TON x Telegram — The Race for SuperApp.
What, in your opinion, should mass adoption look like? Will it happen after a single significant event or will it come unnoticed? Perhaps it's already here?
Initially, the goal of cryptocurrencies was to change the functioning principle of the financial system. Then the goal expanded to changing the principles of the entire internet and the infrastructure on which products are built.
Now it seems like we have only two choices.
1 - Leave everything as it is, making the internet a barrier to human development. Wait until it breaks under the weight of cumbersome trust systems and numerous intermediaries.
2 - Start building on a new, independent, and decentralized system. One that will help solve the problems we face today.
What might this system look like? How exactly will it work? We are yet to find out.
But it seems that more and more companies are choosing the second option.
Telegram has made such a choice. Telegram Messenger is now being transformed into a next-generation SuperApp. Telegram has already integrated a wallet, anonymous numbers, and transferable names.
The main tool in implementing this project now becomes The Open Network — TON.
How it came about, what awaits it, and how everyone can participate in the future mass adoption, you will learn from this article.
2. Returning to the native harbor.
2.1 How Telegram is building SuperApp.
2.2 TON and its role in Telegram's future.
3. Architecture and technology.
3.2 Development. Smart contracts, programming languages.
4. TON - Ecosystem. How to create a million-dollar app.
4.2 Building on TON. Grants, bounties, accelerators, incubation.
The article was written by the team @zeroxcholy
With the participation of: @cryptofilya & @medvezhk
1. History.
The first Telegram ICO and the creation of TON.
After Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin Whitepaper in 2008 and mined the first block in the network, cryptocurrencies remained the domain of geeks, cypherpunks, and various kinds of criminals for a long time.
Perception changed for the first time in 2017, during the first truly massive bull market. This year marked the time when cryptocurrencies caught the attention of traditional capital and major products.
One such product was Pavel Durov's messenger - Telegram. The reasons why Telegram decided to create its own cryptocurrency and why exactly at this time are both ideological and financial.
By that time, the number of monthly Telegram users had reached 200 million. But in its 5 years of existence, the messenger had yet to earn anything. This fact, coupled with Durov's reluctance to seek investments and sacrifice even a minimal part of freedom, was a big problem for the company.
The solution was found in cryptocurrencies.
Firstly, based on crypto, an independent ecosystem can be created, both from an infrastructure and financial point of view.
Users can be given the ability to pay for purchases, transfer money, deploy applications within Telegram completely independent of jurisdiction or citizenship.
Secondly, launching a cryptocurrency through an ICO can raise funds for the parent company. Externally, it may look like a regular fundraising: someone brings money, gives it to the issuer, and receives a portion of tokens in return. However, legally, these are completely different procedures.
Tokens do not give control over the company. A token is a fundamentally different entity that sometimes exists independently of the product.
Development and fundraising.
The decision to start development was made. The new network was called the Telegram Open Network, or Gram. The task for the new blockchain was to have enough bandwidth to withstand the influx of millions of users from the messenger.
For the basis of the Gram architecture, they took the most advanced and well-known scalability enhancement concepts at that time. At its core, it is a modular network consisting of several chains that perform different tasks in parallel.
This allows for much more efficient operation than single-layer solutions. Now, six years later, such architectures are becoming more common.
It was decided to conduct an ICO for financing.
The fundraising started in early 2018. Several rounds were held, each lasting for several weeks.
Investors began to compete for the opportunity to invest in Gram. As a proxy investment in Telegram and the new mass cryptocurrency, it became one of the most desirable investments of the year.
By March 2018, a total of $1.7 billion had been raised, making it the largest ICO in history. The money was raised, and investors had to wait for the development to be completed.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
It took about a year of development. In early October 2019, the TON team finally sent letters to investors announcing that the network would be launched later that month. But the launch did not happen.
Almost immediately after this announcement, on October 11th, the SEC filed a complaint in the federal court of Manhattan, accusing Telegram of illegally distributing unregistered digital tokens.
The company was accused of violating securities laws. They demanded an injunction against the project, the return of $1.7 billion to investors, and an additional $18.5 million to be paid as a fine.
This, perhaps, is one of the most tragic cases in the history of cryptocurrencies. If we return to the discussion of the difference between tokens and equities, the boundary between them was never clearly drawn. And this problem remains unresolved to this day.
