In the middle and late part of this month, Tether announced a partnership with TON to integrate USDT into the TON ecosystem. In just three days, the total supply of USDT on the TON chain exceeded 60 million. With the integration of USDT, the user base of the TON ecosystem will grow rapidly in the future, and the advantages of Telegram+TON+USDT will be magnified. Even the large-scale adoption expected by Web3 is no longer just "paper talk".
So what changes will USDT integration with the TON public chain bring to the ecosystem and what potential wealth opportunities will there be for Web3 users? To this end, Odaily Planet Daily will elaborate on the development prospects and potential wealth effects of TON+USDT+Telegram.
"U" OTC transactions are not uncommon in Telegram, but "U" has an ecological scenario and may bring "new money" to Web3
USDT’s past relationship with Telegram
The use of USDT in Telegram is not uncommon, but it is limited to payment. Even the main users of USDT in Telegram are not the Web3 group. Thanks to Telegram's encrypted messaging method, many "shady" transactions are mostly facilitated on Telegram.
However, our research found that although most Telegram users use "U" to complete transactions, they often only provide exchange addresses, conduct offline transactions or single-trust payments, and Telegram is only a negotiation medium.
USDT is truly used in Telegram, thanks to the addition of USDT to Telegram's built-in Wallet Bot, but it is limited to transfers between users, and Wallet Bot has opened USDT deposit and withdrawal options. Users can choose the corresponding regional fiat currency to purchase USDT, or they can purchase it through P2P options. Currently, credit cards can be used in Hong Kong to purchase in Hong Kong dollars, but they cannot "withdraw" and the actual purchase price will be 6.26% higher. At the same time, you can also receive TRC 20 USDT (currently also supports USDT on TON).
However, the Bot format adopted by Telegram Wallet is not an on-chain activity. Although Toncoin, BTC and USDT tokens have been added, most of the payment activities chosen are those that occur in the Telegram application. This is equivalent to the Web3 industry watching most users being blocked "outside the door."
Telegram’s strong connection to TON
The past background of Telegram and TON is already old news for most people, and Odaily Planet Daily briefly reviews it here.
Telegram raised $1.7 billion in private placement in 2018 and launched the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain, but was subsequently accused of illegal fundraising by the SEC. Legal pressure led Telegram to abandon the project and open source it. Later, the community established the TON Foundation and announced that it would independently operate the project, and the project name was changed to The Open Network. Subsequently, Telegram's views on TON gradually changed until September last year, when Telegram officially announced TON as its Web3 infrastructure and established a partnership.
The relationship between the two has gone through three stages: original, divestiture and cooperation. A big factor in this is the influence of regulation. Although regulators once divested TON from Telegram, as the encryption industry has gradually been accepted by the mainstream, Telegram has re-embraced the TON ecosystem.
Then the two launched the TON Space beta version, and combined it with Telegram's own Wallet Bot. In the settings of Wallet Bot, choose to turn on the TON Space beta version. It is worth noting that TON Space can only receive Toncoin tokens and tokens on the TON chain, and cannot recognize transfers from other chains.
The launch of TON Space enables Telegram's own Wallet to connect to blockchain networks and explore DApps, turning Telegram from a single IM application into a Web3 portal. So far, the narrative space brought by the Telegram+TON combination has gradually become clearer and "sexier".
USDT integrates with TON to meet the needs of “U”
As mentioned earlier, USDT is only used as a payment tool in Telegram. Although TON has established cooperation with Telegram, the user acceptance of Toncoin tokens in Telegram is not as high as USDT, and it is unable to bring users into the TON ecosystem. After USDT is integrated into the TON public chain, all these links will be opened up, and USDT can directly enter the TON ecosystem.
As the largest USD stablecoin in circulation and market value in the crypto world, USDT plays an irreplaceable role in the public chain ecosystem. The supply of USDT in the public chain reflects the ecological prosperity of the public chain from a certain perspective. At the same time, before the TON public chain cooperated with Tether, there was a lack of stablecoin support in the ecosystem, resulting in a large number of users who were accustomed to using USDT to participate in project construction missing, and it was impossible to transfer assets across chains, which greatly reduced the circulation properties of the tokens.
USDT integration with TON has great benefits for both parties. For USDT:
· Lower transaction fees: USDT transaction fees on the TON network are only one-third of those on other networks. Specifically, USDT transaction fees on TON are only 0.0145 Toncoin (about $0.10).
Improved transaction speed: TON’s TPS is as high as 15,000, which has won the Guinness World Record, which has improved the transaction speed of USDT on the TON network.
For the TON ecosystem:
Improved liquidity: The circulation of USDT will increase the liquidity and activity of the TON network. According to the latest data, the total market circulation of USDT has exceeded 70 billion US dollars, so introducing it to the TON network will inject a lot of liquidity into the network.
