Driving Mass Adoption: TON’s Breakthrough Mini Apps

Transcript

just imagine you get a message from your friend and that's a very beautiful intro message with a button uh probably even some I don't know GIF or like some interactive element and then you just click and you access the game and you start playing probably you were invited to take part in a tournament or in a battle in a pppp with your friend um so once again this is all about you know like sharing and involving more and more people so that these apps they really become viral and uh which definitely eliminates the need to have invest in marketing just because it's very very organic growth the polygon Community grants program was launched with 1 billion tokens all four polygon Builders season 1 is live right now and features 35 million in madic to support the next

generation of polygon products builders on polygon these grants are for you join the aggregated future today by applying at polygon.net exchange built on top of Simo users can trade trending narratives with one click from do narratives such as long BTC short e right through the whiff versus Bon the Hat stays on Sim's intense Centric architecture enables deep liquidity source offchain and Brad onchain and combined with pair has democratized access to complex trading strategies typically reserved for institutional Traders Avalanche is a smart contract platform that has a novel consensus protocol subnet infrastructure and the hyper SDK toolkit which allows

web free developers to easily launch custom powerful blockchain Solutions you can start building today by checking out the link nothing set on zerox Research is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions not Financial advice Pacho Ryan and our guests May hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed what's up guys welcome back to another episode of zerox research uh I'm joined by Ryan from the blockworks research team and Alina who's the ecosystem lead at ton thank you so much for joining us Selena thank you so much guys I'm excited to participate we are as well um before we get started do you want to give a brief

overview of what you guys are building over at ton yeah sure so basically I work at ton Foundation as you very correctly mentioned so I'm ecosystem lead which means that I'm responsible for making sure every team every founder every Builder on T has all the necessary resources materials and programs to succeed and to build something cool and sustainable inside the ecosystem so working really like a lot with different teams that are basically migrating from somewhere else to ton right now because it's really I think the hottest period for ton at the moment yeah but generally as ton Foundation as a nonprofit organization uh our aim is to uh ensure this favorable very convenient

conditions for just building something great um inside the the Webster space and specifically in our our ecosystem that makes sense and I actually just to start us off one of the things that I wonder is how ton wants to position itself like you're a layer one but is there a specific sector that you want to go for to me it feels like onboarding usdt and um tether gold it feels like you want to become a payment type of network but I'm wondering like how you guys think about it or is it a freefor all uh I mean generally speaking of course it is we free for all all you know just thinking in the long term but probably now we are you're right focused on payments of course with the coming of

native used the te to ton but then also I mean leveraging the potential of telegram of course that's the main narrative right 900 million people monthly active audience someone needs to onboard them into into blockchain into crypto and this is basically our intrinsic goal and mission of course so this is why we are specifically focusing on such verticals as like social fi different utility use cases inside telegram defi of course as the well let's say I mean essential element of any web3 ecosystem right but so we're definitely focused on building telegram mini apps specifically with the use of t as the web three infrastructure for

them that makes sense and I kind of want to ask a bit about your relationship with telegram because in the past you've distanced yourselves and then later or earlier this year you uh like became more Associated again like you almost Rec reconciled I'm wondering like what's the reasoning behind this and how does that work yeah I mean this is a very important question and I really wanted to clarify today just because probably mostly for the Western audience uh these two things are very I mean similar and very I would say even the same but this is absolutely not true just because telgram and ton Foundation as such are completely like independent entities right with uh different missions let's say which

definitely intersect uh when it comes to web3 but like generally speaking so ton Foundation is already mentioned is a nonprofit organization that is uh building this infrastructure this tooling these programs for Builders and Founders uh inside the ton ecosystem and then telegram is the messenger right one of the top Messengers in in the world right now so um in September of last year at token 2049 in Singapore there was this official announcement uh from the main stage of this um strategic official partnership between telgram and ton Foundation which basically means that we've become their like I mean partner uh as regards the web three part

specifically right so once again keeping it as being two completely independent and separate institutions entities but very like tightly collaborating uh in in the web three realm specifically to add on top of that but we saw the appearance of wallet at wallet inside telegram right so also important to mention to highlight that there's an independent team behind at wallet uh so they basically start out Building inside the tone ecosystem and what is very cool about wallet is that uh people can already see it natively integrated into the interface of telegram right so you just open uh settings um you can see the

wallet there if the wallet uh has already been rolled out in your region right this this uh specifically concerns like the African region southeast Asia probably they already touched Europe as well I'm I'm not pretty sure so like every region except for for the US um is definitely on the road map so the wallet will continue to be rolled out in in these different world regions so what it basically means that people can see the wallet in settings they can see it in the attachments when they send a message to their friend and they can just in one click uh send some crypto to their family and friends and this is really really impressive just believe me uh if you see any person that has not touched crypto uh any time before this is like

really the window of opportunity and so uh we have we as ecosystem I mean have at wallet and then we have all those amazing and talented developers that are building teler mini apps as another layer um in this uh pyramid let's say um um which is definitely an amazing combination so you have decentralized application you have the wallet and then you have the user um and you just connect the dots and uh well ultimately achieve uh M adoption of course and about the minia apps I feel like this has I've started to hear more and more about the Inon mini apps um and telegram mini apps uh separate entities

