Original Title: "The Next Bull Market Engine? Exploring Whether Ton Can Make Telegram the WeChat of Web3" via TG Bot

Original Source: Ximi Sammi

Telegram Bot's Rise

Unibot's recent surge in the past two months and its ability to generate revenue from protocols have ignited the entire Bot industry. Despite the recent market correction, the Telegram bot sector remains strong.

TG Bot is a high-income but relatively low-risk and low-investment track related to strong cash flow/strong trading. Its scale fluctuates with the MEME coin market on the chain.

TG BOT's revenue from the track is currently divided into internal revenue and external revenue:

External Revenue: User subscription payments for using Bot services, practical attribute. (Maestro, which has not yet issued coins, relies entirely on external revenue, with monthly revenue stable at over $4 million.)

Internal Revenue: Transaction fees paid by users to obtain project tokens, with speculative and arbitrage properties. (Unibot and other projects generate 80% of their revenue from transaction fees on their own tokens.)

Currently, the core logic of most projects relies on transaction tax dividends. By sharing tax revenue, users are incentivized to hold, "by traders, for holders."

The monthly revenue of first-tier projects such as $unibot and Maestro is over 5 million US dollars.

The second-tier Bot projects, even those with a market value of less than 10M, can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly revenue.

Unibot and other Telegram Bots have played a significant role in the subtle migration of users and capital. The strong profitability of TG Bots in the bear market will spur a wave of entrepreneurial teams to develop more Web3 products based on Telegram, ranging from trading to DeFi, GameFi, and from individual exploration to collective gold rush.

奇点临近:Web 3 的移动之路

translates to

The Singularity is Near: The Path of Web 3 on Mobile

The biggest pain point for new users entering the encryption industry is the difficulty of using wallets and DeFi protocols. The emergence of Telegram's built-in wallet has lowered the entry barrier for Web2 users, and the transition period from PC Web 3 to mobile Web3 is quietly opening up.

In the Web 2 world, Facebook has approximately 3 billion global users, while WeChat and TikTok have over 1 billion users each. Telegram also has over 800 million users.

Looking at the Web3 world, according to data from TripleA, a cryptocurrency payment company, the number of global cryptocurrency and Web3 users will exceed 320 million in 2022, accounting for approximately 4.2% of the world's population.

From PC to mobile, the mobile dilemma of Web3 may be transformed through Telegram, becoming the application that truly reaches a user scale of 1 billion during the next bull market.

Telegram: Catching up with WeChat in the Crypto Industry

In the red ocean of public chains, most of them emphasize high performance, high scalability, EVM compatibility, etc. However, the key to large-scale application of blockchain at present is not the lack of high-performance public chains, but the lack of users using public chains.

Ton is a Layer1 public chain originally designed by Telegram, which can serve billions of users and achieve fast, low-cost, and energy-efficient blockchain transactions.

Ton, backed by Telegram's 800 million monthly active users, was able to stand out from the battle of the chains by redirecting Telegram's user traffic to Ton's growth.

When we anticipate Ton as the decentralized financial layer of Telegram, with a "probability" of becoming the engine of the next bull market, the second step is to globally analyze Ton's ecosystem, deduce the situation, and clarify the key elements needed to build a successful momentum:

Entry-level tool - Telegram's built-in wallet that is easy for new users to use. The emergence of WeChat Pay and Alipay has promoted the development of mobile internet. The first step for users to enter the Web3 world is to open an encrypted digital wallet. Similarly, on Telegram, a secure and easy-to-use built-in wallet is needed, which can be linked to a bank card. Users can directly purchase cryptocurrencies, increase the adoption rate of cryptocurrencies, and promote the large-scale use of mobile Web3.

Web3 User Habit Migration - Supporting the Development of TG Bot Projects. The development of TG Bot allows users to experience encrypted services and tools in a one-stop-shop on Telegram, without having to switch between various apps and websites. As mobile phones naturally occupy more of users' time, the adaptation of TG Bot and the built-in encrypted wallet in Telegram will migrate some of the active transaction users in Web3. The current Bot race is still a blue ocean market, and Ton needs to integrate with more Bot projects to migrate more users into the Ton ecosystem.

Public chain drainage artifact - meme coin. Meme coin is the best marketing lever in the new ecology, which can quickly attract users at low cost and leverage the market. At the beginning of the year, Bonk, the meme coin of Solana ecology, skyrocketed, attracting a large number of users and funds back to the Solana ecology; Bald, the meme coin of Base ecology, increased by thousands of times overnight, attracting countless attention, resulting in TVL breaking through 100 million US dollars before the official launch of Base mainnet; the myth of shib brought countless new users and the development of the entire meme sector to the bull market in 2021. The Ton ecology currently lacks a meme coin that can ignite the bear market and has strong spreadability.

