Exploring the TON Ecosystem: The Rise of Crypto Bots Led by Unibot and Investment Opportunities on the TON Blockchain
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Exploring the TON Ecosystem: The Rise of Crypto Bots Led by Unibot and Investment Opportunities on the TON Blockchain
How did TON regain popularity? What is the relationship between Unibot and the TON blockchain?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Maggie@Foresight Ventures
Since July this year, the surge in popularity of Unibot has sparked a wave of interest in Telegram "Crypto Bots." Combined with the launch of the Telegram Wallet at Token2049, the TON chain has returned to public attention. This article will guide you through the background of these developments and explore entrepreneurial and investment opportunities within the TON ecosystem.
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Distinguish between three products: Telegram, "Crypto Bots," and the TON blockchain.
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Understand how the TON chain regained momentum.
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Assess the current state of the TON ecosystem and identify potential entrepreneurial/investment opportunities.
TL;DR
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Telegram is an instant messaging platform with over 800 million active users and strong support for the TON chain. The application format of TON DApp Bots on Telegram (similar to WeChat mini-programs) holds significant potential.
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Technically, the TON chain was designed from the outset to handle Telegram's massive user base, with a primary design principle of high performance capable of supporting millions of TPS. Developing smart contracts on TON differs significantly from other blockchains and presents certain development challenges.
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In terms of ecosystem development, the TON chain is still in its early stages with substantial growth potential, particularly in large-scale payment applications where TON may hold a competitive advantage.
1. Conceptual Distinction: Telegram, "Crypto Bots" (e.g., Unibot), and the TON Chain
First, it’s essential to clearly differentiate these distinct products.
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Telegram
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Telegram ranks as the fourth-largest global instant messaging app, with over 800 million monthly active users worldwide—almost ubiquitous among crypto enthusiasts.
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Beyond messaging, Telegram has added features such as Stories, Wallet, and Mini-bots—akin to how WeChat offers Moments, WeChat Pay, and mini-programs beyond chat functionality.
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"Crypto Bots"
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Telegram bots are small applications running within Telegram, similar to WeChat mini-programs. The term "crypto bots" refers to crypto DApps like Uniswap being implemented as Telegram bots, enabling convenient usage directly within Telegram.
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TON Chain
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The TON chain is a high-performance public blockchain initiated in 2018.
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The TON wallet has a top-level entry point called “Wallet” within Telegram, connecting TON and BTC, and displaying USDT balances on Tron.
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Inside the Telegram wallet, TON Space is a non-custodial wallet that only connects to the TON chain backend.
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Telegram hosts an Apps Center featuring Web3 DApps—functionally equivalent to WeChat mini-programs—where most apps are currently built on the TON chain. These may eventually migrate into Wallet/TON Space.
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By now, you might already be wondering: What is the relationship between Unibot and the TON chain?
The answer is: There is none. Crypto bots like Unibot are simply bots operating within Telegram (analogous to “WeChat mini-programs”). Unibot allows users to swap tokens directly within Telegram, but its backend connects to the Ethereum-based Uniswap protocol—not the TON chain. Therefore, Unibot has no connection to the TON chain.
2. Evolution of the TON Chain
History of TON's Development
In summary, the evolution of the TON chain can be divided into three phases:
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Pre-2021: Legal action, abandonment, and project stagnation.
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In 2018, the Telegram team began exploring blockchain solutions suitable for integration with Telegram, leading to the design of the TON blockchain.
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In Q1 2020, Telegram was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), fined $18.5 million, and required to return $1.2 billion to investors. Telegram subsequently abandoned the TON project and halted development.
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2021–2022: Relisting and rollout of "Side Features" and infrastructure, including cross-chain bridges, storage services, and DNS.
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In 2021, a small open-source developer team named NewTON revived development of the TON blockchain. NewTON later rebranded itself as the TON Foundation.
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In Q4 2021, the TON chain launched its own decentralized exchange.
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Between 2021 and 2022, key side features and infrastructure such as TON DNS, TON Storage, and cross-chain bridges were developed. Note: “Side Feature” is not an official term but used here to describe functionalities beyond core blockchain operations.
