Author: Web3 Sniffing Observation
In 2024, TON became one of the best performing Layer 1 public chain projects. Since the beginning of this year, the TON chain has developed rapidly, and the total locked value (TVL) has soared from US$9.56 million last year to US$750 million now, continuing to set new highs. Currently, TON ranks tenth in the global public chain rankings.
Its native token Toncoin (TON) has a total market value of more than $18.1 billion, and TON's market value has ranked among the top eight cryptocurrencies. Although Binance has only launched TON contract trading (spot trading is not yet online). In addition, the TON chain ecosystem has expanded rapidly, and the number of decentralized applications (Dapps) has increased to more than 900.
While most crypto projects are struggling to survive in the cold winter, the TON ecosystem has developed so rapidly that it has attracted the attention of many investors. This year, TON has shown an amazing rate of return in its investment portfolio. Even when the overall market fell and other altcoins were cut in half, TON has shown strong resistance to declines. This breakthrough performance is mainly due to the vigorous development within the TON ecosystem.
As of July 15, the price of TON tokens exceeded 7.5U. It should be noted that the price of TON was still 2U at the beginning of the year, and the annual return rate exceeded 270%.
Since TON is backed by Telegram's huge user base (more than 900 million active users) and strong social network effect, its community and ecology are doing well. With the resolution of restrictions in the DeFi field and the development of cross-chain bridges, the TON chain has a promising future, especially in Telegram's native projects.
Current status of TON ecosystem
According to Deflama data, as of July 15, the TVL of the TON chain has exceeded US$750 million, ranking 10th among all public chains.
According to data from TON's official website, as of July 15, the TON ecosystem currently has 960 decentralized applications (Dapps), covering multiple categories such as trading markets, wallets, games, NFTs, social networking, Launchpad, etc. At present, the TON chain is still in its early stages of development, and the number of ecological projects is much less than that of Ethereum, Solana, and Binance Chain.
A wallet is the first step to participate in the TON ecosystem. Currently, there are 49 wallets that support the TON chain. In addition, there are many decentralized exchanges (DEX) that support TON, such as Uniswap, 1Inch, Pancake, and STON.fi. In addition, mainstream centralized exchanges (CEX) also basically support TON, such as OKX and Huobi.
Memecoin hype was a central theme in the TON DeFi space and the cryptocurrency market as a whole in the first quarter of 2024. This phenomenon has in part contributed to a surge in on-chain activity and DeFi metrics, increasing the total locked value (TVL) by 7x. This was mainly due to increased activity on decentralized exchanges and the market dominance of the liquid equity mining protocol Tonstakers.
Following Notcoin’s success, TON ecosystem has recently seen another meme project, DOGS, which has attracted more than two million users in just two days. Through telegram airdrops and user invitation mechanisms, this project has used the “viral transmission” model to bring about strong community communication.
New vitality continues to emerge in the TON ecosystem. With the influx of more users and funds, the TON DeFi ecosystem is expected to continue to maintain rapid growth in the future.
TON Ecosystem Hot Projects
wallet
The first step to participate in the TON ecosystem is to choose a suitable wallet. The following three popular TON wallets are recommended:
Wallet: This is Telegram's native centralized custodian wallet, similar to WeChat Wallet, built into Telegram settings. Users can directly use Wallet to exchange tokens and deposit funds through P2P or bank cards.
TON Space: This is a self-hosted wallet based on Telegram launched by the TON Foundation, embedded in Telegram. Users can open TON Space in Wallet and use TON Space to connect directly in TON-based dApps. In addition to mnemonics and private keys, wallets can also be restored via email and Telegram accounts.
Tonkeeper: A TON wallet independent of Telegram and a non-custodial wallet. It was launched earlier than TON Space. It is better than the current TON Space in terms of stability and user experience. It is recommended to use Tonkeeper for application interaction.
DeFi Projects
DEX leader: Ston.fi
Leading lending protocol: EVAAProtocol
Stablecoin leader: Aqua
Staking leader: TonStakers
Cross-chain bridge leader: Orbit
Launchpad leader: Tonstarter
game
Games are the craze of this round of TON. Simple and easy games plus one-click forwarding on Telegram can spread the games in the most effective way.
Catizen: Cat synthesis game
Hamster Kombat: Hamster Kombat
Blum: Gamified Trading Platform
Yescoin: Notcoin’s twin brother
NFT Platform
TON Diamonds: One of the main NFT trading markets on the TON chain. Ordinary users need to pay a 5% handling fee to trade NFTs on TON Diamonds. Users can reduce transaction fees by purchasing diamond NFTs of different grades.
Fragment: TON's non-custodial decentralized NFT trading platform, and also Telegram's advertising platform. Unlike other NFT trading markets, Fragment is closely tied to Telegram and is a dedicated username and virtual number trading platform, with the transaction settlement unit being TON.
Social Apps
Moons.so: A SocialFi platform built on the TON blockchain, designed specifically for Telegram users. It provides a social platform where users can join different organizations and communities, freely discuss topics and news, and play games.
TonGifts: is a social red envelope application in the TON ecosystem. It allows users to send NFTs generated by the TON blockchain as gifts within Telegram.
TON development background introduction
TON, the full name of "The Open Network", is a decentralized L1 network that aims to build an open Internet environment for everyone. Originally conceived by Telegram's founders Nikolai and Pavel Durov, TON's development has now become community-driven. This shift emphasizes its fundamental principles of decentralization and the broader community's commitment to its growth and innovation. The TON chain integrates a variety of blockchain-based services, such as cryptocurrency payments and storage solutions, directly into Telegram's ecosystem.
Telegram is an instant messaging software with over 900 million active users. Therefore, TON has a very good user growth advantage backed by this social software with a huge user base. In addition, the application form of TON Dapp Bots (Telegram bots are similar to WeChat applets) on Telegram has great potential.
TON is mainly composed of four parts: TON blockchain, TON proxy, TON payment and TON storage. These four components have very clear roadmaps.
Built for high performance and scalability, the TON chain uses dynamic sharding technology to process millions of transactions per second. It aims to achieve adoption by hundreds of millions of users, and such a high transaction processing speed sets a world record, nearly twice as fast as Solana's 60,000 transactions per second.
Native public chain token TON (Toncoin)
The initial supply of TON tokens is 5 billion, with no cap, and it grows at a rate of about 0.6% per year (equivalent to about 30 million tokens), which means that its token economy is inflationary. The supply is mainly controlled by the staking mechanism, as $TON is allocated to reward validators. If a validator is found to have misconduct, some or all of his or her stake will be slashed as a penalty. TON was mined through PoW in the early days, and later changed to PoS, that is, TON rewards are obtained through staking.
As the native token of TON, it is mainly used for on-chain gas, consensus maintenance, voting governance, and TON payment services for some applications in the ecosystem. On July 15, the total market value of TON exceeded US$18.7 billion, ranking eighth in the global cryptocurrency market value. According to transaction data, the price of TON has risen by more than 270% in 2024 alone, and by more than 400% in half a year.