Ecosystem Barrier - The Development of Gaming Mini Programs/DeFi/E-commerce. Even if the built-in wallet solves the problem of new user entry and there is the promotion of meme coins, if the usage scenarios are insufficient, it is also easy for the Ton chain to be short-lived. With 800 million monthly active users on TG, not everyone is speculating/investing, and user usage rate is more important than investment return rate. Building an ecosystem barrier, making Ton the goal of global financial settlement layer, requires combining cryptocurrency with basic social life and connecting consumption scenarios. Only by making users feel the necessity and motivation to use wallets, increasing user stickiness and duration, can traffic be truly converted into retention pool.

When Telegram goes through the four stages of "infrastructure (wallet) -> user habit migration (TG Bot) -> explosive flow (Meme coin) -> social entertainment (game mini-programs/encrypted e-commerce and other segmented fields)", it will generate a large number of new models combining online and offline in segmented fields, which may truly create the WeChat of the Web 3 field, convert 800 million users to enter Web3, and become the engine of the next bull market.

Ton Introduction and Development Status

Ton History

Telegram established the Telegram Open Network project in 2018, raising $1.7 billion through an ICO. However, in 2019, it was accused of illegal fundraising by the US SEC. Therefore, in May 2020, founder Pavel Durov announced the end of Telegram's involvement in blockchain development and began issuing refunds to early investors.

After Telegram abandoned the project, it was taken over by the developer community and renamed The Open Network, with the token being TON. Telegram's founder publicly expressed support for the TON project.

In April 2022, TON Foundation announced the establishment of a $250 million ecosystem fund, TONcoin Fund, and received investments from exchanges and institutions such as Huobi, KuCoin, MEXC, 3Commas Capital, and TON Miners. The fund will be used to support financing, incubation, hackathons, education programs, and grants for projects based on TON development.

In June 2023, DWF Labs joined the $25 million TON Accelerator Program, and will contribute to the token economics, market making, and liquidity of the TON ecosystem. DWF Labs' support includes investment and other ecosystem services.

Utility of TON Token

$TON is the native cryptocurrency of the network, used for paying fees for executing smart contracts, using dApps, and participating in governance. According to Coingacko data, the current total supply of $TON is 5.09 billion, with an inflation rate of 0.6% per year. The current circulating supply is 3.4 billion, with a market capitalization of approximately $5.15 billion, ranking 16th in market capitalization.

Ton Ecological Growth Index

The main indicators for measuring the growth of the public chain ecosystem are: developers, ecology, users, and capital (TVL).

Developer: As of June 2023, there are a total of 6,793 full-time developers and 21,338 active developers on the entire network. On Ton, there are 39 full-time developers and 174 active developers per month.

For public chains, the participation of developers is necessary for the landing of applications. Otherwise, high throughput is meaningless. To operate the Ton ecosystem well for developers, in addition to doing a good job of onboarding, providing convenient development tools, technical communication forums, and more developer activities, it can also emulate BNB Chain and add a Migrate module to attract existing Web3 projects to migrate.

TVL: According to DeFiLlama data, TON's TVL is approximately $10.4 million, ranking 62nd among public chains. The DEX project with the highest TVL is Megaton Finance, with a TVL of $6.42 million, occupying 62% of the dominant position in the TON ecosystem.

User: There are approximately 3.26 million accounts on the current TON network, with around 740,000 active wallets on the chain. There are 344 validation nodes and a total staking amount of 490 million, accounting for 9.6% of the total staking ratio.

Ecology: Ton mainly takes the application store as the concept to build a complete ecosystem. Currently, there are 551 apps built around the Ton ecosystem, covering wallets, Dex, games, NFT, etc., and the infrastructure is relatively sound.

TONcoin Fund launched its accelerator program in May this year, aiming to inject up to $25 million into projects that will have a significant impact on the continuously developing TON ecosystem.

TONcoin Fund is a $250 million ecosystem fund dedicated to supporting founders building on TON. The fund will focus on key projects across various sectors, with a particular emphasis on DeFi. Investment amounts for each project range from $50,000 to $250,000.

