The Open Network (TON) is a decentralized and open internet platform made up of several components. These include: TON Blockchain, TON DNS, TON Storage, and TON Sites. TON Blockchain is the core protocol that connects TON’s underlying infrastructure together to form the greater TON Ecosystem.
TON is focused on achieving widespread cross-chain interoperability, while operating in a highly scalable secure framework. TON is designed to process millions of transactions per second (TPS), with the goal of eventually reaching hundreds of millions of users moving forward.
The Open Network (TON) statistics
At the date of the writing of this article, the statistics were the following:
Total Supply (The overall quantity of Toncoin (TON) that has been mined) — 5,100,839,509.
Burned total — Total amount of Toncoin removed from the circulation by sending to a specific wallet. Any assets sent to this address are rendered unusable and cannot be transferred or accessed. — 263,614.
On-chain Active Wallets — Smart contracts that have been initialized as wallets and have received at least one transaction. — 1,138,909.
Validators — The number of network nodes responsible for maintaining the blockchain’s operation. — 297.
Staked TON — The total sum of Toncoin (TON) that has been staked by validators. — 419,653,068.
Countries — The number of unique countries where validators are located — 25.
TVL — $16,5M — liquid staking protocols subtracted from total TVL.
Blockchain Core Developers and Commits (December) — 13 Devs and 104 commits.
You can find the actual stat at TonStat and DefiLlama
Mining and Staking on TON
The Open Network mining was available from June 2020 till 28 June 2022 with 98.55% of the total supply, estimated it was around 200,000 TON daily. The final result was all tokens were distributed among miners.
The TON blockchain declares they were the first ever to combine the two consensus algorithms. The blockchain runs on proof-of-stake technology, making it fast and cheap, but the initial token distribution was enabled by mining, which was decentralized and had the same conditions for all who participated.
Note, that mining on TON commenced spontaneously. In 2020, after its court case, the Telegram team agreed on a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was forced to cease its work on The Open Network.
To stop their involvement in the project and, at the same time, allow enthusiasts to continue studying the technology, the Telegram team put all the available coins of the network into smart contracts, which anyone could mine on equal terms.
After the initial distribution of coins, TON enters a new stage, increasing the number of validators and coins involved in validation, which leads to strengthening the stability and security of the network.
TON is a proof-of-stake blockchain, which means special nodes are in place to ensure the network runs smoothly — operated by validators.
As the network hums along, new Toncoin is created as a reward to validators for their work. Every year, about 0.6% of the total supply is created. Anyone can become a validator — you just need a powerful server and a rather large amount of Toncoin to stake.
The TON ecosystem has nominators, a tool that allows stakers to lend tokens to validators for staking while sharing the income.
JETTONS
Jettons are custom fungible tokens on the TON Blockchain. You can find the list of top-traded tokens on TON with their statistics, reviews, and other important information via the link.
The most used jettons are:
The number of holders of the top 1 Jetton is 11816 users, so most users prefer only TON.
TON-related products
TON sites. You can launch a web server with your website and make it available on the TON network. TON Sites provides encryption and authenticity verification of data via built-in cryptography. Your site will be immediately secure without having to go to certification authorities. TON Sites uses TON DNS, a fully decentralized domain name system. Incumbent domain registries require owners to make non-trivial payments, which go to pay for employees and other expenses, whereas with TON DNS, all you have to do is make an annual micropayment as a symbolic “sign of life” to confirm domain ownership.
TON DNS is a service that allows users to assign a human-readable name to crypto wallets, smart contracts, and websites. The domain zone for TON DNS is called “.ton”. Users will register their domain names as NFTs. Your domain will be stored in your wallet, and you’ll be able to put it up for sale on NFT marketplaces.
Decentralized Subscriptions. You can make donations to authors in Toncoin and use it to pay for joining private Telegram channels. Recurring payments for subscriptions are charged to your Tonkeeper wallet. A decentralized system where readers pay authors directly with no one in the middle, with the smart contracts ensuring that the agreed-upon amount is charged once in a given period.
TON Applications
TON has the official marketplace for all their applications. At the date of the writing of this article, 551 Apps are available starting from wallets to various shopping, VPNs, and others.
To make easier the usage of the TON App, it visually reminds the Google Play and Apple Store. Also, there are different categories, so you can easily filter and find whatever you need, special badges for top apps, and the top pick for each category make the navigation much easier for new users.
The advertisement and promoted apps section are available at the top of the website. It can be a good option if you want to add your Apps on the website.
Additionally, two interesting features are available in the TON App:
TON Wallets
There are 34 wallets available on TON App, but we will cover the best options. You can choose the most suitable one for yourself.
Best wallet application:
Available — iOS, Android, Web, Extensions
Features available:
In Telegram application:
Available — Telegram only
Features available:
Special mention:
Available — across all platforms including MacOS and Linux
Features available:
Other crypto wallets that support TON:
TON Launchpads
At the moment, only three official launchpads are available for TON ecosystem:
Due to the number of projects and size of these launchpads, we will cover only Tonstarter as the biggest and the best one.
Tonstarter — is the first launchpad based on The Open Network, enabling teams to raise capital through public and private token sales and product incubation in a decentralized, secure, and easy-to-use environment.
Projects provide different terms on this launchpad. It can be:
You can follow the announcements about the new projects on their website or Twitter.
Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) on TON
Several DEXs are supporting the open network, which is very well known across Web 3:
TON-based DEXs:
Among the base swap utilities, some of them have different DeFi features! We go through it in the DeFi section, but ION Finance, Storm, and StonFi have the feature to use it inside the telegram app, which is the killer feature across the apps built on TON app.
