55 million to 200 million, which is very low compared to competing applications) , the DAU/MAU ratio is only 15%.
In comparison, Facebook’s ratio is 69%, Wechat is about 67%, Instagram is 60%, TikTok (only counting the US market) is 49%, and Twitter (X) is 45%. This suggests that Telegram has lower market penetration and a smaller monetizable user base than the market expected.
PANews Note: The DAU/MAU ratio can measure network or application user stickiness
Incompatible with EVM, less programming language usage
The TON ecosystem team will face challenges from the lack of EVM compatibility and FunC (the native programming language of the blockchain).
The Ton Virtual Machine (TVM) is incompatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) because TON uses a completely different architecture (TON is asynchronous, while Ethereum is synchronous). Therefore, the TON ecosystem does not support development in Ethereum’s Solidity programming language.
According to a 2023 Developer Survey Report (more than 90,000 developers participated), Rust is the most respected language, and more than 80% of developers hope to use it again next year. 46.4% of developers expect to use Solidity.
The three programming languages available on TON are Fift, FunC and Tact. Currently the most commonly used language among the three is FunC. Although FunC looks a lot like the C language, it is generally not well known or respected.
There are limitations in end market coverage
A big part of the TON narrative growth is that Telegram will become the next WeChat. However, WeChat is blocked from the US market and only serves the Chinese market.
In sharp contrast, today's application market is dominated by technology giants with strong financial resources and complete network effects, while Telegram's largest market is located in the fragmented markets of the Asia-Pacific region (except China and Eastern Europe), which makes the use of Telegram Distribution startups add a layer of complexity.
The following is Telegram’s full-year download distribution in 2022:
India: 104 million downloads.
Russia: 34 million downloads.
Indonesia: 27 million downloads
United States: 26 million downloads.
Brazil: 21.94 million downloads.
Egypt: 14.85 million downloads.
Vietnam: 11.84 million downloads.
Mexico: 11.61 million downloads.
Ukraine: 10.76 million downloads.
Türkiye: 9.79 million downloads.
FDV is overvalued
Despite these realities, TON still has huge growth potential, with little margin of safety for new investors.
The figure below shows that among all public chains, TON’s FDV is 8.6 times its network’s annualized DEX trading volume, ranking first and at the highest level.
In addition, FDV is 927 times the annualized cost of its network, ranking high among all public chains.
This article is reproduced in cooperation with: PANews
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