I don’t know how many people still remember the TOKEN 2049 conference, where Telegram CEO Pavel Durov gave a speech, reiterating Telegram’s ecological concept and Tether’s USDT issued on TON, allowing for a seamless new experience of value transfer around the world. This is the first deep integration of a social networking giant and cryptocurrency, and this move will undoubtedly change the existing landscape of Telegram and TON ecology. This article will focus on analyzing the potential of the TON ecology, as well as whether TON will become the next Solana, as many public chains are imitating Solana in this cycle.

What is TON?

TON stands for The Open Network, which is a Layer 1 public chain and TON is its native token.

The TON network was originally founded by the Telegram team and later taken over by the developer community with the goal of building a complete blockchain ecosystem.

The TON public chain includes the TON blockchain, decentralized storage, I2P network, instant payment, and a Web3.0 network for highly usable decentralized applications.

In September 2023, Telegram reached a partnership with the TON Foundation to integrate TON's self-hosted crypto wallet "TON Space" for Telegram users.

Web2 traffic, Web3 users, social media platforms, a total of 800 million Telegram users, and a high-performance public chain are TON's core competitiveness and have attracted much attention.

There are currently 643 apps in the ton ecosystem, including infrastructure, wallets, DEX, NFT, SocialFI, Brideg, Launchpad, etc., as well as various gamefi and other projects.

TON’s rally catalyst

How can a public chain that is not listed on Binance and whose ecosystem has not grown, have a high market value? This may be a question that many enthusiasts want to ask.

When we compare these tokens in the top 30 rankings, we will also find that TON is the only token that is not listed on Binance. Compared with other ecosystems, TON’s characteristics may have the ability to attract users and investors, or a trend of self-driving and driving ecosystem valuation may be formed within the ecosystem.

1. TON is inseparable from Telegram. Telegram is already the biggest trump card for TON users and business possibilities. If an IPO is conducted, it will provide great support to the TON ecosystem from the perspective of value capture.

2. In April 2022, the TON Foundation announced the establishment of the $250 million ecological fund Toncoin Fund, which has received investments from Huobi, KuCoin, MEXC, DWF, etc. and cooperated with other mainstream traders.

3. From the perspective of overall application types, most applications are a fusion of Web2 and Web3, with only the corresponding functional boundaries distinguished. It can be said that TON ecological applications are a fusion of Telegram’s attributes and Web3’s attributes.

Telegram x TON boosts the ecosystem

TON is natively integrated into Telegram, which brings TON advantages that other public chains cannot have, forming the huge potential of the Telegram x TON ecosystem:

• Large user base: Telegram has nearly 1 billion active users, which provides a large potential user base for the TON ecosystem. Telegram's product features are built on the TON network, so TON can easily complete the conversion of traditional users to crypto users.

• High performance and scalability: TON has extremely high TPS and expansion capabilities, which can handle the massive transaction needs generated by the Telegram user group; it also supports large-scale distributed applications, providing rich functional expansion and data verification services for various applications in the Telegram ecosystem, greatly expanding the application scenarios of Telegram.

• Payment and financial applications: The cryptocurrencies and smart contracts in the TON ecosystem are the infrastructure for Telegram to build secure and convenient payment and financial services. At the same time, the TON network will greatly expand the space for the digital economy by leveraging the Telegram platform.

• Developer ecosystem: Telegram has an active developer community. The TON ecosystem provides a wealth of development tools and resources, which is expected to attract more developers to join and incubate innovative decentralized applications.

TON Tether is launched, opening a new era of crypto payments?

As of May 2024, the total market value of stablecoins has exceeded $160 billion, of which USDT has a market value of over $100 billion, dominating the stablecoin market, followed by USDC with a market size of over $30 billion. On May 4, TON officials said that the issuance of USDT on the TON chain has exceeded 130 million.

Telegram and TON are addressing the lack of mass adoption of stablecoins by partnering with Tether. TON provides a gateway to a broad audience, directly reaching 1 billion users. This collaboration not only allows the general public to understand and accept cryptocurrencies, but also paves the way for the commercialization and wider application of USDT by integrating it into users' daily payment scenarios.

1. Solve user pain points

The pain points that traditional Web2 users face in the global payments space include high transaction fees, slow processing speeds, limited international accessibility, payment security and privacy concerns, technical usage barriers, and inconsistent user experience.

2. Innovative payment methods

Telegram takes advantage of the platform's unique advantages, uses native USDT as a stable value carrier circulating within the ecosystem, and builds a Web3 payment model on the TON network that cannot be replicated by other public chains.

3. Free and open platform

Inject new vitality into Web3 payment, so that Web3 is no longer just a crypto world exclusive, but a way to integrate into daily life. Telegram has a huge user base, and the completely free open platform will challenge the status of traditional Web2 payment platforms.

Therefore, the combination of Telegram & TON and Tether does not allow users to give up the existing high-quality Web2 experience and instead accept relatively difficult and complex encrypted ecological operations. Instead, it allows users to seamlessly connect to the encrypted world while enjoying the advantages of Web2 products, and experience the unique advantages of Web3, such as unlimited possibilities, privacy protection, and low-cost transactions.

Can Solana be replicated?

Currently, Toncoin ranks 11th on CoinMarketCap with a market value of $17.1 billion, while Solana, which ranks fifth, has a market value of $78.3 billion, a gap of five times. Similarly, in terms of trading volume, SOL's daily trading volume reached $2.21 billion, while TON's was $333 million. When discussing whether TON can replicate Solana's success, it is worth discussing from multiple aspects:

TON has its unique advantages and potential:

• Technological innovation and scalability: TON's architecture design has native sharding support, which can theoretically reach a processing speed of 104,715 transactions per second while maintaining high efficiency. In addition, TON's multi-chain structure and the ability to support custom work chains provide strong flexibility for different types of applications.

• Integration with Telegram: TON’s biggest advantage may be its close integration with Telegram. With Telegram’s 900 million monthly active users and its mini app function, TON is able to provide a unique user experience in the social and gaming fields that is difficult for other blockchain projects to replicate.

• Community and ecosystem growth: Although TON is a latecomer, it is rapidly developing its ecosystem and providing rich development tools and resources. TON's vision is to drive the development of the ecosystem through the power of the community rather than relying on a single development team or company.

TON faces challenges and limitations

• Market competition and technical challenges: Although TON has a high TPS in theory, it has stability issues in actual operation. Moreover, although the TON blockchain has shown growth potential in the DeFi field, it still faces some challenges and disadvantages. Its DeFi ecosystem is still in its early stages, and the current DeFi applications and tools are relatively limited, and there are centralization issues and capital inefficiency. These factors may affect TON's attractiveness and credibility in the highly competitive DeFi market. TON's TVL is not comparable in absolute terms to other networks such as Polygon or Solana.

• The early low-cost miners will have 1 billion chips, which may lead to unstable market supply and price fluctuations.

Although TON has its own unique features in social and gaming through the Telegram platform, and its technical advantages cannot be underestimated, the many challenges it faces are also obvious. In sharp contrast, Solana has established a strong ecosystem in many fields such as DeFi, NFT markets, and high-frequency transactions by virtue of its outstanding performance in technological innovation and developer-friendly environment. Solana's success is largely due to its ability to handle ultra-high transaction speeds and reduce costs - this is exactly what TON has not yet fully demonstrated.