Behind the explosive rise of TON: A comprehensive analysis of the development history, technical characteristics, and ecological construction of public chains.

Since 2024, the TON chain ecosystem has shown an explosive rise trend. From May 25 to June 17, the price of Toncoin reached a maximum rise of 79.7%, Notcoin rose by as much as 700%, and Fishcoin rose by 400%. The TON ecosystem demonstrates a strong wealth effect, attracting a large influx of capital. So how should we participate in this feast? This article will provide a comprehensive overview of the development history, core logic, and ecosystem construction of TON.

1. Project Background

Basic Information

Name: TON( The Open Network )

Founders: Pavel Durov, Nikolai Durov

Operating Team: TON Foundation

TON is a decentralized first-layer public blockchain designed for billions of users, featuring scalability and sharding capabilities, aimed at addressing issues such as high transaction fees, slow speeds, cross-chain communication, and scalability that exist in blockchain. Currently, it is mainly operated by the non-profit organization TON Foundation, whose goal is to provide 500 million users with digital identities, data, and assets by 2028. Backed by Telegram, the TON chain is a key means to achieve this goal. Despite the rapid development of TON, its journey has been tumultuous.

The tortuous development process

● In 2017, the project was launched: Telegram founders Pavel Durov and Nikolai Durov began developing the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain project, planning to launch the native cryptocurrency Gram.

● In 2018, the first token issuance ( ICO ): Telegram raised approximately $1.7 billion through its ICO, becoming one of the largest token issuances at the time, attracting the attention of the SEC.

● In 2019, development progress: TON introduced sharding technology to improve scalability and processing speed, and launched the testnet.

● In 2020, the turning point of the project: Telegram announced its withdrawal from the TON project, transferring development work to an independent open-source developer community. The project was renamed "The Open Network", and the token was renamed Toncoin. ICO funds were refunded.

● In 2021, community takeover: TON Foundation took over the project, continuing to advance development and promotion.

● In 2023, returning to Telegram: Telegram officially announced that TON is its preferred Web3 infrastructure and plans to integrate it into the Telegram app. Telegram has released its IPO plan.

● In 2024, ecological expansion: The TON application ecosystem continues to expand, covering multiple fields such as finance, storage, payment, and domain names. Projects like PunkCity, PUNK, and HyperGPT are gaining attention. In February, Telegram announced that it will exclusively use the TON blockchain and Toncoin for all channel owner transactions and payments.

TON has undergone a huge transformation from its establishment to its explosive popularity, steadily rising from the initial narrative to its actual implementation now, demonstrating strong vitality.

Core Narrative for Users

In the development of TON, Telegram has always played an important role. While most public chains promote innovative technologies, TON relies on Telegram's 900 million monthly active users, emphasizing user needs and convenience.

At the same time, Telegram is not content with just being a social messaging platform. Through a rich product line, connecting payments to life, and providing Bots, it is attempting to transform into a comprehensive platform. This strategic shift signifies the infinite possibilities of the TON public chain.

Telegram currently has over 1.3 billion registered users and 900 million monthly active users. Freedom of speech and privacy protection are its missions, which also make it a hub for cryptocurrency—almost all Web 3.0 projects have communities on Telegram. The Web3 soil of Telegram provides tremendous support for the TON ecosystem, laying the community foundation for ecological projects from incubation to ICO.

increasing market recognition

As of the time of writing, the market value of TON is $18.759 billion, ranking as the ninth largest cryptocurrency. The TVL of the TON chain has risen rapidly since April, currently reaching 605.72m USDT, ranking 15th among public chains. Although the TVL growth rate is fast, it has not yet kept pace with the market value, leaving significant room for improvement.

2. Financing Information

● In 2018, the first ICO raised 1.7 billion USD, but refunded part of the funds due to an SEC lawsuit.

● In April 2022, Huobi Incubator, KuCoin Ventures, and MEXC Pioneer Fund jointly invested $250 million to establish the TON Foundation, focusing on supporting DEX and NFT projects on the TON blockchain.

● In October 2023, MEXC Ventures invested tens of millions of dollars to promote the adoption of the Web3 ecosystem on Telegram.

● In November 2023, Animoca Brands invested in funding, research, and analysis platforms to support third-party mini-programs and game projects within the TON ecosystem, becoming the largest validator.

Telegram initially focused on privacy protection, with no obvious revenue channels, relying on bond financing to maintain operations. Since 2022, it began exploring revenue models and recently announced it is close to profitability. In 2023, founder Pavel Durov proposed a plan for an IPO within two years, with a current valuation of over $30 billion, possibly choosing to list in the United States.

Both TON and Telegram are currently in a thriving development stage. Investing in the TON ecosystem is equivalent to recognizing the potential of the Web2 social platform Telegram to transform into a Web3 comprehensive platform.

3. Technical Features

Programming Language

TON's smart contract development does not use popular languages like Solidity, Rust, or Vyper, but instead has three programming languages: Fift, FunC, and Tact. Fift is more low-level development, focusing on efficiency and is more challenging; Tact is a newly introduced high-level language, similar to TypeScript, which lowers the difficulty of development; FunC is close to the C language and is currently the preferred choice. Given Tact's efficiency, mainstream developers may shift towards using Tact in the future.

