TON Ecosystem Panorama: Exploring Star Projects and Future Opportunities on the Chain (Part 1)

Written by: WolfDAO

Continuing from the first article "Ten Thousand Words of In-depth Analysis of TON Chain: Revealing the Future"BlockchainThe Core Strength of Giants”, this article is the second in the TON Ecosystem series. Due to its length, the report is divided into two parts, which are released at the same time. The first part analyzes the development and risks of the overall TON ecosystem; the second part focuses on the most influential star projects on the chain, analyzing their innovative features and future opportunities. Through detailed data analysis and case studies, we will show TON’s outstanding performance in decentralized finance, NFT, games and other fields and the huge potential it brings.

Written in front

As a company that strives to understand the market trend/deep cultivationBlockchainResearch InstituteCommunity WolfDAOWe have been closely following the rapid development and growth of the TON ecosystem. When reading relevant reports, we deeply felt that there is still a lot of potential in the TON ecosystem that has not been fully discovered and explored, which is also the reason for writing this series of reports.

TON not only has a huge user market, which is the cornerstone for supporting its diverse innovations and emerging applications, but also has brought a huge impact and unlimited possibilities to the entire market.

Part ITen thousand words in-depth analysis of TON chain: revealing the futureBlockchainThe Core Strength of Giants中，我们深入探讨了 TON 区块链的技术优势、市场表现和发展潜力，为读者揭示了 TON 成为未来区块链巨头的核心力量。

You are reading the second part of the TON series of special reports; this report"TON Ecosystem Panorama: Exploring Star Projects and Future Opportunities on the Chain"Through detailed data analysis and case studies, we will demonstrate TON’s outstanding performance in decentralized finance, NFT, gaming and other fields and the huge potential it brings.

At the same time, we will"TON Chain Compliance and Risk Assessment: Prospects and Challenges Coexist"We will discuss in depth the compliance and regulatory challenges faced by TON as it develops rapidly and their impact on future development. Will the rolling golden wheel stop because of the obstruction of the mountains? Please look forward to our in-depth analysis of this key issue and provide you with a comprehensive assessment of the prospects and risks of TON.

TON Ecosystem Overview

In the TON ecosystem, there are 19 track categories, each covering different types of applications and services. These tracks include CEX exchange、DEX exchange、Staking、wallet, Explorer, Bridge, Utility, Channel, NFT Collection, Chat, Social, Gambling, Jettons, Games, VPN, Development Tools, Shopping, and Launchpad, etc. Excluding the Jettons category with many duplicates, the most popular track is the game track, with 128 projects, becoming one of the most important development areas in the TON ecosystem.

Ton Ecosystem App Classification Source:TonApp

One of the key events that boosted the popularity of TON was the launch and popularity of the "Tap to Earn" game Notcoin. This low-threshold, high-feedback game model effectively attracted a large number of users and became the flagship project in TON's marketing. However, relying on a single track makes it difficult to form a good feedback loop to feed back the ecosystem. Therefore, a healthy ecosystem requires balanced development covering multiple key tracks. In the current ecological development, active developers are needed.Community, strong technical support and a good user market, can achieve prosperity and development. The following will analyze and discuss these factors in detail.

TON 生态开发者社区

1. Developer community size and activity

According to Artemis statistics, the number of TON's weekly active core developers remains at around 50, and the number of weekly core submissions is about 300. Compared with other public chain projects such as Solana and Aptos, the scale of the TON development community still has a lot of room for growth.

Number of TON weekly active core developers source:artemis

TON weekly core submission numbersource:artemis

Current status and future prospects of TON developer community

The main communication channel for TON developers is concentrated on Telegram, which is very active and engaged. Currently, Telegram's English developer channel has 10,548 users, with an average of 600 messages per day discussing issues related to code and deployment. At the same time, Telegram's Chinese developer channel has 6,716 users, with an average of 400 messages per day active on different technical topics.

