The State of The TON Ecosystem: July 2024

TON in data

Relevant TON Statistics:

Total Value Locked: $756.11m (up by over $200m since June)

Total Raised: $504m

TON Price: $6.65

TON Market Cap: $16.7528b

TON FDV: $34.013b

Among TON protocols, the following are the best five performers by rate of TVL change in the past month:

1. Tradoor
2. EVAA Protocol
3. STON.fi
4. DeDust
5. Hipo

And here are the ten worst performers:

1. DAOLama
2. Tonnel Network
3. TonsOfFriends
4. Tonstakers
5. Bridgers

TON Teleport BTC

Two weeks ago, the TON Foundation, the team behind TON, announced the launch of TON Teleport BTC, a trustless bridge that allows users to transfer Bitcoin to the TON blockchain trustless and securely.

This bridge enhances Bitcoin's utility by enabling its use for DeFi activities within the TON ecosystem. This has the potential to accelerate the growth of TON’s user base by bringing in Bitcoin holders, with the assurance of a trustless and transparent architecture.

TON Teleport BTC employs advanced protocols like Distributed Key Generation (DKG) and FROST to ensure that private keys are never created or held by a single party, making it highly resistant to private key compromises.

Hamster Kombat Launches Playground

Hamster Kombat, one of the foremost play-to-earn crypto games right now recently launched a new ‘Playground’ mode. The new mode is designed to enhance the gaming experience by allowing players to participate in various events and earn valuable keys, which can then be used to unlock rewards and progress further.

The developers have also hinted at more applications and features to be released under the Hamster FAM games umbrella, which will, of course, expand the ways players can earn and use keys.

Currently, the Bike Ride 3D game is available and needs to be installed from the mobile app store to be played. Within the game, there is the Hamster FAM event option that enables users to participate in the Hamster Race, compete against real players and earning valuable keys.

TON Blockchain and Animoca Brands’ Partnership

The partnership between TON Blockchain and the gaming and metaverse-focused firm, Animoca Brands is a significant development in the blockchain and web3 space. The highlight of the latest partnership is a $20 million initiative to support TON but the details are more exciting.

The $20 million MOCA Coin and Toincoin reserve is aimed at incentivizing developer and user adoption of the TON ecosystem through various joint incentives and programs. These include hackathons and accelerator programs to empower developers across the ecosystems. The aim is to boost $TON adoption to 1.6 billion users.

The partnership also includes the implementation of an identity and reputation-based consumer network across both ecosystems and a token swap agreement between MOCA Coin and Toncoin to incentivize ecosystem growth and user engagement.

Recall that last year, Animoca Brands invested in the TON Network and became its largest validator.

Binance Labs Invests in Pluto Studio

Binance Labs is the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance. It led the latest investment round for Pluto Studio, the GameFi publishing platform behind the popular Telegram-based web3 game Catizen.

The value of the investment is undisclosed but Pluto Studio had raised over $6 million in its two previous investment rounds.

Catizen was launched only in March and it has amassed immense popularity within a short while. In total, it has about 25 million players, including 1.5 million on-chain gamers (those who engage in blockchain activities) and over 500,000 paying users globally.

The funding from Binance Labs will be used to support the growth of Catizen and its game engine. Pluto Studio has also outlined plans to release more Telegram mini-games, with 18 more games ready for release in the coming months. Beyond gaming, Pluto Studio will also launch other entertainment and e-commerce projects with web3 elements.

The Open League S5 is On

On July 10, Season 5 of The Open League kicked off and is currently running until the second week in August. For the latest edition, the 27 (of 40) accepted participants jostle for $1.15 million in prizes across 4 leaderboards: App, DeFi, Token, and NFT.

Some of the new farms introduced in this gifth season include REGI/TON, NOT/TON, STON/TON, COFE/TON, RECA/TON, DEC/TON, and so on. Hence, participants have ample opportunities to maximize their gains through strategic farming.

As usual, The Open League ultimately aims at fostering growth and adoption within the TON ecosystem by providing various incentives for different levels of participants, from beginners to experienced web3 users.

Upcoming TON Conferences

Activities are gearing up ahead of The Open Summit, billed to hold between August 6-8, 2024. This is a TON summit powered by TON which will feature speakers such as Steve Yun of the TON Foundation, David Mak of Catizen, Daniel Cawrey of Tonkeeper, TM Lee of CoinGecko, Jack Booth of the TON Society, and so on.

The event will be held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center in Taiwan and will also be the TON Hackathon: Code Summer, where participants will compete for a share of a $500,000 prize pool.

Meanwhile, tickets for TON’s The Gateway Conference went on sale earlier in July and can be purchased through the Onton bot on Telegram. The ticket price is 50 TON, which currently costs about $332.

The Gateway Conference is an annual event for members of the TON community and the foremost TON blockchain event. This year’s event will take place between November 1 -2 at the Grand Hyatt Dubai Convention Centre, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Both events are expected to feature talks and panel discussions by various speakers, including founders and key contributors to major projects, with the major highlight being discussing the achievements and the future of the TON blockchain. Attendees will also get networking opportunities and witness the presentations of new and ambitious projects.