User growth: According to the latest statistics, USDT’s daily active addresses have exceeded 1 million, and the TON network has more than 7.8 million registered users. Therefore, the introduction of USDT will attract more users to join the TON ecosystem.
Ecological prosperity: Cooperation with USDT will enhance the ecological prosperity of TON and provide users with more trading options and application scenarios. Taking the number of trading pairs on the TON network as an example, there are currently more than 1,000 trading pairs to choose from, and the introduction of USDT will further enrich the TON ecosystem.
At this point, Telegram provides user access and funds, TON provides ecological demand scenarios, and USDT serves as the medium throughout. The three may introduce Telegram's 900 million monthly active users into the TON ecosystem and form a social-driven Web3 ecosystem.
Web2+Web3 incentive combination: how Web3 users can benefit from it
The integration of TON in USDT has formed a closed loop for the Telegram+TON+USDT ecosystem. How to import users into the TON ecosystem has become the focus of the next stage. To this end, Telegram and TON have launched a series of incentives and new products. Will they be effective? Odaily Planet Daily analyzes them one by one.
Telegram
Judging from Telegram’s recent actions, after establishing a partnership with TON in September last year, Telegram not only integrated TON Space into Telegram Bot, making Toncoin tokens on Telegram available for on-chain activities, but also opened the Telegram advertising platform to nearly 100 new countries in March this year, and sold advertisements through Toncoin tokens, while distributing 50% of the channel advertising revenue to the channel owner.
Telegram's advertising revenue and premium subscription service Telegram Premium have always been Telegram's main source of profit. Telegram has switched the platform's advertising purchase and profit distribution channels to the TON public chain, which is itself the largest traffic output. However, obtaining advertising revenue in Toncoin tokens can easily lead to a low degree of decentralization of Toncoin tokens. For this reason, Telegram will sell the other 50% of Toncoin tokens it has obtained to long-term investors at a lower price and with a certain lock-up mechanism. This move is to release the core revenue model of Web2 in the form of Web3, and the benefits to the TON public chain will far outweigh the disadvantages.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in his personal Telegram channel that starting next month, Telegram channel owners will be able to receive financial rewards for their work. He said that currently, Telegram broadcast channels generate 1 trillion views per month, but only 10% of the views are monetized through Telegram Ads, a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind. In March, the Telegram advertising platform will be officially open to all advertisers in nearly 100 new countries. Channel owners in these countries will begin to receive 50% of the revenue that Telegram earns from displaying ads on their channels. To ensure fast and secure advertising payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be used exclusively, and ads will be sold through Toncoin and revenue will be shared with channel owners.
However, according to the Telega.io platform, there are currently 154,128 advertisers and 5,407 channels on the platform, with an average monthly income of US$500 per channel. In fact, from the perspective of volume and user sharing, Telegram advertising can only bring a few users to the TON public chain. This is also a drawback of IM (instant messaging) applications. Although IM applications occupy the usage time of most users, most of them are concentrated in private chats. Advertisements in the form of channels will not attract the attention of users. Therefore, most advertisers do not choose IM applications as advertising platforms.
However, the focus of how Telegram users are introduced to the TON ecosystem is not on Telegram, which only provides an entry point. The real effect depends on the attractiveness of the TON ecosystem itself.
TON
TON previously focused more on chain promotion, such as the Guinness World Record, to increase its own visibility and attract developers to join. Starting from April this year, TON launched The Open League (TOL) and USDT early adopter incentives from the perspective of its own ecological construction and user incentives.
The Open League (TOL) event is based on activities to introduce Telegram users to Web3 and provides a variety of ways for chain beginners to earn income, including low-risk mining activities and related tasks, as well as high-risk LP and trading competitions.
TOL was launched on April 1 this year and will launch 3 seasons, each lasting 1 month. In the first season of TOL, 30 million Toncoin community rewards will be provided, which was worth about 115 million US dollars at the time. The first season of Open League includes four areas: The League, Token Mining, Quests & Airdrops, and Liquidity Pool Boosts.
Starting from the first season, each project will compete in one of the five key performance indicator (KPI) rankings according to their respective project categories, namely the Token Ranking, Meme Coin and Community Token Ranking, DeFi Ranking, Application Ranking, and Liquidity Staking Ranking. The specific rewards of the TOL event are shown in the figure below.
At the same time, TON announced the launch of the Open League DeFi funding program, which aims to provide support to Web3 builders in DeFi and dApp. Currently, TON will provide four levels of support based on the project's current TVL on other chains, team experience and other indicators.
Tier 1: TVL > $300M; up to $200K in grant support; $300K in pre-commitment rewards for protocol users; $20K worth of free Telegram ad credits.