After six months of litigation, Telegram suspended support for TON and reached a settlement with the SEC, promising to return all funds to investors.
There were no fundamental reasons for the SEC to prohibit the release of Gram. This is not one of those cases where the enterprise is doomed to failure from the start. Durov himself believes that it was more of a political decision than a legal one.
Here's what Pavel Durov wrote in his article.
> What Was TON And Why It Is Over.
We are very pleased with the result of the technology we created. TON had the potential to change the world and change how people perceive storing money and transmitting information. Unfortunately, the American court did not allow us to do this. Moreover, they prohibited us from launching it even outside the United States. Because American investors "could" find a way to use the TON platform.
This decision shows how little sovereignty individuals and countries have in the modern world. This is what we wanted to fight against. Nevertheless, we decided to stop supporting TON. Unfortunately, 96% of the world's population depends on the decisions of the 4% of American citizens they elected. Perhaps this will change in the future, but not today. We tried to change the world, but failed. And now we leave our business to the next generation of entrepreneurs and developers who will learn from our mistakes and do what we couldn't do.
For any other traditional product, this would be the end of the story, but web3 operates by different rules. The product community, developers, and contributors sometimes have as much power as the team itself.
In the world of the new internet, technologies belong to the people, not the companies.
All of the TON code was released open source on GitHub, and the developer community decided to come together to take it and finish what Telegram couldn't do. The project was in the testnet for a year and only in 2021 did it go into full Mainnet.
At the same time, the TON Foundation was born - a community of people united by the goal of popularizing and promoting TON.
Already in December 2021, Pavel Durov first supported the new TON.
When Telegram bid farewell to TON, I expressed hope that future generations of developers would someday be able to realize our dream of a blockchain platform for everyone. I am proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving.
Technically, TON still outpaces everything else in the blockchain sphere for years. It would be frustrating if this project died without bringing any benefit to humanity. Toncoin is no longer associated with Telegram, but I sincerely wish the team success.
By the beginning of 2022, the blockchain had been completely revived by the community. It became a full-fledged and working L1 solution. It lost Telegram's support but still had the fastest and most efficient architecture underneath.
2. Returning to the native harbor
Although Telegram and The Open Network became fully independent projects that had existed and developed separately for several years, they did not lose sight of each other.
It turned out that back in 2018, the Telegram team and Durov foresaw future trends. Just a few years later, in 2022, one of the most popular topics became Superapps.
And the reason for the popularity of this topic is WeChat.
The largest Chinese messenger. A type of application that contains almost all the services necessary for life. Although WeChat was originally developed as just a messenger, it is now one of the most profitable applications on the market.
WeChat's earnings are at least 100 times greater than Telegram's, and 17 times greater than WhatsApp's.
· WeChat: $17.4 billion in 2021 - almost all from mini apps + WeChat Pay.
· WhatsApp: $906 million in 2022 - almost all WhatsApp for Business.
A 2020 Kagan Asia Consumer Insights study showed that 87% of Chinese users make payments through SuperApps, and 78% order services.
Leading global consulting agencies, such as Gartner, predict that by 2027, more than half of the world will actively use various SuperApp applications. (By the way, it was Gartner who came up with that very Hype Cycle)
In 2022, PYMNTS and Paypal conducted a study that concluded that 72% of consumers in the United States, Australia, Germany, and England are interested in using SuperApps in one form or another.
In general, everyone is very excited about the idea of replicating WeChat's success.
- After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk announced plans to transform the platform into a Super App. Basically, this led to the renaming to X.
> Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter may take inspiration from Chinese super apps
He has repeatedly said that he wants to create an "Everything app" and the equivalent of WeChat in the Western world.
Mark Zuckerberg and Meta also plan to do something similar from their ecosystem. They own WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
Facebook was renamed to Meta in 2022 and also began building its own kind of SuperApp, with a focus on content and sociality. In general, considering the blurred definition of the "Metaverse", this concept can also be classified as a type of SuperApp.
Even Microsoft has announced its desire to create its own SuperApp. Let's wish them success.
But for now, there are actually no applications in the world that could be directly compared to WeChat. In fact, for Web2, it is a unique system made possible by the internal characteristics of the Chinese economy.
It's a very unique economy (which does not let Western companies into its internal market), but at the same time, it's one of the largest in the world.