um but more so what I wanted to understand was that when did this become I guess a strategy for ton and how are you guys approaching this exactly um that's a good question so definitely all the main uh decentralized applications on T they started as web apps just as in any other ecosystem right so take our dexes like stfi dust um take our lending protocol Eva they all started just as ordinary web apps definitely with this idea in mind that they will need to create a telegram mini app as well I would say probably the appearance of first telegram mini apps started like last summer I believe definitely they were telegram mini apps

before that as well but just like intrinsically web three app started to to turn up um I bet last summer we we will need to check but this is this is my assumption and so then after the announcement of course after September of last year um the there was this Rising trend of launching telegram mini apps and just to give you an example our uh major per deck uh storm trade they started with the telgram mini app from from the very scratch uh so they already adopted that strategy just because you know to leverage the potential and to build um D5 product for for the mass uh Mass user Mass audience uh and now this

narrative is really on the hype of course especially with the tap to earn narrative that I think we will definitely need to cover during this podcast right and then all the other use cases just because uh it's basically we chat uh replicated on on the web three rails and this is this is something very exciting yeah totally um since you mentioned tap turn like let's dive into it um like from a high level it seems to be just like an easy way to onboard or to put tokens in users hands but maybe there's more there like explain the phenomenon maybe explain some interesting apps in the space and and

how developers are kind of like using this new primitive to to drive adoption and drive drive eyeballs to their apps yeah I mean Ryan you're absolutely right it is a very simple onboarding tool for for the masses to start you know touching crypto in some way but then for me personally how it all started so I basically joined ton foundation not long ago like half a year ago like last November probably more than half year we need to count uh but so one of my first meetings was indeed with Sasha who is the founder of NCoin and they had like this small this mini ecosystem of apps on T from the very beginning they have one of the first teams to have joined the ecosystem in general so they had ton starter which is a one of the launch

pads on ton they had Community bought which is a quest platform really like it has been number one platform for for a long time and then not coin and so when we were on on that first very first all with Sasha uh he mentioned not coin as you know just a game where you basically tap on a coin and before that we discussed you know so Advanced things um so so exciting stuff for me especially at the beginning and then I was like really why are you bringing it up at all like people will just what need to tap on a coin like what's the what's the essence of it and he basically announced um the game just a few weeks ago uh before our call at gate at ton Gateway in Dubai

and I I was basically following that stream on YouTube because because I was not part of Tom Foundation at that moment and I was like okay but this sounds very silly like guys I I was serious about it and then can you can you imagine my reaction in like January uh when that app started to gain I I mean like millions of people every single day that was really a phenomenon right so they they knew how to create this very uh engaging narrative very very very special very interesting um this progression in the game you're not just clicking right you're competing as squads and then you are completing all these uh easy but still very interesting tasks so people started to learn what

anft are all about they started to buy the first jettin uh jettin are uh the Stander of tokens uh for like I mean on on on ton chain so um that was that was really like I mean a completely new story right and then definitely a lot of expectations a lot of speculation around the TG and listing and it all went very well I must say and so now if we take the stats so 35 million people played NCoin in general overall right after the end of the mining phase the number stood at that point and then 11 million people even more I think 11 uh million half something like that they claimed NCoin

on their wallets either self- custody wallets or uh just just help them on on their uh exchanges account right and then 2.3 million people uh are now holders of NCoin on chain holders right which makes NCoin absolutely number one uh meme coin in the web space for the number of holders I think this is an amazing achievement just because I mean if we even focus specifically on those onchain holders people are not selling they see long-term value here they know that the team will be developing more interesting and exciting stuff in the web threee in general um and this is I mean this is just crazy like these are crazy numbers

uh but then now when we have games with even even larger audiences like hamster combat right that broke uh 150 million total users just a couple of days ago or like tap swap with I think 50 million or yesin with 20 million or Bloom which is by the way not just a tap to earn uh that team is building a hybrid exchange right uh with cross-chain swaps uh and potentially with a perex as well like with a lot of stuff with a very Advanced road map generally speaking but they decided to adopt the step to earn Approach at the very beginning and I personally believe this is a very right strategy just

because judging from the experience of other teams it is evident that it's much easier to onboard masses into something very simple you know very community based as well just because you're playing with your friends you're sharing you're discussing you're just having fun and then to give them something more you know longterm some something more sustainable in terms of the value and this is something that we definitely expect from all those teams and we're always there for them to to help them with the road maps uh just to make sure that this is not just a shortterm trend that is going to you know fade away in a few months but yes okay we did on board this uh amazing number of people but then we need to definitely do something

with them right so that's on them on the teams and definitely on us as as their main let's say supporters in terms of you know just creating something sustainable yeah that that's kind of where I was going to go next like when I when I think of tap to earn like the first thing I think of is like move to earn which like it was like this cool like new game that everyone was really excited about but the teams that were executing on move to earn um they it was not sustainable for them they they didn't figure out uh new bells and whistles to kind of keep those projects going so could you maybe speak to like some like next steps for some of these tap to earn games like what are what

what are what are the next steps to to like deepen user P penetration yeah that's a good question actually I mean uh to my mind there are so many strategies out there so once again going back to the example of Bloom the guys are building an exchange right this is definitely something still to see how exactly they will make these people stay so now I think more than 20 or more maybe 30 million people are um they need to like collect snowflakes or flowers inside the game so it's not just clicking but it's something already you know more advanced and actually I mean interesting stuff is that people are becoming more and more creative which is definitely something we expect so you're not only tapping on the coin anymore you

