Solana
Could Telegram’s TON blockchain be the “next Solana” and successfully challenge Ethereum?
Although lagging behind Solana, TON’s daily active addresses have surpassed Ethereum’s numbers every day except one so far in June. Some believe that TON could close the distance in terms of market capitalization with Solana.
Posted June 12, 2024 at 5:09 PM EST.
The Open Network (TON) blockchain is showing signs that it could be the next Solana by challenging the historic smart contract leader, Ethereum.
Driven by Telegram’s in-app crypto wallet and fast-paced mini-game play, the TON blockchain surpassed Ethereum in daily active addresses on all but one day in June, a sign of the growing popularity of the Telegram-connected network, the popular messaging. app with over 900 million monthly active users.
According to the blockchain analysis company ArtemisTON recorded an average of 465,200 daily active addresses in June with a high of 568,300 on June 3, levels that Ethereum has not crossed as the latter has yet to see more than 400,000 daily active addresses on its base layer during the month, excluding its different layers 2. .
“For early ecosystems such as TON, we believe [daily active users] is a better metric to monitor than [total value locked] or fees, because gathering users is a higher priority than making money,” Kelly Ye, portfolio manager at liquid venture capital firm Decentral Park Capital, wrote in her post. weekly newsletter published on May 20.
Despite having higher levels of daily active addresses than Ethereum, TON’s growing numbers continue to decline compared to those of Solana, which averaged around 1.64 million daily active addresses in June.
“TON is good for the blockchain industry because the data shows it adds net new activity,” Andrew Van Aken, a data scientist at Artemis, wrote in a Telegram message to Unchained. “Daily active addresses on Solana and TON increased over the year, indicating that TON is onboarding new addresses.”
TON Unsubscribe Wallet Launches With Massive User Base
Telegram’s built-in community, aided by its in-app crypto wallet, helped propel TON’s level of daily active addresses to where it currently stands, argued TON ecosystem investor and associate Jehan Chu director of blockchain venture capital firm Kenetic.
Telegram’s native crypto wallet is “an opt-out wallet, meaning that aside from the 30 or 40 million US users who are geo-blocked, the remaining 860 million Telegram users all have a crypto wallet natively.” [and] automatically,” Chu said in a conversation with Unchained. “Let that sink in… This is a Thanos-level kind of change.”
Telegram has been able to scale its technology as well as the integration of its large user base thanks to the official deployment of the Telegram crypto wallet, launched in September 2023. “What’s interesting is that it’s not about not really wallets. It’s the seamless integration of Web3 technology where users already are,” namely messaging, “one of the most frequented destinations for users on a daily basis,” Chu said.
“99.999% of blockchain projects are a technology idea aimed at creating a community – from scratch. According to CoinMarketCap, there are over 23,000 cryptocurrencies. It’s a difficult path for most,” wrote Dan Morehead, CEO of a crypto-focused venture capital firm. Pantera, in the company’s May announcement that TON was its largest investment ever. “Telegram is a community [of over 900 million users] integrating blockchain technology. It just has to be easier.
Pantera, which manages $4.7 billion in assets, cited other reasons for its investment in TON, including its values as a neutral platform, independent of state influence and its process of easy integration.
Games generate record activity levels
Driving the recent surge in activity is another factor that led Pantera to invest heavily: an ecosystem of mini-apps including chatbots and games. Referring to the increase in Telegram’s daily active address levels, Chu said it was a result of “a combination of things – obviously gaming is a big driver.” A number of mini games of Telegram have caught the attention of its users, such as NotcoinHamster Kombat and Catizen.
Notcoin, a free game on Telegram where more than 35 million users have tapped their screens to earn tokens, rolled out its cryptocurrency in May and has since generated a market capitalization of $1.6 billion, according to data from CoinGecko. Similarly, Hamster Kombat has almost 33.6 million subscribers on its Telegram channel, while Catizen has over 3.6 million users.
Bloomberg too reported As of Tuesday, many in the crypto space believe this mini-game trend in Telegram “could be the killer app that defines the current bull market.”
Although they do not interact with the TON blockchain, popular trading bots such as Solana’s native BONKbot and Banana Gun, which is on Ethereum, rely on Telegram to generate fees by allowing crypto users to trade on their mobile devices. Telegram also has trading bots for the TON blockchain, such as sTONks and TOB Bot.
“We believe that similar Telegram bots native to TON will become the preferred user experience for many traders,” according to Ryan Barney, partner at Pantera.
TON’s price has increased nearly 392% to around $7.40 over the past year, bringing its market cap to $18 billion. Despite overtaking the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, BTC and ETH, TON’s price performance last year is not as strong as that of Solana, whose native token has been climbing by 860% during the same period to reach a market capitalization of more than $68 billion.
According to Decentral Park Capital’s Ye, TON has solid potential “to close the market cap gap with Solana this cycle.”