1/31 Telegram's $TON has been outperforming $ETH yet nobody on CT is talking about it... So here you go!
Telegram has been quietly developing the @ton_blockchain ecosystem💎
🧵Here's a DEEP DIVE on Telegram's positioning in Defi and what I think their strategy is ->
2/31
Messaging apps are a part of people's daily lives and many are now looking to integrate with payment solutions to offer more convenience, becoming superapps
Superapps provide multiple services for personal and commercial use - think a swiss-army knife.
3/31
Particularly in Asia, superapps are dominating the tech space - WeChat, Line, Gojek, Kakao...
However, regulations overseeing superapps are very strict, especially when payment data is involved
(US: Federal Reserve, EU: PSD2, APAC: PS Act)
But Telegram is dodging that..
4/31
Enter Defi.
With the anonymity and security offered by Defi, this becomes an opportunity for messaging apps to finally integrate payment solutions.
The Open Network (TON) is one such project designed by Telegram.
5/31
As an extra layer of decentralization, they recently added anon number auctions, purchasable with $TON coins on fragment.com/numbers
These can be used to sign up for Telegram without needing SIM cards.
6/31
Telegram’s emergence in DeFi signals a growing trend: another messaging app — KakaoTalk — also announced its own EVM L1 chain, Klaytn in 2019
KakaoTalk is the superapp owned by South Korean conglomerate Kakao.
7/31
Another example - Line, a superapp jointly owned by Japanese conglomerate Softbank and South Korean conglomerate Naver Corporation.
They launched LINE blockchain and even their own exchange "BitMax". "Bitfront" was also backed by them, albeit not very successful 👀
8/31
TON is a fast, scalable and fault-tolerant L1 PoS/PoW blockchain infrastructure that developers can use to create dApps. (I'll get into the Pos/PoW later)
It's an open protocol with a built-in payment system and tools for user governance, app development and crypto economy
9/31
TON started back in 2018 with the goal to facilitate the exchange of values, by leveraging off their already large userbase.
Their progress was halted when their ICO in 2018 went sour after the SEC deemed it a security.
21/31
Interestingly, Tonchain's infrastructure was designed in a way that enabled both PoS and PoW consensus to generate new blocks.
In June 2022, all 5B $TON was mined, but the new $TON will only enter circulation via PoS validation, slowing inflation to only 0.6% annually.
22/31
This is the current distribution of $TON:
Total Supply - 5B
Circulating Supply - 1.22B
Total Validator Stake - >112M
PoW Giver Distribution - >34.4M
TON Foundation Holdings - >74.9M
The rest are held by exchanges/individual wallets.
23/31
$TON can be bridged to ERC- and BEP-20. Data on Tonchain's explorer (toncoin.tonscan.io) is not available yet.
Looking at the ERC-20 & BEP-20 $TONs, you'd realise an address holding 38.94% of ERC-20 circulating supply
25/31
Link to FTX address (0x97f991971a37d4ca58064e6a98fc563f03a71e5c) holding $TON: etherscan.io/tokenholdings?…
26/31
While TON might seem like any other ecosystem, what sets TON apart, is its integration with the Telegram messenger, essentially achieving the "one-stop shop" superapp status
27/31
A major hurdle to global crypto adoption is the high barrier to entry.
Reiterating 2/31, Telegram is trying to provide CONVENIENCE, with a goal to become a superapp.
My view is that Telegram might have killed 2 birds with 1 stone by venturing into DeFi:
28/31 (1) - Dodging regulation. Looking at WeChat Pay or KakaoPay, they all require payment licenses they are dabbling with TradFi payments.
Going straight to DeFi skips the regulation part, since everything is anonymous
29/31 (2) - Mass DeFi adoption. Integrating everything into telegram makes DeFi super accessible.
They can leverage the 700M+ users already on Telegram (DAU of 55.2M). By comparison, Ethereum's DAU is 420K.
Telegram could beat ETH by converting just 0.76% of their DAU to DeFi
30/31 What's next for TONchain?
While not explicitly mentioned in their roadmap, Durov (CEO of telegram) has announced that Telegram is working on building a DEX & non-custodial wallet following FTX's collapse.
People have been calling out @kucoincom and @cryptocom to be next CEX downfall. Trust in CEXes has hit all-time lows and CEX outflows have hit highs.
Here's a thread on how you can on/off-ramp without CEXes🧵 ->
1/17
Traditionally, you had 2 options: (1) CEX (2) Non-CEX
With the risk of CEXes being a ticking timebomb, we'll focus on non-CEX on-ramping
2/17
MoonPay 🌖
@moonpay enables users to purchase #stablecoins (TRC & ERC20), #BTC, #ETH (Arb, Op, Polygon, zkSync) and a bunch of other Altcoins using various payment methods.
Why @Grayscale is unlikely to be a scam, despite the FUD revolving CT:
1. There is SEC supervision and audits every quarter. The audit of #Grayscale is way too simple, hence difficult to fake.
2. The probability of #Coinbase cooperating with fraud and presenting a false asset certificate to #Grayscale is very low.
3. If #Grayscale is fraudulent, #Coinbase should have the obligation to actively disclose or report directly to the regulatory agency at this time, otherwise it will be in default.