Top 3 DEXs based on 24H volume:
DeFi on TON
The Open Network has the DeFi Liquidity Incentive Program, which every project can apply if they meet the following criteria:
In this section, we will cover the top five DeFi based on TVL according to DeFi Llama.
Top 1 — Tonstakers — TVL $34M
It is the liquid staking protocol with more than 13500 stakers. You can stake your TON and receive tsTON, which represents shares in TON pool, and use these liquid tokens for other purposes. You can exchange the tsTON to TON anytime and receive the accumulated yield.
Top 2 — Bemo — TVL $23,1 M
Also, a liquid staking protocol where you can get stTON for your TON tokens, and you have the opportunity to add these liquid tokens to the pools to provide liquidity for Decentralized exchanges.
Top 3 — DeDust — TVL $6,9M
Decentralized exchange with swaps, bridges, and Jetton pools with 189 available pairs with various APY.
Top 4 — StonFi — TVL $5,5M
Decentralized exchange with swaps, staking, Jetton pools, and farming. You can stake your TON to receive STON. Liquidity tokens can be used to add liquidity to the pool earning fees and add these LP tokens to farming accumulating rewards in various tokens.
Top 5 — Stakee — TVL $4,5M
A liquid staking protocol that allows you to stake your TON, receive STAKED, liquid tokens of this DeFi, and earn APY.
Special mention — Storm — TVL $330K
The decentralized exchange that allows you to trade Crypto, Stock, Forex, and Commodities, with leverage, both in the Web App and Telegram. At the moment only crypto is available, and other assets are marked as coming soon.
NFTs on TON
All the top NFT collections based on Volume are TON-related collections.
Top 1 — Telegram Usernames — Total Volume 61M TON
Unique addresses in Telegram’s ecosystem of more than 700 million active users.
Top 2 — Anonymous Telegram Numbers — Total Volume 15M TON
These anonymous numbers can be used to create Telegram accounts that are not tied to SIM cards.
Top 3 — TON DNS Domains — Total Volume 6,2M TON
*.ton domains
Top 4 — TON Diamonds — Total Volume 1,2M TON
Unlock exclusive privileges in the TON Ecosystem with TON Diamonds NFT! Trade top-tier NFT collections with zero fees on the marketplace. Get early access to new digital releases and single pieces from the world's major digital artists in the Auction House.
Top 5 — Animals Red List — Total volume 931K TON
Animals Red List is the first NFT project on the TON platform to integrate with Telegram. The project consists of 13,333 NFTs. Each NFT is a unique, hand-drawn illustration matching an endangered animal from the Red List.
NFT collections other than TON-related have low volume. The last 24 hours' volume for the top 20 collections is 70,300 TON, and if we don’t count the TON-related collections, it decreases to 5900 TON.
Gaming
Most of the games that you can find on TON are casual or P2E genre games.
The most hyped game right now is Notcoin. Everyone is playing, farming the coins, and looking for the drop. It shows how users like simple solutions. One of the hardest challenges for the game is to motivate people to stay in the game after the drop. Let’s see how they can find a solution for it.
Tap Fantasy is a game in the MMO RPG genre based on TON, it was very popular in the early stages when there were little players online, and they could farm good money during the gameplay. It has very good partners such as Binance, TON, Trust Pad, Shima Capital, and others. You can see the list on their Website in the Partners section.
We can see how the activity falls in the game with the time, when new players join, and the amount of earnings significantly dropping. Less than in a month, the number of transactions and the number of unique active wallets (UAW) decreased from an average of 1000 Txs and 800 UAW to 200 TXs and 70 UAW. These statistics are available on dApp radar.
The most interesting news regarding TON gaming is the partnership with ANIMOCA brands.
The ongoing collaboration between TON and Animoca Brands will help to seamlessly onboard existing Web2 users into new, exciting, and intuitive Web3 mini-apps with strong use case value. This commitment highlights the importance that both Animoca Brands and TON Foundation place on facilitating a seamless transition from Web2 to Web3.
The key takes from TON about the GameFi on their blockchain are
Additional to this, they also provide:
Also, they have
It can be a good platform for onboarding people in Web 3 gaming. Probably, it will stay as casual gaming, but we have many examples that these games are the most popular.
Gambling
iGaming is one of the most popular products on TON. You can find more than 30 different apps on their website, and many more are made as a bor inside the telegram. One of the apps that is available via the telegram bot is a casino builder, where you can build it with zero knowledge, and start playing.
As we can see casinos, betting, lottery, and other gambling are very popular across this blockchain.
List of the advantages of using TON for gambling:
For obvious reasons, you can’t find the exact statistics for the TON gambling platforms. If we refer to how many new iGaming products are launched on TON, it looks like this niche finds a good place for future products.
Other Apps on TON
Utility apps — various apps such as the current rate of TON and crypto, portfolio managers, username generator, and other tools.
NFT Services — products related to TON NFTs. Drop Calendar, Statistics, raffles etc. One of the best apps is TON Gifts which allows you to send an NFT with a message as a gift and TON Diamonds which is the digital artists marketplace.
Shopping apps — only two available for international customers, it’s the bot that allows you to buy premium for TON and the cross-promotion app, where you can get money directly to your wallet after posting an advertisement.
Social apps — most of the apps are for private communities where you should pay for access to these groups or content.
VPN apps — VPN services inside the telegram app that allow you to pay for their service in TON directly from the wallet and use their VPNs.
Conclusions
We can see consistency in TON ecosystem development. Many new products are built on TON blockchain.
The pros of TON ecosystem:
The cons of TON ecosystem:
Overall, TON has the potential to be one of the first steps for new users to the crypto world. We can see how many people have TON wallets and know almost nothing about Web 3, but right now, it seems these people are not interested in going deeper and are comfortable in the TON ecosystem only.
