Cryptocurrency is a relatively independent emerging technology that faces unique challenges on its path to mass adoption. While blockchain projects promise to disrupt various established tech industries, they need to establish thriving communities with active users who have shifted their activities from established platforms to the cryptocurrency space. This is one of the most daunting challenges for blockchain projects as established technologies are already functioning well. Moreover, there are currently thousands of blockchain projects that are often similar to each other and compete for the same attention and users. The majority of these projects are essentially “technological ideas attempting to build communities from scratch.”
Telegram, as a leading cryptocurrency communication platform, is making strides towards reaching one billion active users. With its versatility, security, and speed, Telegram has become the preferred platform for cryptocurrency users. It enables seamless communication between individuals and teams. For the industry, Telegram plays a crucial role in mass community building, providing projects with tools for audience interaction, information dissemination, and fostering a sense of belonging. It may be one of the best tools for cryptocurrency projects to build communities.
Telegram’s vast user base and its open API offer an unparalleled opportunity for cryptocurrency projects to integrate their products into an existing, vibrant community that already has a large user base of cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Recognizing this potential, TON stands out for its strategic alignment with Telegram. However, there are indications that other blockchain ecosystems will also be further integrated into Telegram.
Telegram’s Rapid Development
Since being announced as Telegram’s “official Web3 infrastructure” at the TOKEN2049 Singapore event in September 2023, TON has gained widespread attention and demonstrated remarkable performance in the cryptocurrency market. During the event, Telegram and the TON Foundation announced TON Space, a new self-hosted wallet that is directly integrated into the official Telegram wallet and included in the settings and attachments menu for all non-US users.
TON Space is a game-changing product. While some may view it as simply Telegram adding a self-hosted wallet, the broader perspective is that Telegram has effectively become a self-hosted wallet with nearly one billion users, seamlessly connecting users with numerous cryptocurrency applications within the platform and allowing communication between individuals or groups without leaving the platform. No other wallet can provide such a user experience. Most wallets lack direct application integration or social features, requiring users to go through cumbersome login processes between different browser-based applications, severely limiting usability. Telegram’s all-in-one integrated experience is crucial for mass adoption. Imagine if Instagram or X required you to log into a separate browser application just to send messages or leave comments on a friend’s post, or if you had to use different browser applications to attach files from your cloud storage to an email.
The renewed collaboration between Telegram and TON has attracted the attention of prominent venture capital firms, with Pantera Capital making its largest investment in TON to date, and other companies expressing recent interest. Unlike most blockchain projects that struggle to build new communities, TON’s deep integration with Telegram positions it as “a community integrating blockchain” as highlighted in Pantera’s investment letter, stating that “this will be much easier.”
TON: The Spotify of Cryptocurrency
TON’s recent integration within Telegram reminds me of the significant moment in the music streaming industry when Spotify partnered and integrated with Facebook in 2011. The integration between Spotify and Facebook allowed users to directly share their listening habits and playlists on the massive social media platform, greatly enhancing Spotify’s visibility and usage. Within just four days, Spotify gained one million new users associated with Facebook. Within six weeks, Spotify’s Facebook-associated users shared over 1.5 billion listening activities through Facebook’s Open Graph, which allowed developers to integrate their applications into social media platforms. The rest is history.
Similarly, TON’s integration with Telegram enables TON developers to integrate their applications into Telegram’s vast social network, making it easier for users to discover and use TON’s applications and services. Just as Spotify leveraged Facebook’s social graph to build a community around music sharing, TON leverages Telegram to build a community around value transfer.
Since Telegram’s recognition of TON, TON has experienced steady growth. Recently, the total value locked (TVL) in TON smart contracts exceeded $1 billion, growing by two orders of magnitude since before the activity.
TON’s daily active wallet count continues to reach new highs.
TON’s token holders and trading volume show strong upward trends.
While there are limitations to reasoning by analogy, there are striking similarities between Facebook and Spotify, and Telegram and TON. In the third quarter of 2011, when Facebook integrated Spotify into its platform, Facebook had approximately 800 million users, while Spotify had two million paid subscribers. Less than a year later, Spotify’s paid subscribers grew to over four million. Similarly, when Telegram integrated TON in the third quarter of 2023, Telegram had approximately 800 million users, while TON had around 100,000 monthly active wallets. Less than a year later, TON’s monthly active wallets grew to approximately 5.5 million.
Although TON’s user growth is on a different scale than Spotify’s, it is important to note that directly comparing Spotify’s subscription users from a decade ago to the current active TON wallets is inaccurate. What matters is that the adoption of new technology has seen significant growth after integration into a massive social network.
Considering that TON has only touched a small portion of Telegram’s user base so far, it is reasonable to expect its growth to continue as the technology improves and use cases expand.
Beyond TON: Cryptocurrencies on Telegram
While Telegram has officially recognized and offered exclusive benefits to TON on its platform, they are likely to remain separate entities due to legal considerations. This is a positive situation for other blockchain projects as Telegram maintains its free and open API for developers, promoting healthy competition and innovation.