Although TON has been online for a short time, its ecosystem is relatively complete and active, and many popular projects have emerged. Therefore, we are very positive about the future development prospects of TON. TON has a strong technical foundation and an active developer community, which lays a solid foundation for its further expansion and innovation in the future.

2. Support plan and incentive mechanism (detailed introduction of TON’s various support and incentive measures for developers)

Analysis and Outlook of TON Developer Incentive Program

TON’s developer incentive program is run by the TON Foundation. Founded in Switzerland in 2023, the TON Foundation is a non-profit organization funded entirely by community donations, whose mission is to serve the interests of the community by supporting various initiatives that contribute to the mission of the open network.

It is worth noting that the TON Foundation authorizes the operation of the TON project without directly controlling the TON technology and is one of many network contributors in the decentralized TON community. TON runs on open source code, allowing anyone to contribute without a single controlling authority.

TON’s current incentive plan is mainly divided into two categories

• Project and community specificTokenexcitation

TON Foundation launchesTokenIncentives. For example, the recently announced TON/USDT liquidity pool incentive plan is worth $30 million. In addition, John, head of the Asia-Pacific region of the TON Foundation, announced in "TON's achievement in Asian Pacific region and TON society HK" that 1 million TON tokens will be provided to incentivize MiniApp developers in the Chinese-speaking region.

• OpenLeague

The TON Foundation will launch the first season of OpenLeague on April 1, 2024. The event will last for one month and will distribute 30 million TON tokens (currently worth approximately $200 million) as ecological incentives. TON ecological projects will compete every month to win huge prizes, and TON chain users can get rich rewards by participating in the event. The competition includes the following four parts:

• The League

• Token Mining

• Missions and Airdrops

• Liquidity pool expansion

Each part will attract participants with different identities, including developers and users, thereby enhancing the activity and diversity of the entire ecosystem.

TON Ecosystem Node Operator

TON global verification node distribution source: TON official website

1. Node Distribution

TON validation nodes are distributed around the world, mainly in Europe and the United States. As of June 3, there are more than 300 nodes, and the number of staked TON is close to 500 million, accounting for nearly 20% of the total circulation.

2. Node roles

TON uses the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus model, which means that the networkSafetyThe network’s security and stability are maintained by a group of network validators. Anyone can become a validator and contribute to the networkSafetyGet Toncoin as a reward for your contribution.

Network validators are responsible for verifying all user transactions. If all validators reach a consensus, the transaction is valid and will be included in the blockchain. Invalid transactions will be rejected.

Users pay a small amount of Ton in transactions as a reward for the validator's work, and this amount is distributed proportionally to the validators selected during the verification cycle. In addition, new tokens are generated during the verification process, which are also distributed to the validators. The overall annual inflation rate is about 0.5%. The average daily income of a validator with an average stake is about 120Ton.

To receive block rewards, validators need

• Pass the validator election and successfully submit the election - a stake of at least 300,000 Ton is required, and winning the election with at least 400,000 Ton, while not being excluded due to reaching the maximum number of validators.

• Successfully validate the block throughout the validation cycle.

Penalty Mechanism

The following two actions may result in a validator being punished:

• Idle: Not participating in block creation and transaction signing for a long period of time during the verification cycle;

• malicious misconduct;

If a validator is idle for a long period of time during a validation round or behaves maliciously, they may be fined. If any network participant believes that a validator has behaved inappropriately, they can file a complaint.Xiaobai Navigation, the complaining party must provide cryptographic evidence of the misconduct for all validators to vote on. All validators running on the network will check the validity of the complaint and collectively vote on whether to pursue the complaint. When 66% validators agree, the validator will be heavily fined and the corresponding amount will be deducted from its total stake.

3. Decentralization

ToncoinTop100 holderssource：coincarp

TON's early tokens were largely concentrated in the hands of miners, and this concentration trend has continued to a certain extent. According to data on June 20, 2024, the number of TON currency holding addresses is 3,600,868. Among them,

• The top 10 addresses hold 61.26% tokens.

