Telegram has unveiled an ad platform, integrating The Open Network (TON) blockchain to offer content creators across more than 100 countries the opportunity to earn from ad revenues, sharing 50% of the total income generated. This initiative not only incentivizes quality content production but also boosts TON's utility by facilitating payments in Toncoin (TON). After the announcement, TON's market value rose by about 23%.
Telegram’s Plan to Share Ad Revenue
Telegram, the online messaging application, has announced the launch of its ad platform that promises to reshape the way content creators and advertisers engage with its massive audience. This new platform is built on The Open Network (TON) blockchain.
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, announced that starting in March, channel owners across more than 100 countries will be eligible to receive financial rewards for their content. Telegram plans to share 50% of the total advertising revenue generated from ads displayed within their channels. The decision to reward content creators directly aligns with Telegram's broader goal of incentivizing quality content production on its platform.
The announcement also pointed out that the Telegram Ad Platform will exclusively use the TON blockchain for payments. Payments to channel owners will be made in Toncoin (TON), the native cryptocurrency of the TON blockchain. This not only facilitates more seamless transactions, but it also encourages a self-sustaining ecosystem where creators can reinvest what they earn into promoting and improving their channels.
The announcement has very positively impacted the value of TON, which saw a significant increase in its price after the news. According to the market tracking website CoinMarketCap, TON’s price rose by about 23% in just the past 24 hours, causing it to trade at $2.68 at press time. As a result, TON’s market cap ended up climbing to $9,295,208,085.
Telegram's move to monetize content through ads comes at a time when the platform is experiencing impressive growth, with daily and monthly active user counts reaching massive figures. Data from Bankmycell indicates that Telegram has around 196 million daily active users, and more than 800 million monthly users.
Despite this, only a fraction of the platform's content is currently monetized through Telegram Ads, a privacy-focused advertising tool. With the introduction of the new ad platform, Telegram aims to tap into a much larger share of its potential advertising revenue, all while still maintaining its commitment to user privacy.
Animoca Invests in TON
The interest in the TON blockchain has certainly been increasing recently. In December last year, it was announced that Animoca Brands, a Web3 investment firm, is becoming the largest validator on The Open Network (TON) blockchain. This move was part of the company's strategy to leverage TON's infrastructure to deliver blockchain-based games to Telegram's massive user base of 800+ million people. While the exact value of Animoca's investment in TON was not disclosed, it is known that a portion of this investment has been allocated directly to Toncoin (TON), which is essential for their role as a validator on the network.
The firm committed to comprehensive market research to understand the potential of TON's ecosystem in fostering crypto and GameFi adoption. With a keen eye on innovation, Animoca plans to support TON Play, a project designed to facilitate the creation and launch of gaming applications on the TON blockchain, directly accessible through Telegram. This infrastructure not only paves the way for new games to be developed on TON but also allows for existing web-based games to be ported to the popular messaging application.
A notable feature of this initiative is the PlayDeck bot, accessible via Telegram's web and mobile applications, which allows users to explore a wide range of mobile games. Animoca is also exploring opportunities to port a selection of its gaming titles and applications to Telegram, potentially transforming the gaming experience for millions of users.
In addition to these developments, Animoca Brands Research has created the TON Analytics Dashboard, a tool that aggregates various metrics from TON's ecosystem, including blockchain, DNS, storage, and sites. This dashboard, alongside in-depth research reports, is expected to hugely contribute to integrating Web3 functionalities into the daily experiences of Telegram users.
Justin Hyun, TON Foundation's director of growth, strongly believes in the importance of Animoca's analytics platform and research when it comes to enriching the Telegram user experience with Web3 features.
TON Foundation Partners with Ledger
Additionally, the TON Foundation also announced in a December blog post that it partnered with Ledger, a leader in hardware wallet technology, to offer enhanced security for Toncoin and other TON tokens. This integration allows users to store their digital assets on Ledger's hardware wallets, known for their strong security features and user-friendly interface.
Anthony Tsivarev, the Director of Ecosystem Development at TON Foundation, shared his excitement about this partnership, stating that it is a crucial step towards ensuring the highest security standards for the TON community. By combining the secure and robust framework of Ledger devices with the dynamic TON ecosystem, this collaboration plans to provide users with the confidence to safely explore and invest in TON tokens.
What is TON?
The Open Network (TON) is a blockchain project originally started by the creators of Telegram. Aimed at facilitating rapid transactions and supporting a diverse array of decentralized applications (dApps), TON was envisioned as a groundbreaking platform in the blockchain space. However, due to legal challenges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Telegram was compelled to stop its involvement with the project in May of 2020.
Despite Telegram's departure, the TON project was revived by a dedicated community of developers and blockchain enthusiasts who transformed it into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). This move was driven by the collective ambition to reach the project's initial goals.
The revival led to the emergence of several community-driven networks under the TON banner, with FreeTon standing out as the most developed among them. FreeTon has evolved into a fully decentralized network, supporting a wide variety of dApps and complex smart contracts. A notable achievement of the project is the establishment of a bridge to the Ethereum network, facilitating the movement of TON Crystal (TON), its native token, within the Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem as wrapped TON (wTON). This feature allows TON's assets to seamlessly integrate and interact with a broader blockchain environment, improving its utility and accessibility.