WeChat wouldn't have emerged 10 years ago as a global company because it's almost infrastructurally impossible. To implement capital transfer, say, from the Dominican Republic to the United States, then to India and Russia, in a way that would be cheap for the person and look like they're making a transfer in a banking app, was impossible.
That's why WeChat exists so perfectly within the homogeneous Chinese economy, where there's no need to worry about financial infrastructure, privacy, or dealing with the government.
To create a global competitor to WeChat, you need a technology that doesn't require constant interaction with intermediaries, a lengthy process of dealing with jurisdictions, and financial horror. A technology that would allow money to be transferred to anyone in the world in one click.
Technology has emerged. Durov, Musk see how cryptocurrencies can be used to create the first global competitor to WeChat.
2.1 How Telegram is Building a Superapp
To build a SuperApp, several layers of infrastructure are needed to deploy applications within Telegram. And, apparently, TON will become an important part of this infrastructure.
The first step in building a SuperApp was the emergence of Telegram Bots back in 2015. They existed independently for a long time until in 2022, Durov's team introduced several new features: TG Web & Mini Apps.
Essentially, they made it possible to launch mini-applications within the messenger itself. It's almost the same as it works now in WeChat.
"Telegram starts to look like a super app, echoing WeChat" - Techcrunch.
Mini Apps are built on JavaScript - one of the most popular languages in the world. A variety of tools from both the blockchain world and the traditional one are used to build the infrastructure, and TON has become one of such tools.
By integrating blockchain to operate the future Telegram SuperApp, Telegram can ensure its independence and, most importantly, convenience. We see one of those cases where cryptocurrency is implemented not just out of some financial or ideological motives, but because it can really solve a very significant technical problem of the modern world - the problem of capital transfer and decentralization of infrastructure load.
At the moment, Telegram has about 800 million monthly active users (MAU). And it has a serious advantage over, say, WhatsApp or WeChat in the sense that it is available almost anywhere in the world. It is used in both developing and developed countries.
It's one of the most geographically diversified applications.
2.2 TON and its Role in Telegram's Future
Now Durov is indirectly integrating TON into his messenger. Using blockchain will provide a decentralized infrastructure for mini-applications to work. And the main plus is that, firstly, they will be completely permissionless, and secondly, they will be able to use any financial instruments without jurisdictional restrictions. Even if, for example, cryptocurrency is banned in a country or any other restrictions are introduced.
It turns out that this time the adoption of TON in Telegram went not from top to bottom, but from the bottom up. Little by little, more and more functionality is being implemented within the messenger, and TON very naturally and imperceptibly is being implemented for the user.
What prospects does this open up for TON?
The first blockchain with tens of millions of active users can be worth a lot. Perhaps take third place after ETH & BTC, or even higher. ZkSync currently has several hundred thousand users at best. The same can be said for the largest L2 solutions.
The cost of acquiring a customerin crypto is extremely high. Projects compete for users, inventing more and more sophisticated motivation systems. As an example of the latest - Blast & Friend.tech. And here we have millions of Telegram users.
The TON infrastructure is being prepared to absorb a lot of liquidity. There are already enough useful use cases: buying numbers, paying for VPN proxies, domains, premium accounts, internal payments in games, bots, and so on.
Moreover, there is already a successful example in Telegram of using cryptocurrencies and building a business on this. This case is Telegram Bots, the way for which was opened by the rise of UniBot. It's a fairly simple but very effective way to use an existing interface to interact with a new technical solution.
TG Bots - snipers have a fairly stable financial model. Now the entire Telegram and TON ecosystem exists around the Bots + API + Wallet framework. That is, bots are used for the interface and access that allows users to interact with one or another on-chain infrastructure.
In September 2023, at the TOKEN2049 conference, the TON Foundation openly announced its plans for mutual integration with Telegram.
Here are the main theses from Pavel Durov's speech and post:
· Telegram began cooperation with the TON Foundation to integrate and promote the Web3 ecosystem based on TON.
· Last year, Telegram allowed users to buy and sell usernames and Telegram IDs on Fragment — an auction platform based on TON.
· This was a phenomenal success. Telegram sold digital assets at auctions for a total of $120 million. Among these assets were anonymous numbers, the buyers of which literally saw a profit of +2700% on their investments in just 9 months.