tapping on I don't know uh a glass of wine or I don't know pizza or something like that right so it's anyway it's even more interesting now but once again going back to the general thesis um the bloom team they will need to onboard these people into something more complex into basically D or CI whatever just at the intersection of it right so this is this is one strategy okay you on board people for something simple but then you need to educate them how to use more complex defi tools and you know how to become an advanced web3 user um in the in the main sense of it right and other strategy just as for like notco they have become the go-to quest platform as well right uh for for any Web Two or web

three brand right now so uh people still using I mean companies uh keep using NCoin as the platform where they can publish some simple tasks and onboard people into their products and then that's on their shoulders to show them once again um what exactly they're offering and uh creating these tools and how to retain the user right so notco basically works with with large and medium companies um as the platform with a lot of traffic right another another example is kogen um also a very successful game right now and it's not only ta to earn uh you basically breed cats and this this is very very exciting

and this is an amazing case how uh a an Asian team has managed to onboard people from Europe and from the CIS region because you know that Asian Games they're very specific and they are usually focused on Asian type type of client type of user those guys I mean they completely broke the narrative and so what is exciting is that uh and they have have experience in launching telegram mini apps in WeChat sorry mini apps in WeChat that's just you know said for in my mind already uh we chat uh which is basically um a paragon for us right as a super app in Asia and so those guys they they want to build more games with more interesting and engaging gameplay and then they want to build

like uh a trading board or an exchange and then they want to build a quest platform as well so it really it's really all about the road map and its complexity and its relevance right um people just need to understand understand what to do with those users and I'm pretty sure that we'll manage it like once again take the example of uh WeChat it's still there and still like um one one billion or even more people are playing those uh mini mini games and using mini apps on a daily basis yeah I would love to talk about the those similarities and and maybe even differences between Telegram and WeChat um you know if you look at like a lot of Market commentary regarding ton

coin specifically and then obviously the ecosystem at large um everyone talks about that distribution relationship first and a big part of the telegram story is kind of like this North Star of creating in in that platform uh a rich ecosystem similar to WeChat could you maybe speak to um the similarities and differences of like Telegram and WeChat as you see them and then like I don't know there's anything unique that ton adds to that relationship with telegram yeah I mean I would say the main similarity here is definitely the concept itself that you have everything in like one single interface right you don't need to leave the messenger you

have everything there like your friends you can chat with them you can buy Goods um order delivery uh for pizza for I don't know a party um you can for example pay for your VPN or um as whatever just you play games um you interact with people you discover news everything in one single place um that that's the similarity the difference is that we're building it on on the web three engine right which means definitely decentralization all this Phil philosophy that that follows and then people really have the ownership um of goods um so everything that you know all the web narratives that are out

there and that we all care so much about just because we we've chosen this path to be to be in web three right so um this is the the idea that bav I think um has has has had with him uh for the entire period of existence of telegram and his previous projects as well um this is the main philosophy of the messenger and I think it's become uh pretty clear to everyone and especially after uh his recent interview that he's given so um I hope that people see that this is this is true and that this is somewhere that where we're headed yeah totally and another like pretty pretty obvious um kind of angle

on ton I think is gaming right like if you were to look at like the history of gaming monetization you'd see that almost all the growth over last five or more years is attributable to mobile right uh people playing games on their phone you guys obviously have that unique distribution there um outside of tap to earn are you guys seeing any developers focused on like uh on gaming applications within the the T Min app space no 100% this is one of the strongest verticals I think like most most developers inside the ton EOS system are really focused on gamey uh now and we keep repeating it that once

again like onethird of uh the users of WeChat play games right and this is this is an immense uh amount of people so we definitely want to Target this vertical as well um so apart from tap to earn which literally appeared like what a few months ago and then before that there were uh all these amazing games uh inside tgram onon that were already there and people already started familiarizing themselves with them so um I would probably name some examp exles and then if uh if your listeners are interested they can just go and check out the games right so there is a game called Gat where you basically breed and grow your Gaton um yeah gate is a cat in in Italian by the way so I was always

wondering whether there is this direct connection but this is you know all those uh tagoi inspired games um so people are going crazy about them they keep on buying nfts um uh buying different featurers inside the game to to make their Gaton uh more cool and more experienced and more successful in different uh PVP battles that are available inside the game they have a very loyal Community that's a meat core game they don't have you know all those hundreds of millions of players yet uh but they're just targeting um a different segment of of audience uh but I believe that this is a very successful case uh they also had a

pretty success ful experience in VK before uh VK is uh social social platform for dcis region um you may have heard of it so um this is just to say that people are interested in migrating successful cases to telegram during this period And this is amazing and this is something that we're like heavily supporting in this period um apart from them um there is also a very um entertaining game called the pixels so you all know about the pixels bad right and all this uh various versions that have been launched out there in the market like both web 2 and web 3 so in this particular game people needed to draw pixels on the canvas but they

