Original author: Fu how
Original source: Odaily Planet Daily
In the middle and late of this month, Tether announced a partnership with TON to integrate USDT into the TON ecosystem, and in just three days, the total supply of USDT on the TON chain exceeded 60 million. With the integration of USDT in the TON ecosystem, the number of users in the ecosystem will grow rapidly in the future, the advantages of Telegram+TON+USDT will be amplified, and even the expected large-scale adoption of Web3 will no longer be "on paper".
So what changes will USDT's integration with the TON public chain bring to the ecology and what are the potential wealth opportunities for Web3 users? To this end, Odaily will focus on the development prospects of TON+USDT+Telegram and the potential wealth effect.
"U" OTC trading is not uncommon on Telegram, but "U" has an ecological scene or will bring "new money" to Web3
USDT's past relationship with Telegram
The use of USDT in Telegram is not uncommon, but it is limited to payments, and even the main users of USDT in Telegram are not Web3 groups, thanks to Telegram's encrypted messaging method, many "shady" transactions are facilitated on Telegram.
However, our survey found that although most Telegram users use "U" to conclude transactions, they often only provide exchange addresses for offline transactions or single-trust payments, and Telegram is only a negotiation medium.
USDT is really used in Telegram, thanks to the fact that USDT is added to Telegram's built-in Wallet Bot, but it is limited to transfers between users, and Wallet Bot opens USDT deposit and withdrawal options, users can choose the corresponding regional fiat currency to buy USDT, or through the P2P option to buy, at present, Hong Kong, China can use credit cards to buy in Hong Kong dollars, but can not "withdraw", and the actual purchase price will be 6.26% premium 。 At the same time, it is also possible to receive USDT in TRC 20 (USDT on TON is also supported at the moment).
However, the bot form adopted by Telegram Wallet is not an on-chain activity, although Toncoin, BTC and USDT tokens are added, most of the payment activities that occur in the Telegram app are selected, which is equivalent to the Web3 industry watching most users being blocked out of the door.
Telegram 与 TON 的强关联
The history of Telegram and TON is a cliché for most people, and Odaily is here for a brief review.
Telegram raised $1.7 billion in a private placement in 2018 and launched the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain, but was subsequently charged by the SEC with illegal fundraising, and judicial pressure led Telegram to abandon the project and open source. Later, the community formed the TON Foundation and announced that it would operate the project autonomously, and the name of the project was changed to The Open Network. Teleam's view of TON gradually changed until September last year, when Telegram officially announced TON as its Web3 infrastructure and established a partnership.
The relationship between the two has gone through three stages: native, divestiture and cooperation, and a large part of this is the impact of regulation, although the regulator once spun TON out of Telegram, but as the crypto industry is gradually accepted by the mainstream, Telegram has re-embraced the TON ecosystem.
Soon after, the two launched the beta version of TON Space, and combined with Telegram's own Wallet Bot, choose to turn on the beta version of TON Space in the settings of Wallet Bot. It is worth noting that TON Space can only receive Toncoin tokens and tokens on the TON chain, and other on-chain transfers cannot be recognized.
The launch of TON Space enables Telegram's own wallet to connect to blockchain networks and explore DApps, transforming Telegram from a single IM application to a Web3 portal. At this point, the narrative space brought by the Telegram+TON combination has gradually become clear and "sexy".
USDT integrates with TON to open up the demand scenario of "U".
As mentioned above, USDT is only used as a payment tool in Telegram, and although TON has established cooperation with Telegram, the user acceptance of Toncoin token is not as high as USDT in Telegram, which cannot bring users into the TON ecosystem.
As the largest US dollar stablecoin in terms of circulation and market capitalization in the crypto world, USDT plays an irreplaceable role in the public chain ecology. The supply of USDT on the public chain reflects the ecological prosperity of the public chain from a certain perspective. At the same time, before the Tether cooperation, the TON public chain lacked the support of stablecoins in the ecosystem, resulting in a large number of users who are accustomed to using USDT to participate in the construction of the project, and the inability to transfer cross-chain assets, which led to a significant reduction in the circulation attribute of the token.
USDT integration with TON has great benefits for both parties. For USDT:
- Reduced transaction fees: USDT's transaction fees on the TON network are only one-third of those of other networks. Specifically, USDT's transaction fee on TON is only 0.0145 Toncoin (about $0.10).
- Transaction speed increase: TON's TPS is as high as 15, 000, which has won the Guinness World Record, which has increased the transaction speed of USDT on the TON network.