· Currently, Telegram has 800 million active users from around the world. It is expected that by 2028, this number will reach 1.5 billion. In the next 3-5 years, the TON fund intends to attract 30% of Telegram's active users to TON. This is 30 times > the entire current active crypto audience in the world.
· The wallet has appeared in the Telegram menu for its current users. In November, the wallet will appear in the menu and investment menu for all non-US Telegram users.
· You can already try TON Space — a wallet without storage inside Telegram.
3. Architecture and Technology.
Unlike monolithic blockchains, TON was originally designed as a multi-chain system. In particular, it consists of 3 main components: masterchain, workchains, and shardchains.
> General protocol information is contained in MasterChain. It sets the current values of all parameters, the validator set, active workchains, and shards.
> WorkChain includes information about transfers, transactions. TON allows private chains to exist within a unified ecosystem, which ultimately leads to horizontal scalability.
> TON also provides for database sharding to distribute the load on the blockchain through shardchains. The network generates new blocks on each shardchain & masterchain every ~5 seconds.
Such architecture allows TON to easily scale almost infinitely with the growth of load. For example, a service for asset exchange can launch its own workchain, which, if necessary, can be divided into hundreds of parallel shard chains.
TON is a modular blockchain, which fits into the current narrative and general opinion on the development of this direction (emphasized by Messari, a16z, The Spartan Group in their reports).
TON fundamentally differs from both monolithic blockchains, which were developed without scalability in mind, and modular blockchains (TON does not have a top-down transaction processing principle). Essentially, the architecture has much in common with Polkadot.
Thanks to sharding and parallel transaction processing, TON demonstrates good speed and can compete with many well-known L1 networks.
For example, with 256 validators, TON showed a result of 104,000 TPS - a record among public blockchains.
For comparison, SOL reached 65.000, Ethereum - 15.000. Moreover, developers claim that the real potential of TON is much higher with more validators and optimization of their work
At the moment, TON has 310 validators (the optimal number for balancing speed and maintaining decentralization). Validator selection is done through delegated voting by TON owners.
A critically important parameter is time-to-finality. This is the time it takes for a payment to be fully confirmed by the network. On average, TON takes ~6 seconds for this, compared to ~12 minutes for Ethereum and 60 minutes for BTC.
Thus, in terms of speed/performance parameters, TON comes out on top, surpassing all other blockchains. This becomes especially important in applications where minimal delay is crucial.
Over the past year, the number of active accounts in the ecosystem has steadily increased. Currently, this number exceeds 1 million, and the total number of addresses is 5 million. There was a sharp spike in early January, which was contributed to by Notcoin (we wrote an article about it).
To maintain the network's viability, TON has 3 separate roles, each of which is truly important:
- Verification nodes actively participate in maintaining the network by staking TON tokens. To achieve this status, one must deposit at least 300,000 tokens and have the necessary hardware. Every month, between 100 and 1000 nodes are selected to create all the blocks.
- Fishermen profit by identifying and pointing out errors made by verification nodes. They send invalid certificates to determine how diligently the nodes perform their task. If a node fails to detect an invalid certificate, it is subject to appropriate punishment.
- Proofreaders play an important role in recommending regular nodes to become verification nodes and profit. Additionally, they check the state of shardchains and provide Merkle proofs to be sent to nodes.
3.1 Main Components of TON.
By default, the Distributed Hash Table (DHT) technology is used for data storage. It allows for efficient reading/writing operations distributed among nodes while maintaining a high level of decentralization.
In it, account identifiers account_id act as keys, and the values are data structures with information about accounts:
- Balance
- Smart contract code
- Storage of smart contract data
- Statistics
- Outgoing message queue
- List of recent incoming messages
The key advantages of DHT are high speed, as everything is distributed, and unlimited scalability through horizontal resource addition.
The operating principle is that when storing information using a cryptographic hash function, a node is randomly selected to store this value. When retrieving data for a specific key, the same function is used, and then the data is replicated between nodes for increased reliability.
In combination with other TON technologies, DHT provides the ability to quickly create massive data storage and file exchange services, similar to IPFS & Filecoin, already at the basic level of the blockchain.
Additionally, there is a built-in anonymizing layer - TON Proxy, which masks IP addresses and traffic between users and applications similar to decentralized VPNs.