needed to do it um in communities in groups right so you you enter the game you join some community and you basically um draw these pixels all together um the game lasted for 10 weeks only now it's over um and at the end of each week a snapshot of the canvas was taken and so if you were not on that canvas you lose right and uh that was very exciting and people were really crazy about it they were literally drawing pixels every single day they were discussing it in chats they have they still have very Vivid community and that talented team they definitely want to continue like launching new games and then launching the seasons of the pixels

battle every every once in a while I'm not sure about the regularity yet um but so this is to highlight that um a successful game in in Telegram and onon definitely needs to have such intrinsic elements as social fi as the involvement of communities because telegram is all about communication and communities of course like channels and chats sharing features this is something very cool uh just imagine you get a message from your friend and that's a very beautiful intro message with a button uh probably even some I don't know gift or like some interactive element and then you just click and you access the game and you start playing probably you were invited to take part in a tournament or in a

battle in a PPP with your friend um so once again this is all about you know like sharing and involving more and more people so that these apps they really become viral and uh which which definitely eliminates the need to heavily invest in marketing just because it's very very organic growth and definitely rewards like everyone loves points um in crypto at this at this stage right so um air drops um Raffles uh everything uh is is true for for ton as well of course so um it's all about referral programs and then just farming points uh one more exciting phe for me is gam that's um a portfolio company of animoca Brands

right and um they they've been developing the gaming platform inside telegram for for many years already if I'm not mistaken since like 2019 or we we'll need to check but something approximately from there and so um they now they've launched a new narrative um uh preparing for for the launch of the token on ta um which we hope will come soon so there is a new farming campaign um in in the gaming platform um so you just basically perform very basic tasks and then you play the games because gaming is Bally publisher right so they have more than 70 very cool hyper casual games in this platform so you just get

involved in all those games while I don't know uh being in public transport going to work or uh to University and then you just Farm these points you can also F points through staking different assets uh on ethereum by the way which is a very interesting case for me specifically in terms of how the team will manage to onboard people from the ethereum community to T because um I mean once again the launch will be on T but now if for example you take uh your py Penguins um for for for a certain period you f points and then those points are going to be converted into something valuable on to right so this is a very exciting case for me as well

so um I hope it helps uh in terms of understanding that tap to earn is not the only thing and this is more of a you know very temporary and very um um I mean initial stage and then some something more valuable and more advanced needs to follow of course yeah that makes sense I um I actually want to ask about gaming but maybe not I'm not sure how uh related it is but there's been a few games that have launched natively in telegram but as far as I understand they're not on ton so blast had a game called was related to Samurai it was like Sushi Samurai and it was native like in telegram uh I'm wondering if there's plan for ton to not rent seek but try and ACR some

value off of non uh ton based games or applications that want to launch on Telegram and I think I'm like I also want to ask about um trading Bots related to this as well but just kind of in general how you guys think of apps that are on telegram but not on ton telegram is open to anyone so any developer can come launch a tgram mini app whether it's a web2 app or a web app whether on T on or any other chain right so we definitely talk with a lot of developers who are building telgram Min apps and using other chains um and they all show interest so this is to TA to words ta I mean so this is to say that we're not going to you know like hunt

them or uh in any way I don't know block their activity of course not this is absolutely against our principles and our strategy right we're just you know calmly waiting until they show interest themselves if they do we're very happy to support them to show them the opportunities and I must say this is something that's already happening just because I mean we we definitely attend a lot of conferences and we see how for example there was one guy at in anoca brand uh portfolio day uh so they're building a telegram mini app a game on SOI and then um he was like he was so excited about SOI uh telling me that probably ton will be next step but he was not sure and then just a week after that probably after some major

announcement about taon or something I don't remember in which period it was exactly but he was like Elena you know we just decided to to migrate the app completely to T and I'm like welcome guys we are very very happy to have you so the this just happens you know organically we don't even need to to pitch it anymore just because people see the potential and this is something that we really appreciate just because um there is a certain type of teams that are just you know hunting different like grants or like Financial opportunities in in different ecosystems that's their choice that's their approach uh but we just love we very appreciate when Builders really see why it should be Tor at least during this period at least to

start because definitely the future must be you know um multi-chain Omni chain whatever uh but just as a starting point as and you know as an opportunity to to leverage something that's happening inside the ton ecosystem this is is probably something to to look at that makes sense and one thing is that I assume like a lot of people are interested in the distribution channel that ton um can provide but how do you guys view this like 900 mil uh monthly active users is a huge number um but I'm wondering like how much of that is converted or like that you guys are looking to convert and my second question is

that for example ethereum values itself as having well maybe not values itself but it has like a limited amount of users with a lot of capital and Solana has a lot of users um on paper just as eum has a lot of users on paper but with less capital and how like what is the ton approach here do you 900 million users okay but how much Capital do you think can come on chain and how do you guys like view that yeah I think you know we want to adopt a very balanced approach here because for an ecosystem that's still early um some people recommend focusing on the number of users first of all right which means that definitely growing the retail part

uh but then for us it's probably both and I think we've already achieved uh some very good Milestones here so for example the TBL has grown like a monthly uh by more than um 2,000% recently if we count in dollars right so we we we we've broken um 600 uh million already on our Bay to to to one bill hopefully soon right and talking about users our aim is to onboard uh 500 million people on Chain by 2028 um here we will probably count not only like purely onchain users with self- custody wallets but those with for example in-game balances or um someone that I don't know holds any Tor related

