On February 28th, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, announced on his personal Telegram channel that starting next month, Telegram channel owners will be able to receive financial rewards from their work. He stated that currently, Telegram broadcast channels generate 1 trillion monthly views, but only 10% of those views are monetized through Telegram Ads, which is a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind. In March, the Telegram advertising platform will officially open to all advertisers from nearly a hundred new countries. The channel owners in these countries will begin to receive 50% of the revenue generated by Telegram from displaying ads on their channels. To ensure fast and secure ad payments and withdrawals, the TON blockchain will be specifically used, and ad sales and revenue sharing will be done through Toncoin.
Once the news broke, the TON token experienced a surge, with a peak increase of 38% and a highest price of $2.95. However, after 4 hours, the TON price experienced a significant drop of 25%, reaching a lowest price of $2.2, almost returning to the pre-surge level. What benefits will this change bring to the TON chain? Or is it just another short-term market stimulation?
Telegram, with 800 million users, has been eager to create the world’s largest public chain. Perhaps it is the lukewarm response over the years that has led Telegram founder Pavel Durov to repeatedly provide financial support to TON through various partnerships. So, how much impact will this cooperation have on TON?
In the key information revealed, Pavel Durov mentioned that Telegram broadcast channels generate 1 trillion monthly views, but only 10% of those views are monetized through Telegram Ads. With the introduction of the new advertising plan starting in March, channel owners will receive 50% of the ad revenue, which will be traded through Toncoin.
According to the PANews, Telegram’s official advertising provider, the current lowest CPM (Cost Per Mille) for Telegram is 2 euros. Based on the monthly views of 1 trillion and 10% ad views mentioned by Pavel Durov, the advertising impressions are approximately 1 billion. Calculating based on the lowest CPM, Telegram’s minimum monthly advertising revenue is about 200 million euros, and the total revenue for channel owners is at least 100 million euros per month.
Another report basically verifies this data. According to a report from Telega.io, the largest advertising trading market for Russian Telegram users, the Russian Telegram user community exceeded 50 million in 2021, and the annual advertising revenue in the Russian market reached 285 million USD. Calculating based on the current claim of 800 million Telegram users worldwide, the current global advertising revenue of Telegram is about 4.56 billion USD. The data suggests that approximately 2.28 billion USD can be transacted on the Toncoin chain.
However, it is worth noting that this income is not shared with TON token holders but transacted on the chain through Toncoin. Therefore, this news is significantly different from the dividend distribution proposed by Uniswap in the past. However, based on the current on-chain data of TON, even with this scale of on-chain transactions, it will still contribute to the overall activity of the chain.
Currently, Telega.io shows that there are 4,351 channel owners in the market who are verified providers of advertising positions, and there are only about 70,000 active advertisers. Therefore, in terms of user growth, the potential effect may not be significant. However, the assets deposited by Telegram through advertising fees using Toncoin have become a concern within the community.
To address concerns about Telegram holding too much Toncoin due to selling TON ads, which may have a negative impact on the decentralized ecosystem, Pavel Durov proposed a solution. To limit Telegram’s TON holdings to about 10% of the supply, they plan to sell the excess TON holdings to long-term investors at a price lower than the market price but with a lock-up and vesting plan of 1 to 4 years. This can lock up the freely circulating TON, stabilize the ecosystem, and reduce volatility. In addition, Telegram has set up a new email address for high-value investors (over $1 million) to express their interest.
When talking about TON, most people may think of Telegram’s official encryption project, TON Blockchain. However, the current TON is not directly controlled by Telegram as a public blockchain.
As early as 2019, Telegram attempted to launch the “Telegram Open Network” (TON) blockchain network, which was a multi-purpose blockchain platform aimed to provide higher speed and scalability than Bitcoin or Ethereum to support global payments and decentralized applications. However, this project was canceled after a series of legal battles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The TON project was originally driven by Telegram, but after reaching a settlement with the SEC, Telegram announced its withdrawal from the TON project. Subsequently, the community and other developer teams decided to continue the project and launched several branch projects based on TON, such as Free TON (later renamed Everscale) and TONcoin. These projects inherited TON’s technical vision and aimed to create a high-performance blockchain platform but no longer had direct contact with Telegram. The current TON public chain we are familiar with is called “The Open Network,” which grew after Telegram’s official encryption project failed. Although TON is not directly related to Telegram, Telegram’s official company and founder Pavel Durov have continued to support the project in recent years and emphasized the business connection between Telegram and TON.
In December 2022, Telegram announced that users could purchase anonymous numbers on the Fragment blockchain using Toncoin. Stimulated by the news, TON rose 30% from $1.84 to $2.4, with prices reaching as high as $2.8. Although Fragment’s trading volume exceeded 50 million USD in the following month, TON’s market performance did not remain strong but instead fell to a low of $0.96 as the crypto bear market continued.
In the official introduction of TON, it is stated that as of 2022, TON Blockchain remains one of the few truly scalable blockchain projects. Therefore, it is still the most advanced blockchain project that can execute millions or even tens of millions of real Turing-complete smart contract transactions per second.
In its official comparison with other public chains, TON Chain seems to outperform Ethereum and Solana in various aspects.
In 2023, Steve Yun, the President of the TON Foundation, revealed in a speech that their goal is to attract 30% of Telegram’s users to join TON by 2028. It is estimated that there will be 500 million active users on TON by 2028.
Although the goal is ambitious and backed by Telegram’s 800 million users, TON’s progress currently seems less than ideal. As of March 1st, 2024, there are approximately 1.56 million active wallets on the TON chain, with a peak daily active user of 32,439. In comparison, Ethereum has about 110 million wallets.
Overall, Telegram, with its Web3.0 DNA, is widely recognized in the industry. Especially with the growth of more Telegram bots and crypto tools on the platform. As one of the world’s largest social platforms, Telegram has the potential to become the king of the crypto industry’s scenes. However, in terms of the recent partnership with TON, the market performance may be the best feedback.
This article is authorized to be reprinted from PANews.