It utilizes Mixed Transport Protocol (MTP) technology:
- Traffic passes through several intermediate proxy nodes, being encrypted at each step.
- None of the nodes can "peek" to identify the real source and recipient of the packets.
- Even if some nodes are compromised, anonymity is preserved.
This feature is important for services requiring increased anonymity, such as voting applications, data storage, and file exchange.
In January 2023, TON expanded its functionality by introducing TON Storage (peer-to-peer file exchange system). It is similar to DropBox and torrents and simplifies the file exchange process.
It also provides encryption protection for files stored on the blockchain. Additionally, to ensure continuous file storage, node operators hosting these files receive corresponding rewards.
In addition, there is a system called TON DNS. This is a mechanism similar to ENS, where addresses are converted into readable names (for example, choly.ton). Currently, these names are available on Fragment (the most expensive one was sold for $2 million - .news).
3.2 Development. Smart Contracts, Programming Languages.
Unlike EVM, all smart contracts in TON are asynchronous to increase speed and scalability. TON has its own computational environment called TVM (TON Virtual Machine) — a TON
virtual machine, with a key architectural solution aimed at improving scalability and increasing speed compared to the synchronous model of Ethereum.
The basis of TVM is a bytecode stack similar to JVM/Zend Engine. Smart contract source code is compiled into bytecode before deployment on the network. This also increases the speed of operation compared to interpreted languages like Solidity in Ethereum.
Development is done in languages such as FunC, Fift, and Tact. Developers must take into account the nuances of asynchronous logic execution, message flow between contracts, and attack risks. Compared to EVM, it's more complex, but the benefits will eventually become apparent.
Fift — more fundamental, but due to its complexity, few developers prefer to use it for smart contract development.
Tact — recently introduced by the TON company, syntax reminiscent of Typescript, designed to alleviate development problems.
FunC — the most common language, structurally similar to the C programming language.
TON uses BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant) consensus algorithm based on Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS). The network's performance depends not on miners' computational power but on the quantity & quality of validators.
Since TON was originally created as a multichain supporting horizontal scalability through sharding, any workchain can contain ~260 parallel shardchains.
Additionally, unlike ETH, where shards are partially isolated, in TON inter-shard transitions are indivisible due to asynchrony and a shared storage layer. This makes it easier for applications to scale to a larger number of shards.
TON occupies leading positions in metrics such as transaction speed and finalization time, made possible by its advanced sharding architecture and asynchronous smart contracts.
However, it's important to note that TON is still in its early stages compared to Ethereum and other mature platforms. It currently has lower liquidity in DeFi, fewer dApps, and users.
Nonetheless, its growth potential is significant due to integration with Telegram and ongoing development by enthusiasts to expand the ecosystem.
As of 2023, the TON ecosystem has a relatively small number of developers compared to other ecosystems. There are 28 full-time developers and 77 part-time developers working on TON.
However, the potential for growth within this ecosystem is substantial, even when compared internally. Ethereum, for example, has around 1,900 full-time developers.
4. TON - Ecosystem. How to create a million-dollar app.
4.1 Metrics & Projects.
In terms of metrics, the TON ecosystem currently boasts around 588 applications covering various sectors. The pace of new solutions entering the ecosystem is accelerating, indicating growing interest and activity.
- Over the past year, the number of accounts (wallets, NFTs, smart contracts) has increased significantly, reaching 6.3 million, with daily increases of around 900,000 accounts.
- The number of wallets has grown from 500,000 to 1.5 million over the year, with an average daily increase of 5,000 users and occasional spikes of 20,000 to 30,000 users.
- Daily transaction volumes have also experienced a boom, increasing from 100,000 to 200,000 to 700,000, with occasional peaks of 1 to 10 million transactions.
Interest in using Telegram to create applications has expanded beyond the TON ecosystem.
According to Binance Research, the aggregate trading volume conducted through Telegram bots exceeded $190 million.
Recognizing the significance of Telegram application development outside the ecosystem, the TON Foundation introduced a catalog called the tApps Center. The goal of this center is to create a catalog showcasing Telegram bot and web application ecosystems (TWA).
The aim is to prioritize user interaction, with the tApps Center providing a familiar interface akin to mainstream app stores.
To understand the ecosystem's progress, it's crucial to look back at 2022.