For the TON ecosystem:
- Liquidity Enhancement: The circulation of USDT will increase the liquidity and activity of the TON network. According to the latest data, USDT has surpassed $70 billion in market circulation, so introducing it to the TON network will inject a lot of liquidity into the network.
- User growth: According to the latest statistics, USDT has more than 1 million daily active addresses, while the TON network has more than 7.8 million registered users. Therefore, the introduction of USDT will attract more users to join the TON ecosystem.
- Ecological prosperity: Partnering with USDT will enhance the ecological prosperity of TON and provide users with more trading options and application scenarios. Taking the number of trading pairs on the TON network as an example, there are currently more than 1,000 trading pairs to choose from, and the introduction of USDT will further enrich the TON ecosystem.
So far, Telegram provides user access and funds, TON provides ecological demand scenarios, and USDT serves as the medium running through them, and the three may introduce Telegram's up to 900 million monthly active users into the TON ecosystem, forming a socially-driven Web3 ecosystem.
Web2+Web3激励组合拳，Web3用户如何从中获利
The integration of TON in USDT makes the Telegram+TON+USDT ecosystem form a closed loop, and how users import the TON ecosystem has become the focus of the next stage. To this end, Telegram and TON have launched a series of incentives and new products, whether they will be effective, Odaily Planet Daily analyzes them one by one.
Telegram
Judging from Telegram's recent moves, Telegram established a partnership with TON in September last year, in addition to integrating TON Space into the Telegram bot, enabling the Toncoin token on Telegram to conduct on-chain activities. And in March this year, the Telegram advertising platform was opened to nearly 100 new countries, and ads were sold through Toncoin tokens, while distributing 50% of the channel's ad revenue to channel owners.
Telegram's advertising revenue and premium subscription service Telegram Premium have always been Telegram's main source of revenue, and Telegram has shifted the platform's advertising purchase and profit distribution channels to the TON public chain as the carrier, which in itself is the largest traffic output. However, the acquisition of advertising revenue in Toncoin tokens can easily lead to a low degree of decentralization of Toncoin tokens, so the other 50% of Toncoin tokens obtained by Telegram will be sold to long-term investors at a lower price and a certain lock-up mechanism. This move is to release the core revenue model of Web2 in the form of Web3, and the benefits to the TON public chain will far outweigh the disadvantages.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in his personal Telegram channel that starting next month, Telegram channel owners will be able to receive financial rewards for their work. Currently, Telegram radio channels generate 1 trillion views per month, but only 10% of views are monetized through Telegram Ads, a privacy-designed advertising tool, he said. In March, the Telegram advertising platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly 100 new countries. Channel owners in these countries will start receiving 50% of the revenue Telegram earns from their channel display ads. To ensure fast and secure ad payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be used exclusively and ads will be sold through Toncoin and revenue will be shared with channel owners.
However, according to the Telega.io platform, there are currently 154128 advertisers on the platform, 5407 channels, and an average monthly income of $500 per channel Although apps occupy most of the users' time, most of them are concentrated in private chats, and the ads in the form of channels do not attract the attention of users, so most advertisers do not choose IM apps as advertising positions.
However, the focus of how Telegram users introduce the TON ecosystem is not on Telegram, it only provides an entrance, and the real role depends on the attraction of the TON ecosystem itself.
TONE
Previously, TON focused more on the promotion of chains, such as Guinness Records, to improve its popularity and attract developers to settle in. Starting from April this year, TON has launched The Open League (TOL) and USDT early adopter incentives from the perspective of its own ecological construction and user incentives.
The Open League (TOL) campaign is based on the campaign to introduce Telegram users to Web3 and offers a variety of ways for on-chain beginners to earn yield, including low-risk mining activities and related tasks, as well as high-risk LP and trading competitions.
The TOL kicked off on April 1 this year and will be available in 3 seasons, each lasting 1 month. In the first season of TOL, 30 million Toncoin community rewards will be available, which was worth about $115 million at the time. The first season of the Open League consists of four areas: The League, Token Mining, Quests & Airdrops, and Liquidity Pool Boosts.
Starting with Season 1, each project will compete in one of five key performance indicator (KPI) leaderboards based on their respective project categories: Token Leaderboard, Meme Coin & Community Token Leaderboard, DeFi Leaderboard, App Leaderboard, and Liquid Staking Leaderboard. The specific rewards of the TOL event are shown below.
At the same time, TON announced the launch of the Open League DeFi Grant Program, which aims to provide support for Web3 builders in DeFi and dApps.
- Tier 1: TVL > $300 million, up to $200,000 in grant support, $300,000 in pre-committed rewards for users of the agreement, and $20,000 worth of free Telegram ad credits.
