Is TON poised to become the next SOL or ETH in the booming blockchain gaming ecosystem

Could TON be the next SOL or ETH?
There has been a lot of buzz lately about TON and Telegram, with many people believing that TON will be the next SOL or ETH. Blockworks Research has analyzed this and believes that TON’s potential for future growth may be lacking and could disappoint the masses.
Low user stickiness for Telegram
Telegram has global influence, and its substantial daily active users (DAUs) could potentially be directed to TON. By this measure, Telegram is one of the most widely used apps globally.
According to data provided by Telegram, it is one of the most popular apps worldwide, with a total of 900 million users, ranking it 8th among global apps.


However, when measured by DAU, Telegram’s user stickiness is overestimated.
The DAU/MAU ratio of various social apps in the image shows that although Telegram’s monthly active user (MAU) count is high, its DAU count is relatively low (ranging from 55 million to approximately 200 million, which is very low compared to competing apps), with a DAU/MAU ratio of only 15%.
In comparison, Facebook has a ratio of 69%, WeChat about 67%, Instagram 60%, TikTok (U.S. market only) 49%, and Twitter (X) 45%. This indicates that Telegram’s market penetration is low, and its potential for profitable users is lower than market expectations.
PANews note: DAU/MAU ratio can measure the stickiness of internet or app users


Incompatibility with EVM, limited use of programming languages
The TON ecosystem team will face challenges due to the lack of EVM compatibility and the FunC (native programming language of blockchain).
The TON Virtual Machine (TVM) is not compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) because TON adopts a completely different architecture (TON is asynchronous, while Ethereum is synchronous). As a result, the TON ecosystem does not support development in Ethereum’s Solidity programming language.
According to a 2023 developer survey report (with over 90,000 developers participating), Rust is the most favored language, with over 80% of developers hoping to use it again next year. 46.4% of developers expect to use Solidity.
On the other hand, TON supports three programming languages: Fift, FunC, and Tact. Currently, FunC is the most used language. Although FunC looks similar to C language, it is not well known or popular in general.
Limited market coverage
Much of the TON narrative growth is based on the belief that Telegram will become the next WeChat. However, WeChat is blocked from the U.S. market and only serves the Chinese market.
In contrast, the current app market is dominated by financially strong tech giants with a well-established network effect, while Telegram’s largest market is in the dispersed market of the Asia-Pacific region (excluding China and Eastern Europe), adding complexity to the distribution of startups using Telegram.
Below is the distribution of Telegram downloads for the entire year of 2022:
India: 104 million downloads.
Russia: 34 million downloads.
Indonesia: 27 million downloads.
United States: 26 million downloads.
Brazil: 21.94 million downloads.
Egypt: 14.85 million downloads.
Vietnam: 11.84 million downloads.
Mexico: 11.61 million downloads.
Ukraine: 10.76 million downloads.
Turkey: 9.79 million downloads.
Overvalued FDV
Despite these realities, TON still has enormous growth potential, and new investors have virtually no safety margin.
The image below shows that among all public chains, TON’s FDV is 8.6 times its network’s annualized DEX trading volume, ranking it first and at the highest level.


Furthermore, the FDV is 927 times its network’s annualized fees, ranking it high among all public chains.


This article was originally published in collaboration with PANews.