assets on their centralized Exchange accounts so so this is um just a matter of methodology uh but I believe it it really should be both definitely given the the large uh number of people inside telegram like 900 million um we we're probably more about onboarding retail and um the the main effort now is to really bring this wide range of use cases interesting use cases that will help us do it right so thanks to the amazing work of our developers of of the teams we have a lot of interesting cases regarding payments utilities social fund so on and so forth and so me personally uh I've just been to a series of our uh

boot camps within the open League initiative um yeah by the way remind me I I really need to tell you about the open League which is something very exciting that we're doing right now and so I've been to those boot camps and I can see really how you know our vision resonates with the vision of Builders as well just because they are looking in the very right direction diretion um in telegram we need to first of all think about the telegram user um their daily habits and you know the convenience that the messenger offers intrinsically and then come up with different interesting use cases and additional functionality on top of what telegram already offers as the I don't know Communication channel as the channel to read news and get information uh if if the developer

manages to find this interesting um use case then that's the the first sign of success polygon labs are developing the next generation of open- source ZK Tech to aggregate crypto liquidity and user bases empowering developers to grow in a unified web of interoperable chains with the a layer the a layer is a machine for Network effect don't worry about bootstrapping liquidity just build anywhere in the a layer to tap the liquidity and users everywhere to support the aggregated future and boost scrap quality project the polygon Community grants program was launched with $1 billion to All For polygon Builders season one of the community grants program is live right now and features 35 million in madic to support the next generation of polygon projects

for Builders on polygon or projects interested in migrating these grants are for you join the aggregated future and feel empowered to grow in an infinite web of unified interoperable chains apply today at polygon.net trading exchange built on top of Simo users can trade trending narratives with one click from Blue Chip narratives such as long BTC short e right through the whiff versus Bonk the Hat stays on Sim's intense Centric architecture enables deep liquidity source offchain and Broad onchain and combined with pair has democratized access to complex trading strategies typically reserved for institutional Traders the age of interoperability is here with the launch of teleporter

Avalanche becomes a seamlessly linked network of many sovereign blockchains that communicate so smoothly they feel like a single chain tell order is an evm compatible cross chain communication protocol built on top of avalanche for message it allows any evm chain on Avalanche to send messages assets and data to one another in a simple fast affordable and secure way teleporter and avaline cor messaging provide a new foundation for how Avalanche blockchains can communicate and how developers can easily build cross chain applications out of the box build anything you want any way you want on the eco-friendly blockchain designed for web 3 de check it out by clicking the link I actually have one question about social f as well and then I'm going to pass it on to Ryan

to get more technical but uh Creator tips uh tokenized telegram usernames and tokenized telegram stickers is what Pavel durov talked about at token 249 and I see like because I know there's a lot of countries that use telegram not just the way that we use telegram or let's say me and Ryan use telegram um there are countries who use telegram as their source of news as like just day-to-day life as opposed to the way that I think most crypto people use it do you think that that is the social fight that you're going for such as like news channels that only exist on telegram being able to add Creator tips and some form of like new income Source or are

you going to go for a more crypto native social fight um potentially something like a bit more financialized and not as straightforward yeah I think it's definitely both once again right just because we want to focus on both both like web to retail user and then crypto people that are already used uh to using telegram every single day yeah and actually when I was listening to what bukachi were saying I was like what if your life is entirely in in telegram uh like honestly it's become crazy like all those chats and like everything's happening there work personal life just whatever um yeah so social f is a very broad concept and we want to embrace like the entire range of elements that

are connected to to this trend in general so take I don't know friend teac there's already quite a successful uh case on ton U that basically replicated the functionality of Frac with all those keys and gated communities right and and works pretty well why just because it's all in one single place and you can connect your wallet in a single click right you don't need to set up a new wallet to deposit funds I mean you do need to deposit funds but it's it's pretty simple uh because wallet allows you to do it through P2P or with a credit card right so uh like friend Tech type of apps and then we also have like once again going back to my experience

with the boot camps um the guys are very creative these days for example there is this new social f app that uh wants to allow people to co-invest in positions on on a per deck so just imagine like I don't know one ql like a Trader KL uh they share a link with the community like guys let's I don't know go long on T right now all together and you just click you invest some ton coin and then when the sum reaches a certain level a position gets open right and then it's all automatic through smart contracts no one has the custody of your funds for even for a second um so all the uh POS all the opportunities of the web three

space are there and so it's all very simple and all in one single place and this distribution channel that um you mentioned multiple times is there just because once again you don't need to see this ad on on YouTube you just hear uh about it from your favorite Trader K or your friend right or people from from the same chat you're in so uh there are also guys that want to give an opportunity to monetize uh me messages in chats uh we know that uh AI models especially linguistic models crucial need data right uh authorized data and so why don't you just approve of your data of your uh text messages or voice

messages being used um in order to for you to get rewards to get some points that are probably going to be converted into a token and then those companies that need data they can just uh come come and get it right um so there's also one very exciting use case through which you can basically um get money for uh receiving messages on telegram which I think is an amazing tool potentially for decision makers right uh those who just get like I don't know thousands of messages every single day uh they can just set a price for a message and then only those people who are ready to pay can can reach out to them so all of this uh that's really a mix but I would say

