Key Points
- Pantera Capital announces new investment in TON, a Layer 1 network originally designed by Telegram.
- The aim is to introduce crypto to the masses, according to Pantera.
Pantera Capital just announced its investment in TON, a Layer 1 network originally designed by Telegram and continued by the open-source community, expressing confidence in the network’s ability to bring crypto to the masses.
In the official announcement, Pantera explains that TON has the ability to introduce crypto to the masses due to its extensive use within the Telegram network. Telegram has more than 900 monthly active users on its future-facing, fast, and secure messaging platform.
Using Telegram’s extensive user base and seamless UX, Pantera Capital notes that TON can become one of the largest crypto networks.
Mixing Web3 with large-scale distribution
Telegram is a platform that includes much of the crypto’s ethos, as noted in the official announcement, and it also has important distribution.
The platform outpaces Signal, its alternative, by ten times regarding monthly downloads. The notes reveal that Telegram managed to garner more than 36.7 million downloads only in January 2024.
More than that, Telegram is also the only major platform that is free of regulatory hurdles and it could seamlessly integrate Web3 for an open blockchain network.
According to Pantera Capital, Telegram is the best choice to bring crypto to the world due to its shared Web3 ethos and massive scale distribution.
The Open Network (TON) is a blockchain initiative developed by Telegram and used with the aim of leveraging the app’s vast user base in order to create a decentralized network capable of supporting various applications.
TON boasts a multi-component ecosystem, including TON Blockchain, TON Storage, TON DNS, and TON Services.
The TON Blockchain has been created for high performance and scalability, according to Pantera’s notes, and it processes transactions quickly due to its sharding mechanism. This ensures handling millions of transactions per second and efficient scaling without compromising speed and security.
In its notes, Pantera also shared a comparison between TON, Ethereum, and Solana, highlighting features like block time, time-to-finality, simple transaction performance, complex transaction performance, sharding support, and cross-shard communication. TON is the best choice, according to them.
Pantera Capital also mentions an easy onboarding process with Telegram, highlighting the use of Top.co Wallet, which allows users to connect to mini apps. Through it, people can buy, sell, and manage tokens and NFTs via one single interface.
More than 360 million users are engaging monthly in Telegram’s “mini apps” which include chatbots, mini-games, and more.
Pantera envisions the integration of crypto in these “mini apps” to boost the user base and experience significantly.
TON unlocks new earning ways via Fragment marketplace
TON is able to unlock various ways for the Telegram community to monetize, share, and grow their businesses, Pantera says. They also bring up Fragment, the decentralized marketplace on TON, which has facilitated more than $350 million in sales of custom usernames and virtual phone numbers.
Telegram is also moving forward by integrating revenue sharing with creators and channel owners via Fragment, rewarding creators, and fostering a close relationship between the platform and its users.
Tether (USDT) has recently announced the deployment of its stablecoin on the TON blockchain and in Telegram’s wallet. This move represented an important move for the crypto industry.
Also, a couple of days ago, TON shared its mass adoption story via X, revealing how they are getting noticed, the significant on-chain activity, monthly active users, and other important metrics that reached new ATHs.
