Under the vision of “Trump’s Promise”, is there still hope for TON’s growth?

After Trump's victory, Bitcoin broke through 76,000, and the bull pattern was winning. However, compared with the price changes of Bitcoin, the most beneficial to the growth of the entire industry ecosystem is the cottage season, and the industry expects more abundant growth. In the short term, we can see that the tokens of various tracks have been closely following the market and restarting the heat. In these tracks that closely follow the market, the "TON ecosystem" is still closely watched by investors.

Since the Durov Paris incident two months ago, the TON ecosystem has fallen into crisis, or entered a new stage of adjustment. Even though various meme projects and small game projects in the ecosystem are still constantly attracting new users and updating activity information, those who are sensitive to the market seem to have felt the "limited faith" of the TON ecosystem.

For example, judging from the market feedback, SOL has quickly rebounded to break through 200 following BTC, but TON’s increase is far less than this.

So what is the most beneficial thing for TON in this election event that has attracted much attention in the industry? We can find some answers in Trump's ten major promises for cryptocurrencies. In the promises, we can see that there are not only measures for Bitcoin, but more measures will represent the future "unblocking" of the cryptocurrency industry by the US dollar economy. For Telegram and TON, which have been in the fog for a long time, this will be a strong medicine.

Under the expectation of a smooth background, if the market continues to rise, what specific development expectations can we have for TON?

Favorable development background for TON

Before Durov's news, the growth of TON ecosystem was strong. Led by the several-fold growth of TON tokens, most of the Defi tokens in the ecosystem increased by about 10 times. In addition to the increase in tokens, the attention was even more outstanding. First, before Notcoin went online, various CEXs rushed to go online to include new TON ecosystem users, and then DOGS once again mobilized the enthusiasm of all Telegram users. These represent a huge market base. As long as the market rebounds, the rebound of TON ecosystem tokens will definitely keep up.

It’s just that in the past two months of downturn, after the decline of TON tokens, the TVL and DEX trading volume within the ecosystem have all declined along with the popularity. This is the most thought-provoking data at present.

However, when we understand TON from the perspective of the long-term growth of the public chain, we may find that the current data performance is the data that will inevitably appear in the cycle during the growth of the public chain. This first of all allows us not to worry about losing TON's position in the future public chain competition, but to continue to look at TON from a long-term perspective.

Just like the development trend of DEX, user education in the entire industry is paving the way for high-speed public chains such as TON.

On October 28, according to SolanaFloor, the trading volume of Solana DEX reached $15.78 billion during the week, 77.91% higher than Ethereum's $8.87 billion, setting a record high. As a result, Solana's share of the trading volume of all-chain DEX reached 35%, setting a record high.

At the same time, according to data from The Block and DefiLlama, in October, DEX's spot trading volume relative to CEX accounted for 14.12%, a new high since May 2023.

This trend continues to confirm a trend: with the popularity of high-speed chains, the boundaries between user trading behaviors in DEX and CEX are becoming increasingly blurred.

Under the multiple trends in the industry regarding on-chain liquidity supply, maturity of on-chain token market value management, and the prevalence of small and medium-sized projects, and under the influence of comprehensive conditions such as the increasingly blurred transaction scenarios for user transactions, we will eventually see that user behavior will become: more transaction behaviors and interactive behaviors will return to native on-chain transaction exchanges, or transaction behaviors with DEX and Web3-style interactions as the main idea.

Compared with the current hot spots of background facilities in various chains, TON itself is an ecosystem with a more blurred boundary between DEX and CEX. Its Web2 interaction method first blurs the transaction categories, and the TON wallet on Telegram further lowers the leapfrog entry threshold of Web3 native transactions to Web2, which means simpler and more convenient on-chain native transactions, or it may surpass the transaction convenience currently achieved on Solana.

We can imagine that in the Solana environment, excellent DEXs will be able to achieve a surge in trading volume in a short period of time. For example, Dune data shows that the total transaction volume of Jupiter, a DEX aggregator in the Solana ecosystem, is close to US$334 billion, and it took Uniswap several times as long as Jupiter to reach US$10 billion.

In addition, the token price of Raydium, the most active DEX on Solana, has performed exceptionally recently. Even when BTC, ETH, and most altcoins have pulled back, the coin price has still maintained an upward trend. This fully demonstrates the stability advantages that DEX and Defi itself can have in the rise and fall of coin prices.

For TON, the infrastructure and development ideas are already in place for such a development path, and all it needs is a spark.

The growth history of public chains

TON has been very impressive at the beginning of this cycle. However, with the unclear cycle rotation today, it is difficult for TON to have the same time advantage and external potential as Ethereum and Solana. Seeking stability, maintaining the improvement of infrastructure, and waiting for opportunities to explode at any time seem to be the main proposition of TON, just like TON has been quietly preparing for a year for the 2024 cycle development. Tracing the growth of Ethereum and Solana, we can find a clear development idea for TON.

