GM! Welcome to Milk Road PRO – your weekly crypto boost that's as refreshing as a splash of cold milk on a hot day. 🥵
Speaking of heat, today we’re diving into perhaps the hottest ecosystem in crypto right now.
TON – the blockchain powering Telegram, the world's 4th largest messenger app, with over 900 million users. 🚀
Its recent surge has caught everyone's attention. And we are no exception.
TON's growth is evident across all onchain metrics like $TON holders, active addresses, price or TVL all reaching all-time highs.🚀
The hype is real, and a TON of people are buying this coin… But should you?
Today, there are over 32 million holders of the underlying blockchain token $TON, and the number keeps climbing. 📈
The recent explosion in TON holders suggests something big is brewing. We're here today to dive into this new phenomenon and uncover some key insights.
What's driving this surge? Has something significant happened recently? Is it worth our investment?
Let's find out. Here’s the outline for today's report.
- What is the TON blockchain and what makes it unique?
- What is driving this crazy growth? And is it sustainable?
- Should we invest in $TON?
- 2 ways to capitalize on this opportunity
Ok, let’s start with a quick introduction into this new blockchain.
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Okay, back to TON. ⤵️
WHAT THE HELL IS TON? ⛓️
Let’s start with the history of TON. 📖
Telegram Open Network (TON) was originally developed by Telegram, the popular messenger app.
However, due to legal issues with the SEC in 2020, Telegram had to step away from the project.
Fortunately, the open-source community picked up right where Telegram left off, continuing development under the name The Open Network (TON).
This new iteration has retained the original vision and technology but now operates independently of Telegram.👏
Telegram endorsed TON in September 2023, saying the blockchain and associated token would be its "official web3 infrastructure".
In other words, TON received direct & exclusive access to Telegram’s 900 million users.
TON is built on core principles like high-speed, scalable transactions, smart contracts, and a user-friendly interface, all powered by a Proof of Stake consensus.
Now, let’s take a high-level look at how TON stacks up against other leading blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana.
Let's walk you through this table and provide comments for TON:
- Minimum Stake: Validators need to stake 300,000 $TON tokens (equivalent to $2.5 million at current prices) to validate blocks. This substantial barrier limits the entry of new validators into the network.
- HW requirements: Validators can validate the blockchain with a regular computer.
- Validators: There are about 350 validators across 30 countries.
- Block Time: Transactions take up to 5 seconds to be confirmed.
- TPS: The TON blockchain can process 160 transactions per second.
Currently, TON doesn't excel in any of these metrics, but we believe it doesn't need to; it just needs to provide a good enough blockchain that can eventually scale to the masses.
Let's elaborate on this further. ⤵️
Decentralization: With 350 validators across 30 countries, TON might already have enough decentralization. Or what is the threshold here? 🤔
High Entry Barriers: The high barriers to becoming a validator on TON might not be a real issue because we don't foresee a future where everyone runs their own validator at home anyway. So as long as there are economic incentives ($TON emissions), there will always be some people or companies with enough capital willing to run these validators.
Consumer-Facing Stats: Block time and TPS are crucial. People expect things to happen instantly, and a 5-second block time is on the edge of providing a great user experience.
While we would prefer something below 2 seconds, TON likely has good reasons for setting the block time at 5 seconds.
TPS (Transactions Per Second): TON currently handles around 60 TPS, which is much lower compared to blockchains like Solana with 1200 TPS.
However, the TON Foundation has run tests and claims to have achieved 104K TPS. This impressive number was tested and verified by the auditing crypto firm, Certik.
Scaling: The TON blockchain plans to scale through sharding, a solution also on Ethereum's roadmap. However, we have yet to see any blockchain successfully take off using this scaling method.
That being said, we think TON is not aiming to be the best in these blockchain metrics above but is instead focused on leveraging its unparalleled competitive advantage: access to 900 million users.
To capitalize on this opportunity, TON only needs to optimize for scaling the blockchain to hundreds of millions of users.
While they are not there yet, we believe they will be able to deliver such a scalable blockchain.
This is a great segue to discussing TON's mission.
WHAT IS THE GOAL OF TON? 📌
Simply put, to scale the TON blockchain to the masses.
Their goal is to have 500M monthly active users by the end of 2028 – today they have 3.5M (MAUs).