um all those you know very Innovative very fresh cases that once again add something on top of what telegram already offers um yeah and then this this is a path to to success to my mind uh talking about social fight specifically that's that's super interesting so just to kind of backtrack you're talking about like a gated messaging service where if there's someone they're a well-known VC and they don't want to take every email that they get they can like put out their public telegram address like hey like this will make it to me if you pay 20 bucks or or like I'll provide you with like career coaching advice I'll you know have a message conversation with you if you pay

like the $50 entrance fee is that kind of what you're getting at yeah exactly exactly so you just access uh a link and then yeah you pay uh for this service with tonco or use the on ton or potentially any jettin that the team decides to integrate there uh and you can reach out to that person that you need to reach out to that yeah that's super interesting yeah sorry B do you want to go yeah I just I was just going to say it's really cool I know like some other project just launched a few days ago doing something similar but I in general uh am quite excited about kind of financializing people's times I know it sounds kind of dystopian but I feel like it's naturally going to happen just

because everybody's online and in the real world you can't just reach everybody you need some form of a system and I think it makes sense to do it online as well I I would love to talk about kind of tan like their architecture this the systems architecture from like a high level um and in particular the the the in context of like the activity that we've seen today so like I know you guys on a test net um demonstrated uh a TPS record in a constrained environment I also know that there was some downtime in the past so like obviously like system stability is super important for devs throughput is

super important for devs especially on a platform that is touting like a very high user base so maybe we could just high level architecture and how how this thing plans to scale yeah sure so from from the high level I would say like ton as you already mentioned correctly an L1 with the charting technology inherently right in inherent in this in its architecture and so um from the technical standpoint uh how taon stands out among other blockchains are first of all the speed and then secondly the scalability right so talking about the speed run you're absolutely right um we broke the record

it was last Autumn I think like November or something probably October uh yeah for the highest TPS that reached like 100,000 transactions per second something like that um this is important to highlight it's important to highlight that was basically conducted in an isolated environment right so that was a test and that I mean never happened in in in in Real Environment okay and then you're also right about this um situation that appeared in December because of the um inscriptions hype that reached ton as well right it all started with Bitcoin uh but then touched other chains as well and I believe that was kind of a hard and exciting moment for

um any chain that was involved I mean that that was a nice problem to have right um it was not about like the problem the in the intrinsic problem of the chain as such but there was just the unreadiness I would say of the infrastructure overall just because no one saw it coming and as you know like before September of last year T was not a narrative yet right so there was quite low relatively low activity on on the chain in general and so what happened was that um there was this um new inscription protocol and then basically the infra I mean indexers and API providers they were just in the wallet

they were not ready just because no one expected it and this is why it happened right but then we we started fixing it at once uh and it's it's become much much uh better right now especially after the NCoin launch and then we're obviously expecting all those large tap to earn projects uh to launch soon as well and so that's why we need to make sure the infra is ready uh to to such a high uh workload in terms of onchain transactions on chain activity uh definitely those projects uh I mean for like security reasons just to be on the safe side they kind of split the traffic so they they lead people to centralized exchanges as well right and then to to

dexes to but not coin as we know they balanced it in a way that most of the people people they were mostly engaging with centralized exchanges and then transferring funds to to their self- custody wallets as well uh but I think I mean we we we survived that period quite well regardless of all those problems and but you're absolutely right and there is still a lot to improve and um a lot of people are working on it right now from the side of the coure team and for the side of projects uh that are building inside the ecosystem too is there like there's there's a lot of coms from blockchain teams about like the uh latency they targeting uh the

total throughput that they're targeting like in some future steady state do you guys have an angle on that do you guys like want to achieve you know ntps per second for example when this thing is like fully functioning or like how do you guys think about that um I think for like more precise info on that we should just look up the road mapap on toric but what I can say is that uh we'll probably just you know stick to the record that we've already achieved in terms of TPS but just make sure that it works not only in the isolated environment but also in in like real real life right so when we have this um this level of demand for for the speed and for the

scalability we are ready to to provide it as as blockchain I'm thinking about like the um okay so like a devel veler listening to this call right now like they're interested in the distribution uh they see that this the thing has scale from the Block Explorer um but now they have to start coding and deploying applications right like and I look at the ecosystem and I see like you know ethereum historically was able to like minimize like developer onboarding because like solidity looks like JavaScript right and um you know salana had rust which is a very like admired

language um outside of the crypto industry so like that was kind of like a natural touch point for the salana ecosystem um I I know you guys use func which is um I guess a derivative of c and um like C it's certainly a used like there are there are C there are C programmers out there no doubt but it's not one of these like really really loved languages um I'm wondering how you guys think about like that potential friction in onboarding devs um when like like what's the power of fun C right like you're obviously choosing that for a reason like like why is that the model yeah so uh you're right that's

still a hurdle and uh I mean onboarding dabs like web three dabs into any new ecosystem is is kind of uh you know um a job still to be done um I would say and also we have another language which is tacked and which is I mean easier to to be onboarded into at first phase but definitely like the language that offers more possibilities and more like Advanced um features is fany indeed so uh fany you're absolutely right is very close to the C family of languages and then tact is probably I mean people who code it on like python or typescript will will find some some similarities as