• The top 20 addresses hold 70.72% of tokens.

• The top 50 addresses hold 85.88% of tokens.

• The top 100 addresses hold 92.33% of tokens.

These data show that although TON is continuously achieving the decentralization of tokens, large coin holders still have a great influence on the entire network.

Compared to other mainstream public chains, TON's token distribution appears slightly more concentrated. For example, many mature blockchain projects are more dispersed in token distribution, and the proportion of the top 100 coin holders is usually significantly lower than TON. This degree of concentration may bring a higher centralization risk, especially in the decision-making process related to network governance, where a small number of large holders can have a greater impact on voting results.

The following aspects may need to be considered:

• networkSafetysex：While a smaller number of major coin holders may improve the stability of the early network, it also means that malicious behavior by a few people may have a greater impact on the network.

• Decentralized Governance：High concentration may affect the fairness and democracy of on-chain governance. A small number of coin holders have the ability to control a large number of voting rights and thus influence major decisions.

• Long-term healthy development：To ensure the long-term health of the network, TON needs to continue to work hard to improve the decentralization of its tokens. Incentivizing more new users and small holders to participate in the network will help improve decentralization and increase the network's anti-censorship capabilities.

• Dynamic monitoring and adjustment：Continuously monitor the changing trend of currency concentration, and dynamically adjust with the help of economic incentives and technical means (such as delegated equity proof mechanism, token distribution, etc.) to ensure decentralization andSafetySexual balance.

Ecosystem user and application data analysis

1. User analysis

According to Artemis statistics, TON (The Open Network) has recently shown a significant growth trend, mainly due to the popularity of ecological projects such as NotCoin and Catizen.walletThe number of active addresses and daily transactions have all increased significantly.

From March 20, 2024 to June 18, 2024, the number of daily active addresses of TON remained at a high level, with an average of about 500,000 daily active addresses. It is worth noting that during this period, the number of daily transactions of TON exceeded 5 million many times, especially during certain peak periods, when the number of daily transactions even approached or exceeded 8 million. In addition, as of June 18, the number of daily transactions of TON remained stable at around 5 million.

TON daily transaction volume and daily active addressessource: artemis

Compared with its main competitor Solana, TON shows relatively higher growth potential in terms of user activity and transaction volume. Solana's average daily active addresses are about 1.6 million, while its daily transaction volume is stable at around 350,000 most of the time, which is significantly lower than TON. This data shows that TON has not only surpassed Solana in user activity in the past few months, but also performed well in transaction volume.

In terms of decentralization, TON has demonstrated the healthy development of its ecosystem through a large number of active addresses and high-frequency transactions. This data reflects TON's strong appeal and broad user base in decentralized applications and services. In contrast, although Solana also has strong technology and application prospects, its relatively low active users and transaction volume show that it faces certain challenges in the current competitive stage.

Solana transaction volume and daily active addresses source: artemis

TON has performed well in terms of new user growth, active addresses and transaction volume, reflecting its huge potential in blockchain technology application and user ecosystem construction. With the continuous advancement of projects such as NotCoin and Catizen, TON's future development prospects are worth looking forward to.

2. TVL data analysis

Compared with the popularity of mini-games on TON, the performance of DeFi applications on TON is relatively quiet. As of now, the total locked value (TVL) on TON is $600 million. Although it has achieved explosive growth compared to the beginning of the year, compared with TON's current total market value (17.042 billion US dollars), its TVL is even less than 1/10 of other leading public chains. This phenomenon shows that most of the user traffic on TON currently comes mainly from mini-games on Telegram such as Notcoin and Citizen, while the more basic facilities and DeFi applications in the TON ecosystem have not yet formed a significant attraction for users.

