The blockchain of Ton, developed by the Telegram team, is under all the spotlights of the DeFi sector due to the excellent technical performances recorded and the TVL reached by the ecosystem.
The increase in retail interest, which has exploded thanks to the new trend of “play-to-earn” and “tap-to-earn” games, has allowed new capital to flow into TON and push the TVL above the 600 million dollar threshold.
It is a crazy growth if we consider that until December 2023 the network counted just 13 million dollars.
Let’s see everything in detail below.
Summary
Ton, the cryptographic network of Telegram, marks an impressive growth since the beginning of the year and surpasses 600 million dollars in TVL in DeFi
While the market fully expresses its uncertainty with Bitcoin and Ethereum that still have not taken a clear graphical direction, the TON blockchain earns an honorable mention due to its excellent results recorded in the DeFi field.
According to what was reported by DefiLlama the Ton network, also known as Telegram Open Network, has surpassed 600 million TVL, securing the 15th place in the ranking of crypto networks with the most locked capital.
We are talking about stratospheric numbers if we consider that at the end of December 2023 the TVL of the chain developed by the Telegram team amounted to only 13 million dollars: in just 6 months we have witnessed an increase in money of over 46 times.
It is also worth noting how in the last 3 weeks about 300 million dollars of TVL have been added, bringing a strong influx of new users and on-chain activity in DeFi.
In this context, 8 of the top 10 protocols developed on TON have recorded a TVL increase in the last 30 days, with the DEX DeDust and STON.fi marking gains in 3-digit percentages, respectively 482% and 104%.
Closing the podium of the top gainers, we find the lending platform EVAA Protocol, which grew by 70% in the same period, followed by other DeFi projects that, although reporting less breathtaking numbers, have still observed growth paths, such as Storm Trade, Tonstakers, Bemo, Stakee, etc.
The success of the Ton blockchain is mainly due to its integration as the preferred web3 solution by Telegram users, which, thanks to its strong presence in the social world with 900 million users, has allowed the cryptographic network to make a qualitative leap in a very short time.
As reported by Rachael Lucas, a crypto analyst at the Australian cryptocurrency exchange BTC Markets, in an interview with The Block:
“This enormous base of potential users, about 100 times larger than the current on-chain user base of all other blockchains combined, provides a solid foundation for a thriving ecosystem”
We remind that Ton, despite enjoying a particularly favorable momentum, still offers few integrations with the DeFi sector as a whole, and suffers from the lack of leading dapps in the web3 industry such as Uniswap, Aave, Lido, etc.
Remaining within a closed ecosystem, it is difficult for Ton to replicate what has been done by Ethereum or by other EVM chains that occupy more prominent positions in the DeFiLlama ranking.
In this regard, the Ethereum blockchain, even if it reports a number of new addresses lower than Ton, boasts a TVL of about 62.4 billion dollars, more than 100 times greater than its competitor based on Telegram.
There is still a long way to go for this chain.
Strong wave of retail interest thanks to DeFi and blockchain games: Notcoin, Yescoin, and Hamster Kombat
The increase in interest in Ton’s DeFi, and the consequent disproportionate increase in TVL, stem from a new trend that is becoming popular within the cryptographic community of Telegram: we are talking about “play-to-earn” and “tap-to-earn” games, designed to attract users to perform simple tasks to earn cryptocurrencies.
In particular, simplistic and rewarding games like Notcoin, Yescoin and Hamster Kombat seem to have further increased the popularity of the network, also driven by typical referral mechanisms that multiply retail participation.
Thanks especially to the glorious debut of Notcoin on all major crypto exchanges, with the NOT crypto surpassing 2.5 billion in market capitalization at the beginning of June, a sentiment of strong interest towards the gaming products developed on Telegram has been generated.
The currency, launched for free with an airdrop to the users of the tap-to-earn game, generated according to the data from dune.analytics a trading volume in TON and NOT exceeding 7 billion dollars on the first day of launch on May 16, 2024.
This kind of trend that sees more and more users getting interested in DeFi and dapps on Telegram will certainly continue as long as the launches of new tokens on Ton have success like the one recorded by Notcoin.
To report also the arrival of the stablecoin USDT within the TON blockchain in the month of April, which has allowed for a significant gain in TVL and offered a solid currency for exchanges throughout the entire ecosystem.
Additionally, at the beginning of this month, the messaging app introduced a mini-app digital payment system called Telegram Stars, which offers app developers lower promotional rates compared to traditional platforms like Apple and Google app stores.
Given the numbers so convincing, even the VC support the rise of this blockchain: Pantera Capital invested in TON last month, citing the advantage of a direct connection with Telegram and a substantial user base.
Obviously TON, the main cryptocurrency of the homonymous cryptographic network, has been stormed on the markets by investors who have pushed its price from 2 dollars in February to the current 7.8 dollars in a crazy bull run.
