TON Developer Retreat Recap: Exploring the Vast Possibilities of TON and Telegram
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TON Developer Retreat Recap: Exploring the Vast Possibilities of TON and Telegram
The vision of TON is no longer just a mere idea, but an increasingly tangible and boundary-expanding ecosystem force.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Vivi, TON Foundation
Dear TON crypto enthusiasts, we have just concluded an exciting TON Shanghai Developer Closed-Door Meeting. This event was hosted by the TON Foundation and 518 Salon, with co-organization from TownSquare Labs, Kenetic, 3WW3 Global South Web3 Research Institute, and Tweetfi. During this vibrant developer gathering, participants engaged in deep discussions and knowledge sharing on the cutting-edge developments and technologies within the TON ecosystem.
Over the course of a half-day session, several prominent guests from the TON ecosystem delivered keynote speeches.
TON Ecosystem Development
Vivi from the TON Foundation opened the event with her keynote address. She highlighted that TON’s native integration with Telegram significantly reduces both user learning curves and project development cycles. Users can seamlessly access mini-apps and games within the TON ecosystem using their Telegram Wallet, while projects can reach users directly through intuitive interfaces. Telegram provides high-quality organic traffic, and with cryptocurrency incentives, applications can achieve viral growth and rapid user base expansion.
Vivi noted that the TON blockchain is now entering an accelerated phase of development, with increasing numbers of projects emerging across DApps, gaming, social, and AI sectors. International investors such as Pantera and Animoca have joined the ecosystem, alongside hundreds of other projects and investment firms involved in TON.
Last month, TON introduced native USDT stablecoin support, achieving $300 million in circulation within just one month. Meanwhile, TON's TVL doubled in the same period, surpassing $300 million. Currently, TON sees 500k daily active wallets and nearly 4M monthly active users—a scale unmatched by most other blockchain networks.
Recently, Notcoin, a project within the ecosystem, not only listed on multiple CEXs but also amassed 35M active users within months. Similarly, the game Catizen has reached 10M users. Over the past six months, quality communities like TownSquare Labs, TON xFans, and TonVerse have deepened their engagement with the TON ecosystem, bringing vitality and cohesion. These achievements underscore the immense potential of the TON & Telegram ecosystem.
TownSquare Labs: Building a Uniswap-like AMM on TON
Next, Maxwell delivered a talk titled “Build Uniswap-like AMM on TON from scratch.” As the founder of TownSquare Labs, which focuses on technical development and infrastructure for TON, Maxwell shared insights into Ordrswap—a DeFi protocol designed from first principles based on TON’s contract model. He compared its architecture and interaction patterns to those of Uniswap.
Uniswap uses a centralized account structure where all user asset states are managed within a few core contracts. In contrast, Ordrswap adopts a fully decentralized account model—each user maintains their own independent contract for asset state, leading to O(3N) contract growth. While Uniswap interactions are atomic, Ordrswap requires asynchronous multi-step transactions. This decentralized design introduces challenges around atomicity and composability, making consistency handling during intermediate states a key focus and difficulty in development. Maxwell emphasized that ensuring transaction fairness and consistency must be addressed at the protocol level in such a fully asynchronous environment.
Maxwell pointed out that traditional programming languages face limitations when building highly asynchronous and concurrent systems like Ordrswap. He advocates for TLA+, a formal specification language developed by Turing Award winner Leslie Lamport, which is widely used in mission-critical domains such as cloud services and hardware design. TLA+ excels at modeling concurrency, synchronization, and uncertainty, enabling higher-level system reasoning than languages like FunC or Tact. According to Maxwell, best practice involves writing formal specifications in TLA+ before implementing business logic, helping manage complexity and ensure correctness and consistency. He believes the industry should place greater emphasis on formal methods like TLA+ in crypto protocol design.
TownSquare Labs is pioneering an experimental development workflow on TON: using TLA+ specs for early formal verification, followed by actual code implementation. Maxwell described this as a “community-driven from day one” initiative. The proposal marks the beginning of a transparent, open, and collaborative process—both technical and non-technical contributors are welcome to join this “Toy Dex” journey, aiming to evolve it into a secure, high-quality, and impactful DeFi protocol.
Kenetic Capital: Thoughts on TON Layer 2 Architecture
Then, Liang, co-founder of TON xFans and Chief Researcher at Kenetic Capital, summarized current blockchain scalability solutions, including L1 and L2 approaches. Common L1 scaling techniques include sharding, while L2 solutions encompass state channels, sidechains/subnets, and Rollups (Optimistic and ZK-Rollups). Each approach involves trade-offs among scalability, security, and decentralization.
Liang explained that L2 architectures are equally applicable to TON, offering reduced gas fees for developers and users, improved throughput and performance, and preventing individual applications from slowing down the entire chain. Most importantly, L2 solutions foster ecosystem growth by enabling seamless migration of Ethereum-based applications and lowering the learning curve for developers.
Liang also developed a TRC404-like protocol similar to Pandora, which will be deployed on Atlas Protocol—an L2 scaling solution for TON backed by Kenetic Capital.
3WW3: The Huge Opportunity of Global South X TON & TG
Finally, Zuo Luo (zoroo.ton), co-founder of 3WW3 Global South Web3 Research Institute, shared that the institute focuses on researching crypto ecosystems in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—regions home to 7 billion people and representing a massive latent user base for cryptocurrency. With high internet and smartphone penetration but underdeveloped financial services, these regions present ideal conditions for crypto adoption. Chinese entrepreneurs, who possess strong expertise in internet industries, are well-positioned to combine their strengths with opportunities in these emerging markets.
Zuo Luo outlined four key synergies between the Global South crypto market and Telegram:
1. Telegram already has a large user base from African, Asian, and Latin American countries, providing an excellent platform for aggregating and onboarding these users into Web3;
2. Telegram can serve as a direct channel for projects to bypass traditional centralized exchanges and achieve mass user growth and true mass adoption;
3. The combination of Telegram and the Global South offers Web3 access to a vast and diverse user population, overcoming the common challenge of homogenous user bases and creating space for innovative new use cases beyond technology and finance;
4. Products inspired by UBI (Universal Basic Income)-like models offer valuable lessons for Web3 projects on Telegram—they demonstrate strong virality and long-term user retention.
3WW3 has incubated Yescoin, which rapidly gained nearly 10 million users across over 200 countries and regions through innovative product design and community operations—all within Telegram. This demonstrates Telegram’s enormous potential in onboarding users from emerging markets in the Global South into Web3.
This conference brought together numerous developers, practitioners, and investors from the Web3 space, and the enthusiasm far exceeded expectations. TON has become an undeniable gravitational force in the Web3 landscape—the packed auditorium and energetic atmosphere reflected the vibrant momentum TON brings to the crypto world. TON’s vision is no longer just a theoretical idea, but an increasingly tangible and expanding ecosystem.
Thank you to all attendees. Let us stay true to our初心, carry forward this passion and shared vision, and build a brighter future for TON together!
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