The genius of financial literacy by Pavel Durov.
On May 7, 2020, the story of a new blockchain began, a blockchain that opened up cryptocurrency to a huge number of new users, introducing it into circulation for the most ordinary people who had previously heard about it only in passing.
TON (The open network) is a decentralized computer network created in the blockchain format for performing financial transactions based on smart contracts, developed with the participation of the Durov brothers.
In 2023, the network was recognized as the fastest cryptocurrency network in the world, completing over 100,000 transactions in one second.
First failure and first rescue
In 2018, Pavel and Nikolay Durov announced the launch of a new project, The Open Network, promising tight integration with Telegram, fast transactions, and low fees. Despite the following, albeit with reservations, the blockchain has coped with all these tasks.
$1.7 billion in investment was raised during the ICO, but unfortunately, the US court ruled the ICO an illegal issue of securities, and the project had to be closed.
But then non-profit organizations of enthusiasts came to the rescue: Free TON and openTON.
Free TON contacted Pavel Durov and he gave the go-ahead to the project, which was renamed The Open Network. Pavel publicly refused to participate in the project... but who knows what really happened. In my opinion, Pavel's refusal to participate was simply a move to legally protect himself from future attacks by the law, helping his brainchild grow while remaining in the shadows.
So officially, The Open Network has no direct connection to Pavel Durov.
The project developed, slowly but surely, and already on November 15, 2021, the price for 1 TON reached a large ATH - $4.44. The peak is really large, there is no arguing about that. Considering that now, $TON occupies 10th place by capitalization with a price of $5.
Morgenshtern
TON gained some popularity even before its main growth moment. Morgenshtern promoted it in one of his videos.
Sold all bitcoins and bought TON â Morgenshtern, in the work âWhyâ
And it was a surprisingly profitable investment, both for the short term and for the long term. In December 2022, the price of one coin was less than two dollars, and almost immediately after the release of the video, it reached one of its peaks.
If the artist sold his coins at ATH (all-time-high), his profit would be around 650%.
Explosion. Flight. Popularity.
From April 22 to March 24, there were no major releases on the blockchain, and the TON price stabilized at $2.
But the introduction of Wallet in Telegram and the news of monetization of channels in Telegram played their role in the sharp growth. The most important news was Durov's intention to hold an IPO (initial public offering) for Telegram, which was preliminarily valued at $30 billion.
Mountains of money went into TON, and the price broke through its new ATH, at one point reaching almost $8 per coin. This brought TON into the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the world.
After some time, the main stablecoin appeared on the blockchain â $USDT. Its emission was 1 billion. At the same time, the Wallet in Telegram became able to block USDT on TON with 50% APR for two weeks, with financial support from The Ton Open Network Foundation. This protected TON from high volatility at first, the price did not fall immediately after the takeoff.
Also, with the support of this organization, Farming systems were introduced for liquidity pools on decentralized exchanges, for example, on https://STON.fi the USDT/TON pool still maintains an APR of 13%, previously it was even higher, and the TVL is simply astounding - $87 million on STON.fi alone.
What is Farming and Liquidity Pools on DEX
Liquidity pools are a source of funds to provide exchanges with exchanges. Liquidity providers (ordinary blockchain users) contribute their funds in pairs, in price equivalent. And they receive a percentage of each transaction in their share of the pool.By the way, as proof of ownership of a share in the liquidity pool, suppliers receive LP tokens. At this point, we can smoothly move on to the Farming system.
Everything is simple here - for blocking LP tokens for a certain period, or even with the ability to get them at any time, program participants share the reward.
Thanks to this, significant APRs are achieved in liquidity pools with a farming program, which simply make your head spin (sometimes more than 1000% per annum), and at the same time, liquidity pools with USDT and TON are practically risk-free, since liquidity providers have a share in both tokens, and if one of them falls in price, then it becomes larger, and the price equivalent, provided that the second coin remains unchanged in price, like USDT, for example, remains the same.
Learn more about liquidity pools:https://guide.ston.fi/ru/chto-takoe-pul-likvidnosti
Learn more about Farming programs:https://guide.ston.fi/ru/chto-takoe-farming
The Era of TapTap Games in Telegram
After TON had already reached its peak, users thought that since TON was integrated into Telegram to some extent, it would be a good opportunity to launch their own coin on the blockchain. The first were the Notcoin developers. They launched a simple mini-application, the purpose of which was to tap on the screen and earn coins. Advertising and educational tasks were introduced, such as launching another mini-application in Telegram or performing an exchange on DEX.
But the first sign that Notcoin was more than just nothing came with coin vouchers, in the form of NFTs on TON, which showed incredibly high sales prices.
The listing of the coin was also just around the corner. Popular crypto exchanges: Bybit, Binance, OKX, Bitget, became interested in the coin and accepted it. Although the listing was not without problems, the capitalization of Notcoin at the moment exceeded even the capitalization of USDT on TON, reaching the mark of 2.5 billion dollars (according to CoinMarketCap). This is not a particularly fair value, since the inflated price was caused by problems with distribution on some exchanges. It is fair to consider that the peak point of capitalization was at the mark of one and a half billion dollars.
To give you an idea of ââthe scale:
People who simply pressed the button in the middle of the screen, or even logged into the game once every 8 hours to collect rewards for autofarming earned about $100-200 without any problems. And these were ordinary people, not particularly savvy in the cryptocurrency sphere, including schoolchildren. And itâs scary to even talk about how much the owners of Telegram account farms earned.
Right of primacy
In parallel with $NOT other major projects were also developing - Catizen, Blum and the infamous hero - Hamster Combat.
I'll say right away about Catizen, the guys reached a capitalization of 1 billion dollars, but went into decline, to half a million dollars. Airdrops of avid cat breeders were not as significant as in NOT, but players received 20-50$.
But with Hamster Kombat the story is a little more interesting, the game was overgrown with memes and popularity, causing phenomenal interest in the community. And the same disappointment after the listing.
Most people who already understand something about cryptocurrency expected Hamster Kombat to have a capitalization of $2 billion. But what happened happened...
At the moment, the capitalization reached more than a billion dollars, but the collapse was not long in coming. Those who managed to sell coins at a good rate earned 10-20$, and those who did not... maybe 5. In the best case.
By the way, before Hamster Kombat, another interesting project came out â DOGS, which awarded its points based on the age of the Telegram account. There are no complaints about it: the project gave away $50â100 to participants without bothering them with the mechanics of hammering at the screen.
Technological
When listing NOT and DOGS, blockchain vulnerabilities were revealed, it could not cope with such a load and constantly stopped working.
When listing Hamster Kombat, the errors were taken into account. The Open Network Foundation released a utility for mass distribution of coins, so no one suffered from HMSTR (except for the psychological health of the players). The transition of the main DEX blockchain to a new liquidity pool standard, STON.fi v2, also played a role.
By the way, if anyone is still interested in working with $HMSTR, or if you suddenly donât know how to sell, the https://STON.fi team has made a guide:
https://ston.fi/buy-sell-hmstr-token-price
Epilogue
This is where my story ends. What will happen next with blockchain is unclear, the last six months have been mostly about TapTap games, but after $HMSTR I seriously doubt that they still have a chance. Fortunately, blockchain does not stand still and is constantly evolving, so I think it still has a future.