well if they if they want to uh learn tact uh TCT is not production ready yet um the team is working on it but I would say this combination it helps us onboard people relatively fast to tact and then give them more possibilities if they start learning funy but this is definitely a trade-off just because you you you definitely do need to invest time in learning a new language uh but once again if you want to get that level of distribution and I mean also all those types of support that we from the side of Tom Foundation to give to developers um this is I mean your decision uh but to to my mind it's

definitely worth it and uh we are uh keeping on improving the documentation of course so we have um several good courses uh we keep on organizing all these boot camps and hackathons where people can come and join different workshops where we in in real time show them how to code uh we have a lot of uh very very Lively chats uh with more than I think 18,000 developers already there uh asking questions giving feedback so just working on it is one of the uh most important let's say directions of our work in general because we understand that okay like launching a telegram mini

app on T sounds exciting just because we see all this numbers from tap to earn apps and not only but um where where to start from and how to actually learn a language that's a different question but yeah once again working on it and making sure that all the tools are available how do you see the next six to 12 months what are you guys focusing on over the next year what is let's say as a yeah open-ended question what are you guys looking at um yeah a lot of things um I mean generally speaking I would say like my team specifically uh we are focusing on the open League which is a

major initiative now um of the tone ecosystem in general so this is one of the reasons why the tvl has grown uh so immensely and why we have a lot of new apps and a lot of new users so the open League just uh in a nutshell that's a long-term incentive program uh within which we already distributed more than than $45 million in ton coin to founders of projects to users to even airdrop Hunters uh among everyone else so uh what it basically means it consists of several core elements the first element is the open Battle of ton project um so imagine you launched an app on ton uh and it already has some onchain activity

so you can join the battle where you will be competing with other ton projects for large prices every season right so each season lasts two week and we are Distributing uh during this season uh 1.2 million in ton coin for just two weeks right and those teams that perform well they get the prices and this money goes directly to the team and they can spend it on marketing on product development on an airdrop to their Community just whatever so this is basically like I mean free money very welld deserved of course just because we're tracking a lot of M metc so for apps this is for example the number of transactions the number of active wallets right just to see how how

they're performing in terms of onchain and then we have a token battle where meme coins by the way which is also a very interesting narrative on time right now and just ordinary tokens are fighting for prices as well based on for example the price growth or the number of token holders and the tbll indexes and so on and so forth we also have a separate battle for defi projects that are competing for uh prizes based on the TBL that they managed to bring and then nft battle as well for the most Vivid and active nft collections on T So the plan is just to scale this thing to provide like more prizes to create more leaderboards uh to experiment with the metrics and with the mechanics that we

offer but I would say the projects are really very excited about this thing because I personally never seen a battle of this type an open battle where you can just come you know build something very fast uh bring audience there and get a price and get a lot of marketing support a lot of PR and promotional uh assistance as well just because we're marketing this program very heavily with all our Media Partners and in our uh internal not internal but I mean official um social media channels of ton of the ton ecosystem in general um so I mean this is very exciting and if you for example go and see the app leaderboard right now you will see very new projects that have joined just

recently take yes cor take Ken uh squid TG game uh those are very new contestants that did not take part in season one two yeah one or two uh so and in the third season they already ranked top so this is to say that anyone is very welcome you know just to come build join and win that's the narrative the second element which is also very cool and it's probably more appealing to the end users um also who are new to ta uh these are the so-called LP boosts that we are providing for uh pools with tokens on txas right so those projects that won the battle that I mentioned

previously they get rewards for their liquidity providers indexes so you can just open the website of stfi or dust right now and you'll see the the apy there in some pools that are basically labeled the open league on Dust it's just a lightning symbol so we are providing ton coin from from the side of uh ton foundation and ton society and projects are providing their own token right and so these are basically like the classic farming rewards the end user needs to have ton and some other token uh on their balance I don't know take not coin whatever uh so two token on their balance they just come to Dex um

put liquidity there and farm rewards right usually these are only rewards that are coming from the project itself but here we are sustaining the price of the token of the project through providing uh tonan so this is an amazing thing that really works because the number of jat and holders has also increased like greatly and the projects are very excited about this particular initiative of course just because people now they they now have a very uh evident motivation to buy um the asset right and to also um interact with the product in the long term right so the aim of each project that is participating in the

program right now is to create these like long-term and sustainable mechanics inside their product so that people after the farming ends uh do not just sell the token right but they just uh keep on using it within the product and become like a part of the loyal community of this particular project which is I mean super super exciting um a lot of stuff so the open league is definitely one of the core parts we are focusing on and uh we've just finished uh accepting applications for the open league hackathon as well so here we're actually very very close to salano already in terms of the number of applications so we've got more than