TVL on TON chain (Source: Deflama)

As can be seen from the data in the figure, the locked value of TON showed a significant upward trend from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, especially in the recent period. The stablecoin market value (US$44.928 billion) and 24-hour trading volume (US$2.459 billion) also show the potential activity of some applications in the TON ecosystem. However, compared with other Layer 1 public chains in the entire crypto market, such as Ethereum andBinanceSmart Chain (BSC), TON is still in its early stages of development in the DeFi field.

Nevertheless, as a still very young Layer1 public chain, TON's future ecological development potential is still worth looking forward to. Considering that it is backed by a huge user base like Telegram, TON has the potential to gradually attract more DeFi projects and infrastructure to join in the future, thereby enhancing the diversity of its ecology and user participation.

Overall, TON's current ecological performance relies more on the driving force of small game users, and DeFi applications still need further development.

The TON ecosystem has demonstrated strong development potential, but it also faces technical challenges and ecological health issues. As TON continues to develop in areas such as cross-chain interoperability, DeFi, enterprise-level applications, and privacy technology, its ecosystem will continue to expand and deepen.

Market development expectations

1. wallet地址看市场变化

Cumulative number of wallets Source:[@obchakevich] TONERC20

TON has made significant progress in market expansion. The stable number of new users and the continued growth in the number of cumulative wallets show its market appeal and user loyalty. According to the latest data, TON's market expansion shows a positive development trend.

In terms of new users, the observation data from May 20 to June 16 showed that the number of new wallets per day remained at a relatively stable level, especially reaching peaks around June 4 and June 13. The number of new wallets per day reached about 200 many times, which shows that TON has performed well in marketing and user acquisition and can continue to attract new users.

Secondly, the cumulative number of wallets continues to rise. The cumulative number of wallets represented by the pink line shows a continuous growth trend. As of June 16, the cumulative number of wallets has exceeded 4,000. This shows that the user base of the TON ecosystem is expanding, showing strong growth momentum, with the continuous joining of new users and the good retention of existing users.

Number of TON users Source:[@obchakevich] / TONERC20

TON has a steadily growing user base. The continued growth in the total number of users shows that the TON ecosystem continues to attract new users and the retention rate of existing users is high. Although the number of new users fluctuates daily, it generally shows a stable growth trend, which also reflects TON's good performance in user attraction and retention.

In addition, user activity remains at a high level. Although the activity of existing and new users fluctuates, it is still high overall, indicating that the TON ecosystem has strong user stickiness. The continued maintenance of user activity is crucial to the healthy development of the ecosystem, and TON has performed well in this regard.

2. Expansion of the ecosystem

• Diversified application scenarios: TON's application innovations in DeFi, NFT, supply chain management, digital identity and other fields have greatly expanded the application scope of its ecosystem. These application scenarios not only attract more users, but also promote the activity and participation of existing users.

• Strong developer support: TON has attracted a large number of developers to join its ecosystem by providing a wealth of development tools and resources, as well as incentive programs and technical support. The active participation of developers has promoted technological innovation and application implementation, further enhancing the vitality and competitiveness of the TON ecosystem.

3. Future development prospects

• Continued user growth: Based on the current growth trend, TON is expected to continue to attract more new users in the future and maintain a high retention rate for existing users. As the user base continues to expand, TON's market influence will further increase.

• 技术和应用创新：TON 将继续推动技术发展和应用创新，通过跨链互操作性、隐私保护、去中心化自治组织（DAO）等前沿技术的应用，提升用户体验，满足不断增长的用户需求。

• Robust development of the ecosystem: TON's diverse application scenarios and strong developer support will ensure the robust development of its ecosystem. In the future, TON is expected to play a key role in more industries and application scenarios, promoting the popularization and development of blockchain technology.

