Seize the Early Mover Advantage: A Must-Read Guide for TON Ecosystem Beginners

Jul 12, 17:21

Original Title: "Seize the Early Opportunity! Newbies' Essential Guide to TON Ecosystem"

Original Authors: Viee, Biteye

Are you starting to FOMO into TON? These days, the timeline is full of Black-and-White Dog MEME, point flexing, making people think the bull market is back.

Today, Biteye will teach everyone how to navigate the TON ecosystem and seize potential airdrop opportunities.

We have organized this Thread into a mind map. Feel free to take it if you need it.

01 Wallet Introduction

The first step to participating in the TON ecosystem is to use a wallet, with currently 49 wallets supporting the TON network.

Here, we introduce the two most popular ones: Wallet, TON Space

Wallet

Wallet is Telegram's native centralized custodial wallet, somewhat similar to WeChat Pay within WeChat settings, where users can directly use Wallet for token swaps. Wallet supports user deposits via P2P or bank card methods.

TON Space

TON Space is a Telegram-based self-custodial wallet launched by the TON Foundation, embedded within Telegram. Users can directly access TON Space from Wallet to connect to TON-based dApps. Besides the mnemonic private key, the wallet can also be recovered via email and Telegram account.

With this step completed, congratulations, you can now enjoy the TON ecosystem!

02 Token Related

In terms of market capitalization, $TON is at $18 billion, $SOL is at $660 billion. If $TON can take off like $SOL to become an Ethereum killer, there is still 3.7x room to grow.

$NOT has a market cap of $1.6 billion, ranking as the second coin on the TON network, already in the top 50 by market cap, showing significant popularity. The TON ecosystem is currently not very mature, with few other tokens having real potential. It's better to wait for a good opportunity.

In any case, if you are paying attention to tokens, only $TON and $NOT are not bad, both of which are already listed.

03 DeFi

I have to say, where there is a flourishing public blockchain, there is a solid DeFi gameplay, such as DEX, lending, staking, NFTs, and more.

Only when a chain has these platforms will it have activity and liquidity, enabling the further creation of wealth myths.

Unlike Ethereum Layer 2, the TON chain has not seen large-scale flagship project migrations, leaving significant room for diversification in the DeFi ecosystem.

Here are some DeFi projects:

DeFi flagship: Ston.fi (DEX) @ston_fi

· Lending protocol flagship: EVAAProtocol @evaaprotocol

· Stablecoin flagship: Aqua @aquaprotocolxyz

· Staking flagship: TonStakers @tonstakers

· Cross-chain bridge flagship: Orbit @Orbit_Chain

· Launchpad flagship: Tonstarter @ton_starter

· NFT platform flagship: Getgems.io @getgemsdotio

You can take a look at the top ten DeFi projects by TVL on DefiLlama, and the specific approach is to mine for opportunities or ambush airdrop opportunities while interacting.

04 Gaming

Gaming is the craze in this TON cycle, where simple and light games with Telegram one-click forwarding can spread games in the most effective way.

A large group of gamers is flooding into TON, easily gaining a large number of real users, and hitting a major exchange is a gateway to instant wealth.

Here are some gameplay features of TON-chain games:

Catizen: Cat Fusion Mini-Game

Players operate a cat pet shop, where customers pay coins as rewards after playing with the cats. These coins can be used to buy new cats. Two cats of the same level can be fused into a new breed of cat, one level higher than the original. The player's task is to fuse higher-level cats and earn more coins.

TG Link: https://t.me/catizenbot

Hamster Kombat: The Great Hamster War

Tap-to-Earn game where players earn coins by tapping on the hamster (portraying the CEO of a simulated exchange). Players are encouraged to unlock more rewards through community engagement, and can also increase their mining passive income by purchasing upgrade cards.

TG Link: https://t.me/hamster_kombat_bot

Blum: Gamified Trading Platform

Founded by a former Binance executive, players earn points through Farm and Drop games, where inviting new users grants them Drop game tickets and additional points.

TG Link: https://t.me/BlumCryptoBot

Yescoin: The Twin Brother of Notcoin

Similar to Notcoin, this game follows a pattern of collecting coins and doing tasks, where players can collect tokens by swiping their phone screens.

TG Link: https://t.me/theYescoin_bot

Pixelverse: Cyberpunk Style Battle

Users nurture pet robots, engage in click battles (PVP and PVE modes), and embark on adventures across various maps in the game world.

TG Link: https://t.me/pixelversexyzbot

You can find these games on the TGStat website's growth leaderboard.

https://tgstat.com/

05 Tools/Data Platforms

Telegram Apps Center

An app store supported by the TON Foundation, featuring projects that undergo review for high security standards, and where you can view the weekly top charts.

Link: https://www.tapps.center/

TON App

Third-party TON App query platform

Link: https://ton.app/

TGStat

Telegram channel data analysis website that can query the channels with the most subscribers on Telegram and their subscriber growth ranking to filter out popular projects.

Link: https://tgstat.com/

TONStat

Contains key metrics of TON, updates TON network statistics daily, including total transaction volume, performance, total fees, etc.

Link: https://www.tonstat.com/

06 Background and Opportunities of the TON Chain

The development of the TON Chain has been full of twists and turns.

In 2017, Telegram founders Pavel Durov and Nikolai Durov started developing the Telegram Open Network (TON) project, with the token named Gram.

In 2020, Telegram announced its exit from the TON project, renaming the project to "The Open Network" and changing the token name to Toncoin.

In 2023, Telegram officially announced the TON Chain as its preferred Web3 infrastructure, initiating application integration.

For example, the integration of features like the Telegram built-in wallet and using TON for payments has significantly accelerated Mass Adoption.

Despite the recent overall market pessimism, the TON Chain's TVL has increased by over 20 times in just four months, currently surpassing 700 million.

The TON ecosystem has also been gradually developing, covering various tracks such as CEX, DEX, wallets, NFTs, and games, as shown in the diagram below.

Of course, compared to public chains like Ethereum and Solana, TON still has significant room for improvement. However, its value cannot be simply measured by TVL. Leveraging the real user base of the Telegram platform is a natural advantage that other public chains cannot match.

Under the stimulation and promotion of the TON Foundation, the TON ecosystem has shown good development momentum, worthy of long-term attention and participation.