Backed by the social giant Telegram, will the TON ecosystem be a "flash in the pan" or "advance by leaps and bounds"?

Author: Vernacular Blockchain, Day
Original title: Backed by a social giant with 800 million monthly active users, will the TON ecosystem be a "flash in the pan" or "advance rapidly"?
The popularity of the Telegram Bot track this year has also inspired concepts related to the platform Telegram it is attached to. TON has rushed to No. 9 in market value in a short period of time (it is currently down to No. 11) and suddenly jumped into everyone's field of vision from an unknown place.
In addition, at the recent TOKEN2049 summit, Telegram officials announced that they would transform Telegram into the entrance to Web3 through TON, which has attracted widespread attention to Telegram-related concepts and added fuel to the popularity of TON. Of course, there are currently mixed opinions on the future development of Telegram. Some are optimistic and believe that the ecosystem will usher in a huge wealth effect; others believe that the thunder is thunderous but the rain is small.
Today, let’s take a brief look at the development history of Telegram and TON in the blockchain industry.
Telegram’s failure in blockchain
Telegram has a huge user base worldwide, with 1.3 billion registered users, many of whom are from Russia, Iran, India and other Asian and European countries. According to the founder of Telegram in his personal channel on July 18, Telegram has more than 2.5 million new users registering every day, and the monthly active users have exceeded 800 million.
According to data compiled by statista in January 2023, this number is 1.4 times that of X (formerly Twitter) (556 million), 0.61 times that of WeChat (1.309 billion), 0.86 times that of Facebook (931 million), and exceeds TikTok (715 million). Currently, as one of the must-have apps for Crypto, it has a huge Crypto user base.
Telegram has long been optimistic about the blockchain track. As early as 2017, Telegram released a white paper called Telegram Open Network (TON). TON is designed as a decentralized blockchain platform that aims to provide secure and high-performance blockchain solutions to support Telegram's communications and services.
In order to support the development and launch of TON, Telegram conducted two rounds of fundraising in 2018. It raised $1.7 billion from 175 investors, making TON one of the largest financings at the time. TokenGram's estimated total market value was $29.5 billion, roughly twice the market value of Ethereum at the time and second only to Bitcoin, which shows how popular it was at the time.
Telegram originally planned to issue Gram Tokens in March 2019. However, the blockchain plan was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which claimed that Telegram's token sales violated U.S. securities regulations.
Ultimately, the court supported the SEC's view, prohibiting Telegram from issuing its cryptocurrency Gram in the United States and requiring investors to return their money. Under pressure from the court's ruling, on May 13, 2020, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the termination of TON's research and development. He also began to return part of the investors' money, which was a major blow to Telegram's blockchain ambitions.
Despite the termination of TON, Telegram is still looking for opportunities in the blockchain field. They launched Telegram Passport and Telegram Payments features. Telegram Passport allows users to share identity information between different blockchain authentication services, while Telegram Payments provides a way to make payments on the Telegram platform. This shows their attention to the potential of blockchain technology in user authentication and the financial field.
According to some reports, Telegram is considering adding a cryptocurrency adapter to its chat application. This means that users can trade cryptocurrencies directly on the Telegram platform without leaving the application. There are also reports that Telegram is considering integrating a cryptocurrency wallet into its chat application. This will enable users to store and send cryptocurrencies within Telegram, further promoting the adoption and use of cryptocurrencies. This series of operations has laid the groundwork for the subsequent cooperation between Telegram and The Open Network.
TON takes over Telegram?
In May 2020, TON Labs, the technical research and development team of TON, announced the open source code of the TON project and terminated the development of the project. Subsequently, Free TON, a decentralized community composed of software developers, 13 validators and users, released a forked version of the blockchain "Free TON Blockchain", and the token name was "Ton Crystals".
According to the announcement of TON Labs, the community will also provide 85% of TON Tokens to users for free. The Free TON community said that anyone can join the network. Currently, the official Ton Crystals has stopped updating for a long time, and the price cannot be found, and it is almost in a cold state.