Ton Ecosystem Project Inventory

Wallet (encrypted version of WeChat Pay)

@Wallet is a built-in non-custodial wallet for Telegram, which will launch Wallet Pay, supporting $usdt, $btc, and $ton payments. This is a groundbreaking payment system, similar to Alipay and WeChat Pay. Users can directly purchase tokens through bank cards in Telegram, receive, trade tokens, and send them to other wallets, and purchase products and services on Telegram. This will facilitate an easy entry experience for over 800 million users, bringing the mass adoption of digital currencies one step closer.

Other than the official built-in wallet, there are currently 31 wallets that support TON. These wallets have corresponding support on Win, Linux, MacOS, Android and IOS, web plugins, as well as Telegram.

Megaton Finance

Megaton Finance was developed by the South Korean blockchain company OZYS, with a total locked value (TVL) of $7.13 million. The total supply of the token MEGA is 100 million, with a circulating supply of 5.14 million. The current circulating market value is approximately $710,000. In March of this year, it completed a $1.5 million seed round of financing, with TONcoin.Fund leading the investment and Orbs, MEXC Ventures, and others participating.

STON.fi

STON.fi is an AMM DEX on the TON blockchain, currently providing basic trading and liquidity provision functions for a limited number of tokens including AMBR, FNZ, BOLT, TGR, TON, and WTON. According to DeFi Llama data, the total locked value of STON.fi is currently around $540,000 USD, making it one of the more mature dApps on the TON network.

Fragment

Fragment is a non-custodial decentralized NFT trading platform on TON, and also a Telegram-specific platform for trading usernames and virtual numbers. The trading settlement unit is TON.

The initial owner who puts it up for sale will receive all profits after deducting 5% platform and conversion fees. Users can also acquire attractive and secure Telegram usernames through bidding.

TON has collaborated with Fragment to launch a virtual phone number starting with +888. One important use of this number is to register for Telegram and bind to TON wallet, which serves to protect privacy and showcase user identity. This virtual number is defined as an NFT recorded on the TON blockchain, similar to QQ and license plate numbers, with speculative and collectible value. The initial selling price was 9 TON, and the current floor price is 37 TON.

TONUP - Launchpad Platform

TonUP is a leading launchpad platform on the TON network. It has received a six-figure investment from TONcoin.Fund and will launch its first launchpad project, Tap Fantasy, on August 30th. Tap Fantasy is a unique Game-Fi and MMORPG game with over 700,000 users on BSC and Solana.

Tonstarter launchpad platform

Tonstarter is the first native launchpad on the TON chain. In March of this year, Tonstarter announced the completion of a $1.5 million seed round of financing, with investors including Kingsway Capital, Gate.io, and DWF Labs. Tonstarter was incubated by First Stage Labs, a venture capital firm in the TON ecosystem.

最后

translates to

Final

in English.

Learning from history can help us understand the rise and fall of things. When people talk about the rise of WeChat Pay, the most direct impression is the success of WeChat red envelopes. However, WeChat Pay only became a mobile payment giant after two years of laying the foundation and connecting various online and offline payment scenarios, with the support of nearly 700,000 offline merchants, and it didn't fully explode until 2015. Its success is not only the birth and explosion of a single product, but also the success of the entire ecosystem strategy, ultimately forming a huge commercial closed loop.

If Telegram is to be compared to WeChat in the encryption industry, it will become the super entrance for the next generation of 1 billion Web3 users. It is necessary to synchronize efforts in these areas:

1. Seamless integration with Telegram for the encryption wallet, with user-friendly operation as the top priority.

2. Large-scale user education. Internally, projects such as TG Bot will migrate web users from PC to mobile devices, while externally creating positive externalities through projects such as Play to Earn, Move to Earn, Learn to Earn, and other X to Earn/Free to play initiatives to attract Web 2 users.

3. Connect consumer scenarios and enrich daily encryption use cases. After the arrival of the Web3 mobile wave, it is the real moment for Web3 to land. Integrating games/DeFi/creator economy/encrypted e-commerce into high-frequency life scenarios, and integrating with Ton's encrypted wallet to build an ecological closed loop for Telegram.

4. Reasonable encryption supervision. As a global network, TON needs to comply with the laws and regulatory rules of different countries and regions to protect its security and sustainability. It is necessary to adjust strategies and operations in a timely manner to meet the requirements of legal compliance.

The trend is unstoppable, and the waves are surging. No one can stop the wheel of history. In this rapidly changing era, all business ideas are still unknowns. The road from PC to mobile Web3 will inevitably overturn and reconstruct current Web3 projects, regardless of how the future exists.

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