Toncoin (TON) is again surging: what should investors expect in 2024?
The Toncoin ecosystem has been growing rapidly over the past year: Telegram has integrated the TON Wallet directly into the messenger interface, more than 550 decentralized applications (dApps) based on this blockchain have already been launched, and the project team has partnered with one of the world's leading cloud providers, Tencent Cloud, to develop and implement Web3 infrastructure.
What is Toncoin?
Toncoin, or The Open Network (TON), is a blockchain project created to unite all blockchains on the Internet. The TON blockchain is powered by the popular Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism and its own TON Virtual Machine (TVM), similar to an EVM.
TON was initially founded back in 2017 and was named Telegram Open Network. However, after legal proceedings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), project founder Pavel Durov changed the name and transferred management rights to an independent community of developers. The leading TON network was not officially launched until the summer of 2021.
In October 2023, the TON blockchain set a world record for the number of transactions processed per second with a staggering 104,715 TPS. However, this did not save the network from stalling, caused by an abnormal surge of TON-20 tokens (analogous to BRC-20 in the Bitcoin blockchain) that flooded TON along with many other blockchains.
Toncoin's performance
In September 2023, Toncoin was among the top ten largest cryptocurrencies by capitalization, surpassing Solana. However, Toncoin then lost ground and dropped to 14th place in the CoinMarketCap rankings, behind Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, and Chainlink. The latter two began rapidly rising in the ranking in October 2023, when another altcoin boom began.
And since September, Toncoin has not only lost ground: its capitalization has also decreased — by 14% from $8.84 to $7.71 billion, but it is still very high. Still, it should be noted that over the past year, Toncoin's capitalization has grown 2.7 times, so in general, the indicator shows positive dynamics, especially considering that at the end of 2022, the cryptocurrency TON was only on the 22nd line of the CMC ranking.
The price of the cryptocurrency TON has increased by 435% since listing in August 2021 but is trading 62% below its all-time high (ATH), which the exchange rate reached in November 2021 at $5.84. Over the year, TON's price barely rose due to corrections, which continued until August 2023, when it reached a local low of $1.18.
Outlook for 2024
Toncoin is still far behind in the development of the DeFi ecosystem: DeFi Llama's market analysis shows that Toncoin ranks 66th in terms of the number of assets locked in protocols (TVL), which is only $16.4 million, behind even little-known projects such as Mayachain, Conflux Network, and Radix.
Moreover, the TVL of the most liquid DEX protocols, DeDust and STON.fi, are $7.4 million and $5.9 million, respectively. For comparison, the TVL of decentralized exchange Balancer exceeds $965 million, and Uniswap — $4.3 billion.
However, it is essential to keep in mind that Toncoin's active DeFi ecosystem only started developing in 2023. DeFi Llama has not yet considered many new protocols, and the blockchain protocol itself was launched less than 2.5 years ago.
It should be noted that the Toncoin ecosystem has been growing at a rapid pace for the last 2 years: the TON blockchain has its own Web3 applications, such as:
- NFT-marketplace Fragment, where anonymous numbers can be purchased for TON tokens;
- DEX exchange STON.fi;
- Tonstarter, a blockchain-based token sale platform;
- Wallet integrated directly into Telegram;
- TON Bridge is an official bridge between blockchains and others.
All of these projects are still at an early stage and have limited functionality, but TON developers prefer to release applications and features only after thorough testing, rather than fixing all bugs after launch, jeopardizing their users and the products themselves.
TON is increasingly integrated with Telegram, which has 800 million monthly active users, according to DataReportal analytics data published in October 2023. In the same year, a wallet was integrated into the messenger app, and users will likely be able to make and accept payments in TON tokens.
Even now, users can send TON through their contacts in Telegram, and in the future, there may be stores that allow them to pay for purchases directly through the messenger. For example, services will enable you to order food delivery from stores and pay for it with TON tokens.
Toncoin also has its catalog of applications, similar to the App Store and Google Play, but unlike them, TON applications can be launched directly in the Telegram messenger. Thus, users can already access DeFi without leaving the Telegram app interface, which is a significant breakthrough in the crypto industry.
According to the project roadmap, the Ton team has planned many updates for 2024, which include:
- tools for issuing stablecoins on the Toncoin network,
- the addition of a bridge for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin,
- the TON browser,
- interfaces for smart contracts, and many other updates to the protocol itself.
Payment channels similar to Lightning Network for Bitcoin, allowing instant user transfers, are also scheduled to launch later this year.
The TON project continues to attract investment: In the third quarter, the team received funding from Animoca Brands, KuCoin Ventures, and MEXC, but the investment amount has not been disclosed. Founder Pavel Durov chose TON as the blockchain platform for Telegram, so we'll likely see more integrations and uses for its native tokens in the future.