In May 2021, the Newton developer community spontaneously established by the Telegram community began to continue researching TON and promote the development of the TON project.
In 2021, Newton was renamed TON Foundation, TON was changed from the original Telegram Open Network to The Open Network, and the encrypted token on the chain was also changed to TON, with the goal of becoming the easiest payment method. Starting in June 2020, 98.55% of the total supply of TON was open to mining, and two years later, all TON was produced.
On April 12, 2022, TON Foundation launched its ecosystem fund and received $250 million in investment from some institutions. The fund is mainly used to finance the development of TON ecosystem projects. Driven by TON Foundation, TON has launched a number of platforms.
TON was originally created to serve Telegram, and although there were some obstacles along the way, Telegram users will sooner or later be exposed to the TON ecosystem. The main difficulties other blockchain projects face in acquiring new users are high difficulty of use and high barriers to entry. But TON is basically seamlessly connected to the Telegram application, which greatly reduces the difficulty. In April 2022, the TON Foundation announced that it would provide a wallet robot for Telegram, which means that Telegram users can send and receive TON and exchange other crypto assets directly in Telegram.
With the development in recent years, the community continues to add more use cases for TON, such as DeFi, regular subsidy plans, etc., to expand the user base. TON has gradually become the basic currency of the ecosystem, and its application scenarios are constantly expanding in DeFi, NFT and other fields.
In general, Telegram failed to build TON and was blocked by the SEC, but the open source of TON technology received community support and successfully developed and grew independently. However, when the founder of Telegram announced that he would no longer participate in the development of TON, he clearly stated that he would not have any contact or support for the technical network built on TON. It was precisely because of the statement of the founder of Telegram that the project was ignored by everyone. Without official support, the general view of everyone is that it has no official support and the possibility of success is extremely low.
status quo
The attitude of Telegram's founder has gradually changed over the past few years, from early rejection and disapproval, and no official support, to publicly praising TON's domain name auction in August 2022. He suggested that Telegram could also consider establishing an auction market for usernames, groups, and channels, and try to use TON as the underlying blockchain support for these future markets.
During the Token 2049 event, Telegram and the TON Foundation officially announced their partnership. Telegram integrated TON’s self-hosted crypto wallet “TON Space”, allowing users to access the Wallet directly in the Telegram menu, completing the Crypto self-circulation.
TON Space users can seamlessly connect to TON ecosystem applications through their Telegram accounts. Users can connect to TON Space directly from TON-based decentralized applications (dApps) and enjoy the functions and services it provides. TON Space acts as a blockchain account to support assets such as TON in the ecosystem. Some people compare TON Space to Telegram with WeChat Pay to Tencent to illustrate the importance of this cooperation.
Although the media is currently discussing Telegram's ecosystem very enthusiastically, after the two parties announced their cooperation, the ecological development did not actually bring much growth. According to data from defillima, the current TVL of Ton is only 16.86 million, and there is no obvious inflow of funds.
Ton TVL changes Source: hellobtc.pro
Some people think that TON’s short-term outstanding performance is entirely due to Telegram Bot, and the official cooperation has not played a big role. In addition, the current TON ecosystem is generally average, and most projects are replicas of the Ethereum ecosystem, without any outstanding features. However, some people hold the opposite view, believing that there will be explosive products in the ecosystem in the future. After all, 800 million monthly active users is a very scary number, which is at the same level as Twitter and WeChat, and it is a gathering place for Crypto users. The TON ecosystem deserves attention.
summary
The above is the current development of Telegram and TON ecology. At present, TON's market value ranks 12th. Some people think that this is the result of strong control by the project party. Most of the chips are concentrated in the hands of the project party. As for whether it is worth paying attention to, it depends on one's opinion.
"Disclaimer: This article is the author's independent opinion and does not represent the position of Vernacular Blockchain. This content is only for popular science learning and communication among crypto enthusiasts and does not constitute investment advice or suggestions. Please view it rationally, establish correct concepts, and improve risk awareness. The copyright and final interpretation rights of the article belong to Vernacular Blockchain. "