During this year, the TON Core team made significant changes to the TON ecosystem, including restructuring and optimizing key components such as TON Proxy, TON Storage, TON Payments, and TON DNS. These elements are crucial parts mentioned in the TON technical document.
When TON was proposed in 2017, ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards were not widely adopted. Integration of the DNS structure into the blockchain was a fundamental and complex task lacking a modular design.
In 2021, when TON blockchain development resumed, one of its main tasks was developing TON token contracts.
This led to the creation of standards such as TEP-74 (Jettons) and TEP-62 (NFT). Based on these standards, the 2017 DNS system was reworked to include the NFT concept, and in 2022, the DNS trading market was launched.
Throughout this time, the TON blockchain has been evolving, and the ecosystem has been enriched with new projects and solutions.
The TON ecosystem comprises web2 applications, emphasizing simplicity for ordinary users. Anyone can create a simple application/game on Telegram and integrate it with TON, with all the tools previously unimaginable.
Currently, there's a plethora of TON projects, and everyone has the opportunity to bring their ideas to life. How? We'll discuss this shortly.
First, let's delve into the key TON projects and touch upon their ideas and metrics.
DeDust: An AMM DEX based on TON, currently having the largest number of trading pairs. It also features a bridge with ETH support.
StonFi: Another AMM DEX utilizing the Constant Product Market Maker algorithm. It offers almost zero fees, low slippage, and a straightforward UX/UI. There's integration with Telegram, allowing bot usage.
Lending Protocols in the Ecosystem:
DAOLama: A lending protocol with instant loans and the ability to provide NFTs for rent without the need to communicate with the lender or wait for approval.
It's just starting to gain popularity.
EVAA Protocol: The first decentralized lending protocol in TON, allowing users to lend or borrow assets without relying on a centralized intermediary. It's oriented towards users and features integration with Telegram, marking the first attempt to create DeFi lending solutions using Telegram Mini Apps.
The staking sector is the most developed in the ecosystem, with noticeable user interest. Major projects include TonStakers, bemo, Stakee, and Hipo, offering an average APY of around 4%.
Approximately $800 million worth of TON is staked in the ecosystem.
TON & Telegram Synergy - Wallet, Fragment.
Fragment: A platform facilitating item exchange between users, supporting direct, secure, and anonymous sales, as well as public auctions. Fragment fully leverages the advantages of TON. The primary items circulating on Fragment are usernames and phone numbers, recorded as property of specific addresses after purchase.
Use cases of collectible items in TON:
- Trade Utility: Collectible items act as tradable digital assets, enabling users to buy, sell, and exchange them within the TON ecosystem.
- Exclusive Access: Collectible items can provide special privileges, such as ticket sales or access to exclusive events.
- Gaming Integration: These tokens can be used in GameFi, allowing players to interact with blockchain-based games on TON.
- TON also supports SBT (Soulbound Token) and cNFT (Compressed NFT) standards.
TON Wallet: Integrated directly into Telegram, it provides a convenient and hassle-free way to exchange/manage assets without leaving the familiar interface.
It suits users seeking a simpler wallet for basic coin transfers. Within less than two years, it has garnered over 1.5 million users, enabling easy and secure transactions.
4.3 Building on TON: Grants, Bounties, Accelerators, Incubation.
The TON ecosystem offers a low entry barrier for development and participation in grants. According to ton.org/stats, the statistics as of today are as follows:
- $1.2 million has already been allocated for grants.
- Over 100 projects have received grants.
- The ecosystem supports over 450 builders.
TON has a significant support program, nurturing young talents, rewarding valuable contributors, and providing opportunities for ecosystem development, as well as knowledge, connections, and support.
Let's go through the grants step by step, starting with the areas of interest for TON, conditions, and grant sizes.
1. Creating Telegram Mini Apps:
In this category, mainly social B2C applications in Telegram with a clear vision of achieving virality and retaining users are represented.
A mandatory factor is, naturally, the use of TON in the dApp itself. Besides, the overall concept should be aimed at attracting web2 users into the ecosystem.
It's worth mentioning that you're not limited to these items. Try creating your unique products, but integration with @wallet, TON Connect, Wallet Pay is mandatory.
Grant size: Up to $10K in TON.
Additionally, transferring a project from another blockchain to TON is allowed if there's a good user base. The grant size in this case depends on metrics such as DAU, MAU, TVL, transaction volume, etc.