First of all, if the public chain’s economic model wants to enter a positive cycle, the core lies in continuous transactions, which represents all possible on-chain interactions.

On Ethereum and Solana, DEX and Defi activities are the mainstream, all brought about by users using DApps. Therefore, the development idea of bringing rich and diversified application types to the ecosystem is suitable for TON.

To sum up, both Ethereum and Solana have gone through these steps:

1. The number of TGE tokens of ecological projects is increasing rapidly

To put it simply, taking advantage of the good cycle, a large number of ecological projects will issue tokens and go online on DEX, or Defi can start business.

Ethereum entered this stage in 2018, and a complete wave was formed before Defi Summer, which included the emergence of Uniswap, various wallet applications, major EVM projects, DEX, and Defi successively issuing coins to stimulate business growth.

Solana emerged as a challenger to Ethereum during the Defi Summer. In the early days of the ecosystem, a large number of project TGEs were promoted by the foundation. Even though the chain was not perfect at that time and there were not many on-chain interactions, Solana's stimulation of the ecosystem continued, and the impact of the SBF incident did not completely stagnate.

At the beginning of this cycle, the amount of TON tokens in the ecosystem surged, and the popularity and growth of tokens were also impressive, which is very similar to the corresponding stages of Ethereum and Solana.

2. DeFi TVL Growth

After a large number of ecological project tokens TGE, the most direct impact is TVL. The native applications of the public chain are all related to token transactions, and the Defi category accounts for 90%. The listing of tokens on DEX and the opening of Defi business will lead to lock-up, so TVL data is the second inevitable data for the growth of the public chain.

Each token launched on a DEX must be added to a trading pool, which is often the first locked fund. If DeFi business interactions are carried out, such as lending and depositing, token staking will inevitably occur, which is the second basic action for TVL growth. This action will be stimulated by token airdrops, mining, and interest on deposits and loans, etc.

In the Defi Summer, Ethereum received a double stimulus from TGE and the surge in Defi tokens, with TVL increasing by about 100 times. In the later period, as the price increased, TVL soared again. Solana's growth in this part came from the ecological heat in 2023 and the airdrops and TGE of ecological projects in 2024.

In the past six months, TON's TVL rose to US$700 million and then began to pull back before breaking through US$800 million. This is the result of the decline in the ecological heat. At the same time, like Ethereum and Solana, after the first growth, it needs to return to growing the richness of ecological application projects. Ethereum and Solana both took another 2 years. How long will TON take?

3. Rich accumulation of DEX and DeFi

Ethereum and Solana completed the two years of rich accumulation, one was the cold winter of the bear market in 2018, and the other was the heat withdrawal after Defi Summer.

During this period, Uniswap V1 matured on Ethereum, MakerDAO and AAVE appeared, Cruve and Compound started, Sushiswap quickly followed up, and Farm mining projects appeared one after another. These projects have contributed to the maturity of DEX and Defi. By the second round of application development, DEX such as Uniswap had iterated at least two versions, and Defi such as AAVE had expanded from a single chain to almost all chains in the EVM system.

During Solana's accumulation process, DEXs such as Raydium and Jupiter also emerged, as well as a large number of Defis that stake SOL tokens. Therefore, the maturity of these applications is necessary. They represent more convenient and quicker use of services by users, and will also lock users' real money on the public chain.

TON is still early to mature, and currently the DEX function is relatively simple, and the number of Defi is small. The first step before waiting for the opportunity to explode is to increase the diversity and maturity of Defi.

TON’s first steps towards growth

In the past year, TON experienced the first growth in the number of ecological project tokens. A large number of tokens and small and medium-sized projects started to be listed, airdropped, and IEO, and then TVL grew rapidly. However, after the TVL and price dropped this time, the popularity decreased, and the ecological projects will also be affected. Trust needs to be rebuilt in the future. The more it is at this time, the more it is required to provide practical help for ecological diversification in this round, that is, it requires the maturity of DEX and Defi.

In reality, TON is also at this stage, which is also the first step of TON's growth.

What we can see is that the DEX of Ethereum and Solana have been very mature in the cycle, so what is the current situation of TON? How big is the difference and where is the difference?

TON’s performance and pressure-bearing capacity are the only ones among all current public chains that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Solana, but the DEX in the TON ecosystem is not a good match.

Telegram has built-in centralized trading pool to complete the recharge of stablecoins and TON, and then complete the exchange of TON and other tokens. The operation experience is consistent with the flash exchange of CEX. This function is the first function of Telegram's Wallet. The second function is to complete the interaction with the chain through the TON public chain wallet TONSpace. The experience is basically the same as using MetaMask on PC and mobile terminals. If you need to exchange tokens, STON and Dedust are more commonly used in the ecosystem, but the functions are basically similar to Uniswap V1.

