In 2020, the secure social messaging app and WhatsApp alternative, Telegram, abandoned its TON blockchain after facing legal battles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The TON community took it over and continued its development, independent of Telegram’s direct involvement. It’s since experienced explosive growth, becoming the first blockchain to onboard one million users in a day. 

According to the TON Foundation Ecosystem Lead Alena Shmalko, the arrest in August of Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov by French authorities, has further unified the community. DOGS, the largest memecoin by number of token holders, had its record-breaking launch on TON the day after the arrest. And then the Digital Resistance Open Letter, mobilized by the community, received millions of signatures within the first few days. Durov was released on bail and awaits trial over allegations that Telegram was used for criminal activity. 

Shmalko said in a recent interview that TON has had substantial spikes across all metrics including the number of active wallets. 

“We have a program called The Open League, which is the major incentive program for TON teams. In the last season that we held in October, we saw a 300 percent growth of unique active wallets of the apps in the league,” she said. “October wasn’t the month of large launches, so the apps that launched the token months ago are showing sustainable growth.”

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Much of the network’s traffic and user adoption coming into TON has been from socially oriented tap-to-earn games like Hamster Kombat. 

However, active wallet numbers in the past month show a decline from 9.2 million to 6.8 million. 

According to Azeem Khan, co-founder of Morph, a provider of blockchain layer2 tools, what TON understands better than most is that distribution is everything - especially in an industry that’s always focused on talking about the technology. 

“First time founders focus on product, second time founders focus on distribution, and third time founders focus on retention, which is the question at hand for TON,” Khan said. “Right now, one of the difficult things is so much of what creates stickiness is money, so wherever the money, airdrops and surging activity is, is where everyone goes.” 

While TON can utilize the distribution they have, they still face challenges. “So much of the focus being on the blockchain itself is always wrong,” Khan said. “It’s on the application being on top of the blockchain that’s sticky, not just about being able to farm money and leave, which is a question for the industry at large.” 

What Khan finds most fascinating about TON is that the whole industry functions on Telegram. It brings people together across many different ecosystems. “What’s yet to be seen now will simply be which of the users that they have access to end up staying because what gets built on top of the blockchain itself,” he added. 

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Builders can leverage Telegram Mini Apps to gain access to over 900 million Telegram users with a one-click app launch. “It’s very much a blue ocean,” Shmalko said. “We can see new use cases appearing every week or month. We’re focused on onboarding web2 users. People are building products for their web2 friends and families.”

Shmalko is responsible for the incentive and support programs aimed at startups operating in the ecosystem. She said retaining users is the goal after initial rewards have expired and that the company is focusing on consumer-facing applications. 

Going into next year, TON will be looking to expand in DeFi, payments and memecoins.

“We need more use cases for cross-border payments and remittances,” she said. “It’s all so simple inside Telegram, we just need to prepare the infrastructure, use cases, and localize them. It’s important to accommodate the specifics of each territory.” 

The company is also preparing a separate initiative aimed at furthering memecoins after the growth of DOGS and Notcoin. 

“We’re going to see more social games that are ready to onboard entire communities into crypto where we have competitions for communities, utilizing Telegram as a social layer and as a messenger,” Shmalko said. 

lead image: Some members of the TON team at Korea Blockchain Week. Alena Shmalko, third from the right.