Key challenges facing the Ton ecosystem

Although the TON blockchain has shown strong potential and sustained growth in technology and applications, it still faces some key challenges in its future development. As a series of reports on the TON topic, this report mainly summarizes theHistoric ecological challengeandEcological HealthTo understand the fundamental challenges, please read WolfDAO’s first article on TON.10,000-word analysis of TON chain: revealing the core strength of future blockchain giants”; For compliance and regulatory risk analysis and development trend risk analysis, you can look forward to WolfDAO’s third article on TON, “TON Chain Compliance and Risk Assessment: Prospects and Challenges Coexist》.

1. Historic ecological challenges

TON historical development roadmap Source: TON official website

According to TON’s historical roadmap, we can see that there are some significant problems and deficiencies in the development of the ecosystem:

Development Deficiencies and Problems

1. Early regulatory issues and legal hurdles (2019-2020):

• In October 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Telegram, accusing it of unregistered securities sales. This regulatory issue seriously affected the progress of the TON project and forced Telegram to postpone the launch of TON and wait for the legal issues to be resolved.

• In May 2020, the Telegram team announced that it would stop developing TON and support testnet2, paid a settlement fee of $18.5 million, and agreed to return the funds to investors. This led to the suspension and uncertainty of the project, affecting the confidence of the community.

2. Development team changes and project reorganization (2020-2021)

• After Telegram withdrew, a small open source development team, NewTON, took over and conducted in-depth research on the code, architecture, and documentation, and restarted development. Although this shift maintained the continuity of the project, there may have been delays in progress and resource reallocation during the handover of the development team.

3. Gradual improvement of infrastructure and technology (2021-2023)

• In 2021 and 2022, TON introduced TONEthereum and TONBSC respectively.BinanceThe company has also introduced TONDNS, TONProxy, and TONPayments. Although these new features have enhanced the TON ecosystem, the gradual introduction of new technologies may also bring compatibility and stability issues.

• In the first half of 2023, TON launched DAO & Liquidity Stakingcontract, decentralized encrypted messaging, TVM updates, and other new features have increased the richness of the ecosystem, but these complex technical updates have put higher demands on development and maintenance.

4. Ecosystem development and integration (2023 and beyond)

• In 2023, there will be cooperation projects such as integration with Telegram (TelegramTON), TONSpace and WalletPay, as well as cooperation with Tencent Cloud. Although these cooperations help expand the scope of use and user base, integration challenges between different platforms and systems still exist, which may affect user experience and system stability.

The TON ecosystem has encountered challenges in terms of regulatory issues, team changes, technology updates, and ecosystem integration during its development. Despite some deficiencies and problems in its development, TON has worked hard to improve its ecosystem through continuous technology updates and strategic cooperation in order to achieve wider applications and greater stability. In order to overcome these challenges, TON needs to further strengthen technology research and development, optimize user experience, and actively respond to regulatory and legal issues. This can also be seen in the subsequent development roadmap, which shows the efforts made by its team to improve.

2. Ecological health

1. User growth and retention

• User growth and retention：The number of daily active addresses of TON remains at around 500,000, and the number of daily transactions has exceeded 5 million many times, showing a strong momentum of user growth. Compared with Solana in the same period, TON performed well. The user activity and transaction volume both illustrate TON's outstanding performance in user growth. At the same time, the number of new wallets of TON is stable, and the cumulative number of wallets continues to grow, reflecting good user retention. In general, the high level of user activity reflects the strong user stickiness of the TON ecosystem and lays a solid foundation for its long-term development.

• User stickiness：Although the TON ecosystem has performed well in terms of user growth, it is still a challenge to maintain high user activity and stickiness. It is necessary to enhance user participation and satisfaction by continuously improving user experience and launching new features.

• Market competition：The blockchain field is highly competitive, and TON needs to continue to invest in marketing and user acquisition to maintain its competitive advantage and market share.