In discussing TON and Telegram, it is important to acknowledge the integration of other ecosystems into Telegram. NEAR, in particular, may be the second-most integrated chain with Telegram, quietly taking action to establish a strong presence on the platform.
The most notable example is NEAR’s self-hosted HERE wallet and its lightweight Telegram implementation, HOT wallet, launched in early February. HOT wallet focuses on user engagement and streamlining the process of accessing the NEAR ecosystem through Telegram as a response to NEAR’s integration with the Telegram TON wallet.
Creating a new NEAR account using HOT wallet is as simple as opening the Telegram app, tapping the screen a few times to generate a readable NEAR address, automatically assigned to your Telegram username (e.g., blockhiro.tg).
To increase user engagement, HOT wallet adopts the gamification strategy of the popular Notcoin app on TON, which launched a month ago and attracted millions of users in its first week. Like Notcoin, HOT wallet allows users to mine its native token directly within the application through an engaging game that combines social features, tasks, and upgrades.
Within 10 days of its launch, over one million Telegram users created NEAR accounts on HOT wallet. Since its launch, it has consistently ranked first on DappRadar.
In the first quarter, HOT wallet had an average of around 370,000 daily active users, accounting for nearly 30% of NEAR’s daily active addresses. By the second quarter, the average daily active users had increased to around 500,000.
NEAR’s success on Telegram raises the question: Will TON continue to be the *sole* Web3 infrastructure on Telegram, or will it become one of the Web3 infrastructures? While TON has garnered attention, NEAR and other potential blockchain projects should not be overlooked. In the coming months and years, I will closely monitor the dynamics of other blockchain ecosystems.
tApps (Cryptocurrency Apps on Telegram)
Recent improvements in user experience (UX) in cryptocurrency apps on Telegram, referred to as “tApps,” have paved the way for the rise of more highly engaging mining games and other tApps. Notcoin and HOT wallet are just the beginning. Now, there are already many “mining+” tApps popular across multiple chains, attracting millions of players by offering simple and fun ways to play and earn. Here are some examples:
The user growth of these seemingly simple applications is extraordinary! For example, Hamster Kombat reached 100 million users in less than three months, putting it between ChatGPT and TikTok in terms of user acquisition speed. Rough estimates suggest that at least 10% of Telegram users tried this game within a few months of its launch, showcasing Telegram’s strong influence in Web3 user acquisition (user retention is another matter).
As the tApp category evolves, there are signs that they are expanding to multiple chains (e.g., MemeFi, Blum) and are no longer just imitations of Notcoin (e.g., AVACOIN, PixelTap). Some associate this category with meme coins because Notcoin’s memetic nature sparked the trend, but I disagree. In some ways, the current tApps and meme coins are similar in emphasizing convenience and fun, which contrasts with the serious technical jargon often seen in the crypto space. However, unlike meme coins, tApps offer full functionalities such as games and tasks, attracting actual usage from millions of potential crypto-ready users already on Telegram or willing to join Telegram.
While cryptocurrency applications integrated into Telegram had humble beginnings, now is the time for them to develop into more sophisticated platforms that can rival other mobile applications. New tApps can combine and integrate games, social features, and other engagement mechanisms to provide a richer user experience for cryptocurrency users and newcomers.
tApps spanning multiple blockchain ecosystems beyond TON will further solidify Telegram’s position in the broader crypto industry and strengthen existing connections between various crypto communities and Telegram. If these applications can not only leverage Telegram’s existing user base but also attract new users and developers, it could incentivize Telegram to provide more support for multiple chains. This could be achieved through broader API access, higher server-side rate limits, or extended availability in settings and menus.
In conclusion, to achieve mass adoption, we should consider Telegram in the broader context of digital assets, information security, and globalization, going beyond TON or any specific blockchain protocol. Telegram has become a global communication giant with widespread penetration in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Its vast user base, combined with innovative features at the forefront of information security and technology adoption, makes Telegram the best platform to bridge the gap between the crypto island and the mainland. Just as Facebook in the 2010s gave rise to Spotify and the music streaming industry, Telegram is the right product to accelerate blockchain adoption and normalize on-chain value transfer in the 2020s.
When discussing the barriers to mass cryptocurrency adoption, the most common argument I hear is user experience (UX). Many believe that poor user experience is the main obstacle to mass adoption. However, I no longer believe this is the case. The rapid growth of Telegram Wallet, Here Wallet, and tApps like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat demonstrates that the cryptocurrency user experience is already essentially ready for mainstream use. If it weren’t, these applications wouldn’t be able to attract millions of users within days. I believe the real bottleneck is the lack of integration between isolated blockchain projects and larger social networks. Imagine what would happen if these games were launched as standalone applications outside of Telegram.
Just as streaming technology revolutionized our consumption of audio and visual content by making it more accessible and convenient than ever before, the goal of blockchain projects should be to achieve the same effect for value transfer. This won’t happen in isolation. It will happen on platforms like Telegram, where blockchain applications can make value transfer between individuals, groups, and applications more accessible and convenient than elsewhere.