For instance, for GameFi & SocialFi, preference is given to projects with DAU > 5K, MAU > 20K, R1 > 25%, R7 > 10%, R14 > 5%.
In this case, the grant size can be up to $50K in TON.
The primary criterion here is the presence of social mechanics, aiming at attracting and retaining a mass web2 audience.
Two subcategories of GameFi projects interest the TON Foundation:
Grant size: Up to $10K in TON for initial development & up to $50K for existing games with good metrics.
This category includes technical projects with open-source code, commercial projects enhancing TON's infrastructure, and projects improving the current landscape of DeFi.
It's emphasized that interaction between dApps & Telegram Mini Apps and DeFi projects improving the current landscape are important.
It's crucial to conduct thorough research into the infrastructure and business landscape of TON.
Grant size: Up to $50K in TON.
It's important to note that TON usually doesn't grant funds for simple integration of the TON network into existing projects.
> More detailed information on grants
For Q4 2023, around 243 grant applications requesting $1 million were submitted. Ultimately, 18 projects were selected, receiving a total of $350K.
In addition, the TON ecosystem features bounty programs, through which you can also earn $TON tokens by creating utility.
If you are interested in more specific activities such as finding flaws/bugs, there is a Bug Bounty program.
If you find a critical error/vulnerability in the TON blockchain (in the C++ code of the main repository) or TON's core services, you can submit its description and exploitation scenario to receive a reward.
Critical vulnerabilities are primarily of interest: crashes, loss/theft of coins, etc.
The reward size can be up to $100K in $TON depending on the severity.
Detailed information on bounty programs.
Information on bug bounty.
Around $110K was distributed for completing various bounty programs in Q4 2023. A total of 77 proposals were accepted by TON.
In addition to grants and bounty programs, TON independently nurtures projects, conducts accelerators, and boot camps. A fully developed incubation system for future unicorns is in place.
The accelerator is created by TON Foundation, helping participants attract capital at an early stage and build a strong business using the ecosystem's key advantages.
Accelerator link
The accelerator is developed in collaboration with DoraHacks, Amazon Web Services, Tencent Cloud, Animoca Brands, KuCoin, OKX.
Benefits of participating in the accelerator:
- A 10-week educational program presented by TON Foundation and partners such as Wallet, Community Bot, TON Tech, etc.
- Exclusive access to marketing tools such as Telegram advertising and community bot quests.
- Support from the TON Tech team for integration and auditing.
- Mentorship in marketing and growth.
- Potential funding for your project.
The best projects will have the opportunity to receive funding from a $2 million pool provided by TON Ventures and other funds.
Application for the TON Accelerator is currently closed; applications for the February cohort ended on February 25. We are waiting for the next launch.
However, if you want to try yourself as a mentor for the accelerator and you have extensive expertise, you are welcome.
Additionally, TON recently launched a 5-month incubation program — TON Bootcamp.
It is a web2.5 incubator, giving developers the opportunity to create Mini Apps that combine Web2 capabilities with Web3 advantages, primarily aimed at stimulating the development of Telegram Mini Apps based on TON.
Everything happens with the support of Future3 Campus & partners Hashkey Capital.
Future3 Campus is a web3-oriented incubation platform created by Wanxiang Blockchain Labs and HashKey Capital, aimed at promoting and developing entrepreneurship and innovation in Web3. Attention is paid to the mass adoption of Web3, DePIN, AI. Currently, a $50 million starting fund is open.
As per the current conditions, 15 teams can receive support for integration into the TON ecosystem (funding up to $500K).
Applications for TON Bootcamp are also closed at the moment.
Within this boot camp, 12 projects were selected (out of 200 applications). It is noted that they are currently undergoing training with experts such as Dr. Xiao - Chairman & CEO HashKey Group, Deng Chao - President & CEO of Hashkey Capital, Dr. Zou - Chief Economist HashKey Group.
More about TON Bootcamp.
4.4 Advancement of GameFi.
At present, the GameFi sector in TON is one of the most promising directions. The team itself gives enormous preference to this sector, with approximately 40 gaming & related projects currently in existence.
The choice of blockchain significantly impacts the success and reach of the product. The TON Blockchain creates all the conditions for future development, achieving significant success in expanding GameFi.