This reflects TON's shortcomings in DEX. If Telegram Wallet takes on the CEX experience, TONSpace and DEX can interact on PC and mobile terminals, and Telegram's MiniApp and Bot will also be the trading front end of DEX or CEX functions. These designs meet the optimization of trading experience, but the native interaction part on the back-end chain is obviously backward.

If Solana and DEX on Ethereum can only provide simple AMM pools and the same exchange capabilities as Uniswap V1, the business richness of Defi on Ethereum and Solana will be reduced by at least 50%.

On Ethereum, most Defi services are extended services outside of financial scenarios for DEX functions. After Uniswap's initial iteration of the LP design in AMM, Defi on Ethereum had more new services or directly copied business models (based on liquidity mining, interest on deposits, upgraded to multiple liquidity pools, etc.). The same is true on Solana. Being an LP in DEX and an advanced liquidity provider on a dedicated liquidity platform is also one of the best options for asset holders today.

Therefore, from the perspective of project development, for DEX of high-speed blockchain, it is important to provide transaction liquidity, or modularize the transaction functions so that the advantage of liquidity becomes the reason for users to choose.

For transactions on TON, the front-end entrance must exist in Telegram in large numbers. DEX still needs to increase the sophistication of its business like Jupiter, Balancer, etc., to achieve a balance for all users, whether they are users, token providers, liquidity providers, or platform developers. Each role requires certain refined functions to cooperate.

Compared with DEXs such as Uniswap, Balancer, and Jupiter, the development of DEX on TON in the direction of supplementing DEX functions or Defi functions has become a potential necessity.

Currently, the known on-chain transaction middleware LayerPixel has launched PixelSwap, the first step to improve the DEX function based on the Balancer function. For DEX, airdrop is the fastest way to attract users. In the new round of actions, LayerPixel said that PixelSwap has started the airdrop plan, and the TGE time of the token PIX is determined to be Q4. In the face of the changes in the TON ecosystem today, perhaps PixelSwap can still be promoted steadily in the short term like Raydium.

LayerPixel is a DeFi solution designed for Telegram Mini App, which can achieve seamless integration of DeFi and Telegram Mini Apps. It is officially called TON's Layer 1.5. It can provide a modular combination of functions including wallets, DEX (multiple trading algorithms) services, and oracles. PixelWallet focuses on account abstraction, and Pixacle can provide fast and accurate price data for DApps and smart contracts in the ecosystem.

Pixelswap is a DEX based on weight pools, which has the same functions as Balancer and supports LBP's asset issuance method. Moreover, this type of Dutch auction issuance method is suitable for small and medium-sized projects with low FDV. The most common projects in the Telegram ecosystem are games/GameFi projects of this type, which is why it can make up for the Defi needs of the TON ecosystem. LBP's asset issuance method makes it easier for small and medium-sized projects to complete token issuance in the early stages and maintain a more reasonable transaction price.

Ordinary DEX is the mainstream during the period of rapid development and growth, but once it enters a downward trend, it is more difficult to make a market for the price of tokens in DEX compared to CEX. At this time, the more sophisticated the design, the more likely it is to achieve a win-win situation. For the B-side, it is more suitable for control, and for the C-side, it also makes the unofficial LP of DEX more like the mature LP in the centralized exchange, which can actively guarantee the yield of funds and isolate risks, as well as price stability.

At this point in time, when growth is experiencing a pullback, the emergence of this type of DEX is just right.

In addition to PixelSwap, the liquidity sharing between DEXs on TON and the structure that may form liquidity hedging between various Defis also need to be stable. After the project issues tokens, it is not possible to establish staking mining or multiple types of coin deposits and financial management in most Defis.

One of the reasons for the rapid increase in the amount of tokens locked on Solana is that lending projects, stake and restake projects are following the popular projects to add projects, such as Marginfi and Meteora on Solana. Almost all new tokens on Solana have taken the initiative to increase the token pool. Although most tokens have no financial returns, the platform has given incentives such as points or airdrop expectations, which also allows investors to deposit a large amount of assets to fight for airdrop expectations. TON will have the same effect as long as it follows the same method.

Last words

Before the Durov incident, we had very high expectations for TON, but the decline in the popularity of the ecosystem has caused pain for both ecological projects and investors. However, this is already a familiar rhythm in the industry. There are always investors who persist in projects for a surprisingly long time. No matter when the next opportunity to ignite comes in the future, whether it is a week or a few months, it is time left for builders to enrich the ecosystem.

At this stage of TON, users and projects will gradually realize the difference between new DEXs and new features, or one day they will find that new DEXs like PixelSwap have attracted a lot of TVL and established many staking pools. This will show that the ecosystem is ready for another growth, ready to cope with the growing trading volume, the continuous issuance of new projects, and the rapid increase of liquidity pools and liquidity mining.