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2023: The rise of Telegram bots like Unibot and Bananagun, along with the integration of the TON wallet into Telegram, led to renewed recognition of TON’s value. The token price surged from $1.2 to $2.2 within two months, pushing TON into the top 10 by market cap.
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Prior to Token2049 in August, many questioned the relationship between the TON Foundation and Telegram. This changed when Telegram officially launched its cryptocurrency wallet during the Token2049 event in Singapore. Built on the Open Network (TON) blockchain, the wallet became available to Telegram’s 800 million global users. Following the integration of the TON wallet into Telegram, Toncoin’s price skyrocketed, entering the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
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The TON wallet has a primary access point within Telegram, comparable to WeChat Pay.
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DApps on the TON chain gain greater visibility within Telegram and benefit from higher asset security due to integration with non-custodial wallets.
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3. TON Chain Technology
From inception, the TON chain was designed to accommodate Telegram’s vast user base, making high performance its foremost design goal.
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High Performance: Supports up to one million TPS (with sharding enabled). To achieve high throughput, TON made specific technical choices regarding chain architecture and consensus mechanisms.
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Chain Structure: Multi-chain architecture with infinite sharding. TON consists of one masterchain capable of supporting up to 2^32 workchains, each of which can further subdivide into up to 2^60 shards. Once full sharding is activated, TON claims the capacity to support up to one million TPS across all shards.
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Consensus Algorithm: Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Validators are selected via staking and assigned to the masterchain or various shard chains. Within each epoch, validators run a BFT-style consensus algorithm to finalize blocks. Many high-performance blockchains adopt PoS combined with BFT. TON’s consensus is a variant of BFT—deterministic and efficient—but limited in scalability due to validator set size constraints. TON uses deterministic pseudo-random grouping to assign validators to different chains.
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Inter-shard Message Routing: Hypercube Instant Routing reduces inter-shard communication latency. TON employs a tightly coupled multi-chain model. The global chain (by default, the masterchain) can send messages directly to any account. Messages from other chains must be routed via shared chains based on network conditions. The entire shard network forms a hypercube topology, where message hops scale logarithmically: hop = log₁₆(N). Thus, only four routing nodes are needed to support a million-shard network (higher dimensions reduce hops further).
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Asynchronous Smart Contract Calls: Enable parallel transaction execution. Asynchronous calls facilitate parallel processing but sacrifice atomicity compared to synchronous models like EVM. If you make three sequential contract calls and only the last fails, rolling back prior changes may require manual intervention.
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Smart Contract Virtual Machine: TVM.
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TVM is a non-EVM virtual machine. Developing smart contracts on TON requires using FunC or TACT languages, meaning EVM-based projects cannot be easily ported to TON.
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Smart contract calls on TON are asynchronous, requiring developers to adapt accordingly.
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Side Features: Additional capabilities beyond core blockchain functions.
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TON Storage: A decentralized file storage system for user data.
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TON DNS: Assigns human-readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services, and nodes.
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TON Pay: Enables micro-payment channels for instant off-chain transactions.
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TON Proxy: An anonymizing network proxy service that hides TON node IP addresses to protect user privacy.
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Technical Challenges to Address
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Accelerate development of Side Features. Core functionalities are largely complete, but some remain inactive. Progress on Side Features has been slow, limiting adoption.
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Speed up proposal processing and improve documentation. The TON Foundation is actively working to address the lack of comprehensive documentation and reduce barriers for developers.
4. TON Chain Ecosystem
The TON chain hosts various DApps across DeFi, GameFi, and other categories. However, DefiLlama reports a TVL of only $10 million (as of October 7, 2023). How does this compare?
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Solana: Market cap $8.0B (rank #9), TVL $328.4M.
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TON: Market cap $7.6B (rank #10), TVL $10.93M.
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TRON: Market cap $7.4B (rank #11), TVL $5.57B.
Clearly, as of October 7, 2023, TON boasts a $7.6B market cap ranking in the top 10, yet its TVL lags far behind Solana and TRON. This indicates the TON ecosystem is still in its infancy, offering substantial untapped potential.
From a technical standpoint, fostering vibrant ecosystem growth requires lowering DApp development barriers and expanding infrastructure.