Cutting-edge technology

● Smart Contract Asynchronous Calls: TON adopts an asynchronous model to enhance scalability. When one contract calls a function of another contract, the call will not be executed immediately, and it is not necessary to complete all processing within a single block. However, this also increases the complexity of development and maintenance, raising the technical threshold.

● Infinite Sharding: The TON blockchain is divided into the main chain ( Masterchain ), working chains ( Workingchains ), and shard chains ( Shardchains ). The main chain is the core, storing metadata and the consensus mechanism; the working chains are independent blockchains that handle specific transactions and contracts; the shard chains are sub-chains of the working chains, further splitting the load to enhance parallel processing capabilities.

● Privacy Protection: The TON chain uses TON Proxy to hide node IP addresses, building a decentralized VPN service, and, combined with TON DNS and P2P networks, protects user privacy.

relative advantage

Although asynchronous calls and sharding technology are applied in projects like Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot, and NEAR, TON integrates multiple technologies, surpassing Ethereum and Solana in several metrics such as transaction confirmation time.

4. Market Analysis

Token Economics

● Token Function: $Toncoin is positioned similarly to Telegram's native token, which can be used for discounted payment of membership fees and purchase of virtual products on Telegram. It can be used on the TON blockchain for transaction fees, staking, cross-chain transactions, decentralized data storage, agent services, and more.

● Token supply: $Toncoin has a maximum supply of 5 billion coins. All mining was completed on June 28, 2022, marking the complete transition of TON from PoW to PoS. Each year, 0.6% ( approximately 3 million coins ) inflation rewards for validators.

● Token Distribution: Initially, 5 billion tokens were allocated with 1.45% for the team and 98.55% for miners. In February 2023, TON initiated a proposal to freeze 171 inactive early wallets for 48 months, totaling 1.08B $Toncoin(, which is about 21% of the total amount), reflecting the community's confidence in the development of TON.

Secondary Market Analysis

● Market Cap: As of June 3, 2024, $Toncoin has a market cap of $18.759 billion, ranking 9th. Fully diluted market cap is $39.382 billion, circulating supply is 2.432 billion coins, total supply is 5.107 billion coins.

● Chip distribution: 85.45% of holders own $0-$1k, 14.16% own $1k-$100k, and 0.38% own over $100k. Whales hold 68.68%, while retail investors hold 31.32%. 29.20% have held for over a year, 16.7% for no more than 1 month, indicating a high proportion of diamond hands and a positive outlook from the public. The top 10 addresses hold 29.99%, with a relatively loose chip distribution, indicating a healthy market condition.

● Trend: In the past year, $Toncoin has risen from 12.4071 yuan to 56.54 yuan, with an increase of over 400%, reflecting strong market expectations and wealth effect.

5. Ecological Construction

The TON ecosystem currently has over 500 Dapps and a large number of Telegram Bots, covering almost all popular directions such as infrastructure, development tools, DeFi, GameFi, NFT, SocialFi, inscriptions, and more. The vertically segmented tracks include Launchpad, wallets, cross-chain bridges, staking and lending, DEX, blockchain games, collectibles, etc.

Ecosystem Assistant Telegram Bot

Telegram Bot is an automated robot that is effective in community building, asset management, information aggregation, and project promotion.

● Provide the latest cryptocurrency news and market information for ordinary users.

● Provide automatic Q&A, event management, and promote interaction for the Web3 community.

● Provide governance proposal notifications and voting participation functions for DAO organizations.

● Improve the efficiency of information transmission for the project party and attract user participation.

● For TON ecological projects, it allows 900 million users to participate in airdrop activities without barriers.

The development of Telegram Bot is simple, with mature documentation and API support. It can be implemented using Python, Node.js, and other languages, and set up in conjunction with cloud servers. There are a large number of open-source bots available on GitHub for use.

DeFi leader STON.fi

STON.fi is the largest DEX on the TON chain, supporting trading of over 280 currency pairs. It utilizes AMM, RFQ, and HTLC technology, inheriting the low slippage characteristics of Uniswap to enhance trading reliability and security.

The total supply of the STON.fi token $STON is 100 million pieces. Since February, the TVL has experienced explosive growth, currently reaching 262.2m USDT, ranking third in the TON ecosystem. STON.fi is the top DEX on the TON chain and is even one of the top ecosystem projects at present, worth paying attention to.

Launchpad Leader TonUP

TonUP is a star asset issuance platform based on TON, helping projects achieve successful financing.

● Established in August 2023, raised 80,000 $Toncoin for Tap Fantasy within 32 minutes during the first IDO.

● In October, the TONCoin Fund completed the lead investment in the seed round financing, with multiple well-known institutions participating.

● TonUP2.0 launched in December, $UP token IDO and IEO.

TonUP is a phenomenal Launchpad platform on the TON chain, backed by multiple well-known funds. It possesses strong crisis management capabilities, repurchasing and burning commissions in full when encountering obstacles in the issuance of $MC, earning the trust of the community. 99.66% of the tokens are concentrated in the project party, indicating good cash reserves, which may rise in the future along with the development of TON.

Telegram Wallet and Tonkeeper

Telegram Wallet has the greatest opportunity to become the interface for the flow of funds between Web2 and Web3. It operates on the Telegram platform, making it convenient and easy to use. Built-in Neocrypto provides cryptocurrency purchasing services in multiple countries and collaborates with various platforms to build P2P deposits and withdrawals.