- Level 2: TVL > $100 million, up to $150,000 in grant support, $150,000 in pre-committed rewards for users of the agreement, and $15, 000 in free Telegram ad credits.
- Level 3: TVL > $50 million, up to $75, 000 in grant support, $50,000 in pre-commitment rewards for protocol users, and $10,000 in free Telegram ad credits.
- Level 4: Experienced DeFi teams with new product ideas, up to $30,000 in grants, $20,000 in pre-committed rewards for protocol users, and $5,000 worth of free Telegram ad credits.
This activity is an ecological incentive for the project party, ordinary users cannot get benefits from this activity, please refer to the official documentation for details. However, if the project wants to win the first place or will decentralize the relevant incentives to users, it is necessary to pay attention to the dynamics of the relevant projects, and the follow-up Odaily Planet Daily will also sort out the relevant content for readers.
In order to increase the adoption of USDT on TON, the TON Foundation said that it will provide 11 million Toncoin token incentives to early adopters of USDT on the TON chain:
- 500 万枚 Toncoin 转入 Wallet-in-Telegram 的 USDt Earn；
- 5,000,000 Toncoin to increase the liquidity pools of TON's two largest decentralized exchanges (Ston.fi and DeDust);
- 200,000 Toncoins are available in TON's main centralized exchange partners, supporting the purchase of USDt or any TON-based assets and withdrawing them to TON for free.
Monetization channels for Web3 users
TON and Telegram have launched so many incentive activities, so how can Web3 users profit from it, we will sort out the corresponding content and provide you with the following ways to participate and get incentives:
- Users can transfer Toncoin tokens bought on OKX, XT and Bybit exchanges to the TON public chain or directly purchase them on Telegram through credit cards and P2P (not suitable for China), deposit USDT into Wallet or built-in TON Space (the specific details have not yet been announced, the author recommends depositing in advance), and the official interface shows that the APY is as high as 50% on a first-come, first-served basis, and it is expected to be a snapshot for Toncoin token claims.
- Due to the launch of the TOL event, the projects of the TON ecosystem are about to issue coins, and they can interact in time to obtain airdropped tokens, and for DeFi projects, they can be LPs, because the total number of LPs of DeFi projects in TOL activities is included in the KPI assessment range.
- Due to the sharing of the Telegram advertising platform, communities and KOLs can create channels on Telegram, and the total number of people in the channel is more than 1,000 people can apply for advertising and obtain advertising revenue.
It is worth noting that next week the TON Foundation will launch the USDT Early Incentivizer Campaign.
Conclusions and Risk Disclosures
Compared with Telegram's 900 million monthly active users and the community position of many Web3 projects, TON is not outstanding among many public chains, and it can even be said that it is far inferior to mainstream public chains in terms of ecological volume and user habits. However, in terms of integration difficulty and public chain efficiency, TON is tailored for Telegram.
Until the recent integration of USDT into the TON network, allowing the author to see the prospect of the social-driven Web3 ecological development of TON+Telegram+USDT, the development path of most public chains is not much different, Ethereum has a first-mover advantage, and user habits dominate, and Solana has become the representative of the new public chain with its efficient transaction experience. However, these public chain ecosystems are often internal competition, and the introduction of new users relies on ecological projects to break the circle, but there are very few projects that have really come out of the circle over the years, so the role of large-scale adoption of Web3 in the future is not obvious.
Telegram has 900 million traffic, and its attitude towards Web3 has always been very positive, and at the same time, IM applications, as a daily must-have App, have many channels to connect to the real world, such as Wallet Pay will support merchant payments, and there are currently many USDT holders in Wallet, which is bound to open up the payment scenario between Web2 and Web3.
If the development of the TON ecosystem can undertake or attract ordinary Telegram users, presumably the future growth rate of the TON network will be ahead of other public chains, but the linkage between the three has just begun, and there are still some potential risk points;
- Regulatory pressure, when USDT just announced the integration of TON, the Apple (China) App Store removed Telegram due to force majeure factors, although the founder of Telegram later said that it was not affected, but the related risks still exist.
- Due to the large number of illegal transactions on Telegram, after the demand scenario for USDT and TON is opened, it is inevitable that these risky USDT will flow in, and if there are suspected illegal acts, the issuer of USDT will also cooperate with the supervision to freeze it.
However, judging from the current feedback of Toncoin's currency price, the market is optimistic about its future development prospects, and the currency price has exceeded 7 USDT, hitting a record high. It will take time to tell what the future holds, but in the near future, it is imperative to deposit USDT into Telegarm Wallet.