Tier 2: TVL > $100M; up to $150K in grant support; $150K in pre-commitment rewards for protocol users; $15,000 worth of free Telegram ad credits.
Tier 3: TVL > $50 million; up to $75,000 in grant support; $50,000 in pre-commitment rewards for protocol users; $10,000 in free Telegram advertising credits.
Level 4: For experienced DeFi teams with new product ideas; up to $30,000 in grants; $20,000 in pre-commitment rewards for protocol users; $5,000 in free Telegram advertising credits.
This activity is an ecological incentive for the project party. Ordinary users cannot benefit from this activity. For details, please refer to the official document. However, if the project wants to take the lead, it may delegate relevant incentives to users. You need to pay attention to the dynamics of relevant projects. Odaily Planet Daily will also sort out the relevant content in the future for readers.
In order to increase the application of USDT on TON, the TON Foundation stated that it will provide 11 million Toncoin tokens as incentives to early adopters of USDT on the TON chain:
1.5 million Toncoin transferred to USDt Earn from Wallet-in-Telegram;
2.5 million Toncoins will be used to increase the liquidity pools of TON’s two largest decentralized exchanges (Ston.fi and DeDust);
32,000 Toncoins are provided with withdrawal services in TON's major centralized exchange partners, supporting the purchase of USDt or any TON-based assets and withdrawing them to TON for free.
Monetization channels for Web3 users
TON and Telegram have launched so many incentive activities, so how can Web3 users benefit from them? We have sorted out the relevant content and provided the following ways to participate and get incentives:
1. The TON Foundation provides Toncoin token incentives for early USDT holders. Users can transfer Toncoin tokens purchased from OKX, XT and Bybit exchanges to the TON public chain or purchase them directly on Telegram through credit cards and P2P methods (not suitable for China), deposit USDT into Wallet or built-in TON Space (the specific details have not yet been announced, and the author recommends depositing in advance). The official interface shows that the APY is as high as 50%, and it is on a first-come, first-served basis. It is expected that a snapshot method will be used to collect Toncoin tokens.
2. Due to the launch of the TOL activity, various projects in the TON ecosystem are about to issue tokens. They can interact in a timely manner to obtain airdropped tokens. For DeFi projects, they can become LPs, because the total LP amount of DeFi projects in the TOL activity is included in the KPI assessment scope.
3. Due to the profit sharing of Telegram advertising platform, communities and KOLs can create channels on Telegram. If the total number of people in the channel is more than 1,000, they can apply for advertising and obtain advertising revenue. Currently, the monthly income of cryptocurrency advertising channels is higher than that of other categories.
It is worth noting that next week the TON Foundation will launch a USDT early incentivizer campaign.
Conclusion and Risk Disclosure
I have always believed that the TON network is not worthy of Telegram. Compared with Telegram's 900 million monthly active users and the community base of many Web3 projects, TON does not stand out among many public chains. It can even be said that it is far inferior to mainstream public chains in terms of ecological volume and user habits. However, in terms of integration difficulty and public chain efficiency, TON is tailor-made for Telegram.
Until recently, USDT integrated into the TON network, which allowed the author to see the development prospects of the social-driven Web3 ecosystem of TON+Telegram+USDT. At present, the development paths of most public chains are not much different. Ethereum has the first-mover advantage and user habits dominate; Solana has become the representative of new public chains with its efficient trading experience. However, these public chain ecosystems are often internally competitive, and the introduction of new users depends on ecological projects to break the circle. However, there are very few projects that have really broken the circle in so many years, so the role of large-scale adoption of Web3 in the future is not obvious.
Telegram has 900 million traffic and has always been very positive about Web3. At the same time, as an essential app for daily life, IM applications have many channels to connect to the real world. For example, Wallet Pay will support merchant payments. Currently, there are many USDT holders in Wallet, which is bound to open up the payment scenarios between Web2 and Web3.
If the development of the TON ecosystem can take over or attract ordinary Telegram users, the future growth rate of the TON network will surely be ahead of other public chains. However, the linkage between the three has just begun, and there are still some potential risks.
1. Regulatory pressure. When USDT just announced the integration of TON, Apple (China) App Store removed Telegram due to force majeure. Although the founder of Telegram later stated that it had no impact on it, the relevant risks still exist.
2. Since Telegram has a large number of illegal transactions, once the demand scenarios for USDT and TON are opened, these USDTs with certain risks will inevitably flow in. If there are any related illegal activities involved, the issuer of USDT will also cooperate with the supervision to freeze them.
However, judging from the current price feedback of Toncoin, the market is optimistic about its future development prospects. The price of Toncoin has even exceeded 7 USDT, setting a new record high. It will take time to prove how it will develop in the future, but in the near future, it is imperative to deposit USDT into Telegarm Wallet.