1,000 um submissions this time which is definitely a record for us and we'll be Distributing a price to of uh two uh $2 million uh for the win winners um yeah so uh we will now be reviewing all these applications so I'm super excited about it personally just because I saw the quality of teams during the boot camps that were indeed organized uh as a support to to the overall hackathon um so we will definitely continue in this regard as well just because as I mentioned it's important to um to show the developers the founders the perspective acve from the very beginning and definitely those teams that are participating in in hackathons they still very early and they need a lot of

guidance and a lot of you know assistance and necessary tools and programs and then just the last thing to mention definitely continuing to work with our dear Partners let's say so I mean in terms of strategic partnership like telgram and tether um and then animal Brands as well uh collaborating very tightly with them on many different realms um like fire blocks and many other partners that are um interested in the ecosystem that are are really um looking to build something very long term with us um yeah very very excited about that part as well just because obviously Without Partners we we cannot

just you know work in isolation it's all about synergies um in web three in general yeah that that's great color um you you mentioned these these big partners and these apps that have attracted a certain amount of users like future developers like okay so maybe I'll backtrack a little bit crypto has like a civil problem when airdrops happen when reward programs happen uh users will naturally try to game that system and given like the like semi-anonymous nature of crypto rails like they they take that shot on goal right um like kis in for example they're they're touting very large user

numbers that um I think like a skeptical Dev um is going to like maybe B at or question so like is there anything about the telegram or ton platform that can assure like new devs coming into the ecosystem that like there are monetizable users here today it's not like flooded with cils you like you saw the layer zero airdrop for example Le and the work that Brian did and that he made public like what's going on in tan where they can assure new devs coming to the ecosystem that like that's not going to be a problem for them yeah uh this is definitely I mean a problem that we're facing as well

probably not um not really at the scale but not in the same um mode that for example AER zero or ZK sing or scroll or whatever other a new um L2 or new ecosystem is facing right now um but so the here we're talking about this software and cills right they're basically uh farming uh the future airdrop for us it's more about Bots that are also farming those points inside T mini apps and I would say that um teams uh th those successful teams they already started collaborating with different analytic Partners um just for example uh I mean Nomis that's the team

that uh has recently joined the ecosystem they're building their like onchain scoring mechanism um that will definitely help um avoid um you know giving rewards to to C bills um so and more and more partners are basically coming and joining the ecosystem I would say for now it's also on the shoulders of each team and for example NCoin I know that they definitely removed a lot of uh inactive wallets uh from the uh final distribution of course I'm not sure about the number but I think something around a million for sure so out of 35 mil uh which is kind of a decent number and then Bloom for example they also has they also have like a

dedicated framework for it I remember there's a video on YouTube explaining that so every team of course like those huge numbers are cool right everyone that sees it it's like a wow effect from uh from the first glance but definitely if you like dive deeper you understand that there are Bots there and you're just wondering how many of those 150 million users are actually real um well I can assure you that very substantial part just because I literally see people um all across like even Europe playing this hamster combat I'm really you know it's it just driving me crazy all my family is playing all my friends are playing this is crazy so this is

definitely a sign of uh the game becoming really viral uh among real people people but the the problem still persists I totally agree here and so yes as I was saying it's on the shoulders of each team but we from the side of Tom foundation will definitely continue you know collaborating with different partners in this particular direction so that they can offer their services as well so whether a team wants to uh perform an airdrop they can make sure that there is tooling inside the echosystem that can analyze to wallets specifically and make sure that uh only real people or almost uh real people get get the um welld deserved rewards at the end of the

day yeah that I think it's like very difficult to understand who's real and who's not as and I think like a lot of people put um unnecessary blame on teams sometimes because they're like oh active addresses versus active users this has just been a thing over the past week which is why I wanted to bring it up it's like I see a lot yeah yeah I I feel those teams very much I mean a lot of criticism a lot of complaints but once again my my personal Theses here is that this is anyway free money for you guys why are you always complaining right so you're you're being rewarded like I mean I understand that like everyone has their own Vision their own view of how their words need need to

be distributed but it's that's just life I mean we just okay once again we just need to have fun and all those games at least they they give you fun and entertainment okay you're either you're clicking on a hamster or opening these cards inside the game or finding this days combo whatever it just needs to give you Joy and delight and this is all about those tger mini apps that are now being launched right so once again my personal recommendation here is not to expect anything and that's why I really enjoy The Narrative of notco right it was probably nothing like no expectations no guarantees you guys just have fun you come and play with your friends you read our posts you engage

with us in the chat um we're going to provide a lot of uh you know fun gifts and um memes whatever but it's probably nothing so no of course Financial expectations here uh should be posed just because that's a game yeah that makes sense do you have anything that you'd like to leave our uh listeners with any parting thoughts well guys what what can I say come to T we have a lot to offer um I'm personally very very excited and also when I was to make this decision of where to go half a year ago um after you know exploring all those amazing ecosystems out there um I

made my decision and I never ever wished to to to change it just because uh it's an amazing ecosystem with fantastic opportunities with a lot of programs for for Builders and Founders so the open League once again uh come and build and join the competition we're going to continue for the months to come so you still have time um so we have um a lot of other supportive programs like the grant program we offer marketing support like Business Development support um what else for the users it's also still early and people should come and explore all the opportunities just have a look at our deck at ston dust and you'll find all those amazing numbers there um so if

you've been in in web3 for a while you will understand that this is definitely a place to be right now and then yeah I mean we're just we're very open and uh really have a lot of plans and a lot of Ambitions in the web three space so uh let's see let's see I'm sure we we're going to have many more conversations about Don in the near future perfect well thank you so much for coming on thank you guys that was a pleasure are you currently building on polygon or interested in migrating season one of the polygon Community grants program is live right now and features 35 million in madic to support the next generation of polygon projects builders on polygon these grants are for you join the

aggregated future today by applying at polygon.net [Music]