Is this actually possible, or just clever marketing?
That's exactly what we're diving into.
WHAT MAKES TON SO ATTRACTIVE? 🌐
Before we dive in, let's explain what gives any blockchain its value.
For a blockchain to thrive, it needs:
1/ Developers: They build applications and use cases, forming the supply side of the blockchain.
2/ Users: They access these applications, creating the demand.
People use Ethereum or Solana because they can make swaps, lend stablecoins, borrow assets, mint NFTs, and more.
Without these applications, these blockchains wouldn’t have any users.
So, it all starts with the supply side.
Blockchains need to attract developers to create useful applications. But developers always face a huge gamble: will users actually show up on that particular blockchain?
With TON, this existential risk is a thing of the past.
Telegram already has access to over 900 million users. It is about 14% of the world’s population.
Building on TON allows developers to tap into this vast market, providing a strong incentive to choose TON over other blockchains.
So let's see how many apps have been built on The Open Network. 👀
The TON ecosystem already has hundreds of apps. We can see a diverse distribution across different sectors such as Wallets, DEXs, Staking, Bridges, Games, Lending and more.
We are going to introduce some of them at the end so stay tuned. ⏬
But TON offers more than just users—it delivers a seamless experience.
No need for extra apps; everything is accessible right from the familiar Telegram interface using mini-apps.
Let us show you just how easy it is to swap 2 tokens using the Ston.fi mini-app.
1/ Select the App: Go to the "Telegram Apps Center," similar to the App Store or Google Play Store.
2/ Click "Launch App": Choose the app you want to use and click "Launch App."
3/ Connect Your Wallet: Make sure your wallet is connected to the app.
4/ Enter Tokens: Input the tokens you want to swap.
5/ Click "Swap": Finally, click the "Swap" button.
6/ Done!: Voila! It’s that easy. ✅
And there's more. It's not just about the users and the great experience – TON launched a new incentive program called The Open League.
MEET THE OPEN LEAGUE 🎮
The Open League (TOL) is a dynamic competition within the TON ecosystem, designed to motivate two key groups:
✅ Projects: Incentivized to develop more attractive and functional products, tapping into TON's massive audience.
✅ Users: Incentivized for actively engaging with TON projects.
It creates healthy competition among all participants, driving innovation and maximizing rewards.
“The hypothesis is simple – once the world sees how every project in The Open League can make millions of Telegram users go onchain; TON becomes the obvious choice for every mass audience consumer product on the planet.” TON Foundation
We support this approach and believe it has the potential to succeed.
TON uses simple yet highly effective incentives through the TOL program to bootstrap projects and users.
And since anyone can participate, the rules are straightforward and the user experience is great, it's working exceptionally well.
Here are the results of Season 3:
- Daily active wallets (DAW): 568,000 (+1,403%)
- Weekly Active Wallets: 2.2M (+1,308%)
- Monthly Active Wallets: 3.5M (+775%)
- DeFi Total Value Locked: $320.2M (+1,298%)
- Overall Total Value Locked: $637.6M (+402%)
- Avg. Number of Daily Transactions: 4.2M (+372%)
Those are pretty impressive numbers, aren't they? And to be fair, there's a lot happening all the time.
Here's some perspective on these incentive programs: Season 4, which ran from June 12th to June 26th, offered $1.2 million in $TON as rewards.
- Token Battle: $500k
- App Battle: $500k
- NFT Battle: $50k
- DeFi Battle: $150k
We don't see the astronomical figures found in some competing Layer 1s, where incentives can reach hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
So the TON foundation is doing a great job and making these incentive programs well-coordinated and highly efficient.
The fierce competition among all participants (projects & users) across multiple seasons fuels the relentless growth of all key metrics for TON – users, TVL, transactions…
But it raises a question.
IS THIS GROWTH SUSTAINABLE? 🧩
Uh, Oh… 😧 The rest of this report is exclusive to Milk Road PRO members!
But you’re in luck — you still have 1 more day to go PRO before prices go up. ⤵️
WHAT’S LEFT INSIDE TODAY’S REPORT? 👀
- What is driving the crazy growth of TON? And is it sustainable?
- Should you invest in $TON?
- 2 ways to capitalize on the TON opportunity.