The GameFi sector began to rise in 2020, with games not requiring a huge marketing budget. During the peak of COVID, GameFi projects replaced lost jobs for many people in many low-income countries in Asia and Latin America.
The development of TON GameFi began in 2022 (literally at the peak of the sector), and now we have a huge ecosystem. What has this led to?
At present, the GameFi sector occupies about 18% of the overall sentiment among narratives, making it one of the most popular in the web3 space. And the TON Blockchain does not want to miss this moment.
Telegram is a Web3 messaging platform... Before TON, there was no good way to integrate web3 into Telegram.
– Yat Siu, Co-Founder of Animoca Brands.
By the end of 2023, Animoca Brands announced a strategic partnership with TON Blockchain, becoming its largest validator. The fund joined in revolutionizing the GameFi sector, thanks to the synergy between TON & Telegram, creating a web3 SuperApp.
Animoca Brands plans to launch many new games within Telegram in the near future. This is a huge upside for both the blockchain itself and the ecosystem.
The community itself supports integration, especially after the success of Notcoin, which became the most popular game in web3.
Partnering with TON is the second time Animoca has become a validator. The VC sees tremendous potential in development, encouraging and helping developers in this process (this point was touched upon earlier).
The transition from web2 to web3 games represents a significant shift towards expanding the rights and opportunities of players. However, the complexity of most GameFi projects creates significant obstacles to widespread adoption.
TON & Telegram solve these problems by simplifying the transition to blockchain games. Thanks to Mini Apps, players can easily access games with a single click, and developers can quickly launch games based on TON in Telegram.
Users often encounter complex processes, but TON Blockchain brings a decisive aspect — creating an interesting, seamless gaming experience. All the advantages of web3 games are preserved, and common problems are solved.
At present, GameFi projects in Telegram are not yet widely distributed, with about 1% of users playing games. The potential is enormous compared to other social platforms (10-30% upside).
Proof of concept for the success of the TON idea is Notcoin.
The TON developer community has shown that it is possible to create a viral sensation in the web3 world, immersing ordinary users in our world. There are approximately 27 million players to date.
Additionally, other projects continue to develop, such as Tap Fantasy, with about ~600K players in January.
What other gaming projects exist?
We will highlight just a few of them, but we recommend personally immersing yourself in the gaming world of TON and discovering something interesting for yourself:
Tongochi: A game based on the principles of tamagotchi in a post-apocalyptic world. Raise and train an amphibian for battles with zombies.
Punk City: A game set in a cyberpunk universe. Players can participate in battles and win token giveaways. They have a collection with a trading volume of $2 million.
Fanton: A game in which you must manage a football team and participate in tournaments. Player stats are converted into game points. There are approximately ~1 million users.
Gatto: A game in which you need to raise virtual pets, with the possibility of earning $TON. There are also about ~1 million players.
Every game offers a unique experience, combining the pleasure of gaming with the opportunity to earn. It's worth mentioning that in TON, there's something for everyone.
TON creates all the necessary conditions for those who want to build their own GameFi projects.
There's a platform called TON Play, designed for quick deployment of games on the TON Blockchain. It's now an integral part of the ecosystem, providing a set of development tools that make it easier to create, publish, and manage assets. It also adds additional revenue streams for developers.
TON Play also organizes various hackathons and competitions in which everyone can participate. The latest hackathon had a prize pool of $300 million.
TON Play link
Additionally, there's a platform for creating games without coding knowledge called 8XR.
In simple terms, it's a hub for creating games on the HTML5 game engine, optimized for Telegram & TON. It doesn't require coding knowledge or backend setup, incorporating all features in one convenient place.
Today, TON remains one of the most diverse and accessible blockchains. Its GameFi sector plays a key role in mass adoption, becoming a key for people who want to create something of their own and receive support.
Already, the transformation of Telegram into a SuperApp is underway. Dozens of games are preparing to launch on Telegram using TON.
Conclusion
We will see many unexpected examples of cryptocurrency usage in well-known products.
The Open Network is now in one of the best starting positions to become the native network for many truly mass applications. We've already seen examples like Notcoin, and there will be even more in the future.
Maybe you'll create such an application yourself.
And we'll continue to write about cryptocurrencies and tell you about what the world of Web3 is living.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article!
Stay tuned @zeroxcholy!