Lowering DApp Development Barriers
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Improved documentation, more development tools, and better developer education are needed. TON primarily uses the FunC language for smart contracts, preventing direct migration of Solidity-based contracts. FunC is complex and has few experienced developers. While TON introduced TACT to simplify development—compiling down to FunC—it still carries a learning curve. Enhanced resources are crucial.
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More contract templates are required. Currently, there are few smart contract templates on TON. Existing token contracts are well-designed but difficult to modify.
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Better debugging tools and reduced audit complexity. After writing in TACT, developers often need to inspect or even manually edit the generated FunC code because they’re unsure if compilation preserved correctness. Improved tooling should allow debugging at the TACT level without touching FunC. Additionally, auditing remains challenging due to limited expertise in TACT/FunC among most audit firms.
Infrastructure Expansion
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Expand cross-chain bridge support. The official bridge supports TON/ETH and TON/BSC. Other bridges support Polygon and smaller-cap chains.
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Introduce Oracle services. Oracles are critical for DeFi, especially lending protocols. While none are live on mainnet yet, reportedly some are already operational on testnet.
5. Outlook for the TON Ecosystem
Comparing TON-based crypto bots with non-TON bots highlights TON’s significant advantage within Telegram.
Given this context, what entrepreneurial and investment opportunities exist within the TON ecosystem?
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Large-scale payments represent TON’s strongest opportunity area with vast potential. Unlike ecosystems focused purely on Web3, TON benefits from Telegram’s massive entry point, enabling real-world integrations akin to WeChat Pay’s suite of services—peer-to-peer transfers, lifestyle payments, wealth management, etc. This gives TON a unique edge and significant room for growth.
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Web3 Infrastructure. As noted, TON’s technical infrastructure (bridges, oracles, etc.) remains underdeveloped. While Ethereum’s infrastructure space is highly competitive, TON’s is still nascent and ripe for innovation.
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Gaming and social projects. Gaming and social Telegram bots could become the first breakout hits in the TON ecosystem.
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With Telegram as a powerful gateway, TON-based games can easily reach Telegram’s vast user base.
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Users don’t need to download apps or go through complex registration—they can play instantly within Telegram (“use-and-go”), drastically reducing friction.
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Leveraging Telegram’s “social + gaming” dynamic taps into users’ innate desire to compete—especially with friends—driving viral adoption.
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Small-scale TON game projects—particularly those designed to be addictive, quick to develop, and fast to launch—may become the earliest breakout successes.
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DeFi Projects. DeFi is undoubtedly a critical and potentially lucrative category, though likely to grow more slowly. This is partly due to missing infrastructure and the need for more native token launches on TON. Moreover, major DeFi activity remains concentrated on Ethereum, making rapid migration unlikely.
6. Conclusion
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Telegram, with over 800 million active users, strongly supports the TON chain. The format of TON DApp Bots on Telegram (similar to WeChat mini-programs) holds immense potential.
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Telegram bots offer zero-download, instant access, seamless UX, and social interaction—making them ideal for introducing Web2 users to DApps. The success of WeChat mini-programs provides strong precedent for similar traction on Telegram.
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TON’s advantages within Telegram include a top-level Wallet entry, secure non-custodial TON Space wallet, enhanced visibility in the Telegram Apps Center, and access to Telegram Ads for ecosystem projects.
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Technically, the TON chain was built from the ground up to serve Telegram’s massive user base, prioritizing high performance and scalability up to one million TPS. Developing contracts on TON differs significantly from other chains and poses notable development challenges.
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Building smart contracts on TON requires learning TACT and FunC languages and adapting to asynchronous contract calls.
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To foster robust ecosystem growth, TON must lower development barriers and expand its infrastructure.
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Ecosystem-wise, the TON chain remains in early development with enormous potential, particularly in large-scale payment applications where it holds a strategic advantage.
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Large-scale payments—including peer transfers, lifestyle services, and financial products within Telegram—represent TON’s most promising domain.
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Infrastructure on TON still has room for improvement.
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Gaming and social projects are likely to be the first breakout hits.
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DeFi projects may progress slowly, as most large-scale DeFi remains anchored on Ethereum and won’t shift quickly.
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