2. Ecological diversity

• Lame Ecology：The TON ecosystem covers 19 tracks, including DeFi, NFT, games and other fields, showing a relatively rich application scenario, showing the good trend of TON ecosystem in terms of diversity. Especially in the game track, the successful launch of projects such as Notcoin has attracted a large number of users, proving the potential and attractiveness of this field. However, the TVL (total locked volume) in the DeFi field is relatively low, which shows that TON still needs to further develop infrastructure and applications in this field to attract more users and capital to enter, thereby enhancing the diversity and health of the entire ecosystem.

• Application scenario expansion：TON has made significant progress in DeFi, NFT and other fields, but it needs to further expand more application scenarios, such as supply chain management, digital identity and the Internet of Things, to enhance the diversity and richness of the ecosystem.

• Project Quality：Attract and support high-quality projects to join the TON ecosystem, avoid the influence of low-quality or dishonest projects, and ensure the healthy development of the ecosystem.

3. Community Governance

• Centralization Risk：TON 采用 PoS（权益证明）共识机制，拥有 300 多个全球分布的验证节点，这确保了网络的安全性和去中心化。然而，早期代币持有集中度较高，前 100 名持币地址占比超过 92%，存在一定的中心化风险，需要通过进一步的治理优化来减轻这种风险。同时，TON 基金会提供多种开发者激励计划，如代币奖励和生态竞赛，有助于吸引更多开发者参与到 TON 生态系统中来，推动技术创新和应用开发。TON 的开发者社区活跃度较高，这为生态发展提供了强大的技术支持和动力。

• Decentralized Governance：Promoting the development of DAO and realizing the decentralized governance of the community requires a transparent, fair and efficient governance mechanism. How to balance the interests of all parties and improve the participation of community members and the quality of decision-making is a key challenge.

• Incentives：Design a reasonable incentive mechanism to stimulate the enthusiasm and creativity of community members and promote the autonomous development and innovation of the ecosystem.

4. Legal and Regulatory

• Legal proceedings and settlements：In 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Telegram, accusing its TON project of being an unregistered securities sale. This lawsuit had a significant impact on the progress of the project and led Telegram to abandon the TON project in 2020 and pay a settlement fee of $18.5 million. This not only brought legal and financial pressure, but also affected the confidence of the community.

• Regulatory uncertainty：Early legal issues with the SEC and Telegram’s exit from the project have brought significant challenges and uncertainties to the TON ecosystem. The subsequent takeover by the new open source development team NewTON may also have caused delays and resource reallocation issues in the project.

• Compliance：The legal and regulatory environment for blockchain technology is complex and ever-changing around the world. TON needs to ensure that its technology and applications comply with the laws and regulations of different countries and regions to avoid potential legal risks.

• Policy changes：Always pay attention to and respond to changes in global blockchain policies and regulatory environment, and adjust strategies and measures in a timely manner to ensure that the development of TON complies with regulatory requirements.

in conclusion

TON's innovation and development in technology, market and ecology have set a new benchmark for the blockchain industry. Despite facing technical challenges and market competition, TON has demonstrated its potential to become a world-leading blockchain platform through continuous technological progress, application innovation and ecological construction. In the future, TON is expected to play a key role in more industries and application scenarios, promoting the popularization and development of blockchain technology. For detailed ecological project analysis, please read the next part of this report."TON Ecosystem Panorama: Exploring Star Projects and Future Opportunities on the Chain" [Part 2].

Despite these legal and regulatory challenges, the TON ecosystem continues to grow and improve. However, these early legal issues and regulatory barriers still have an impact on the trust and stability of the ecosystem, and ongoing legal and compliance management is required to ensure the healthy operation of the ecosystem.

However, TON has previously withdrawn from the market due to regulatory issues. With the current rapid development, compliance supervision is the focus that investors need to consider. Whether the rolling golden wheel will stop because of the obstruction of the mountain is a point of view that we will discuss with you in more detail in the next report.

The article comes from the Internet:TON Ecosystem Panorama: Exploring Star Projects and Future Opportunities on the Chain (Part 1)

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