Evaluating The Open Network's Onboarding Thesis

Key Insights

• TON’s mission of onboarding 500 million users by 2028 is an ambitious goal. However, given how large Telegram’s addressable user base is relative to the rest of crypto, even 10% of that result would be a successful outcome for now.
• GameFi has already been a winner for TON’s ecosystem, and early conversion rates from top mini-apps provide some validity to the onboarding thesis.
• Telegram’s native wallets, payments platform, and mini-apps provide a powerful UI/UX advantage which may lead to TON becoming crypto’s preeminent mobile-first blockchain.
• The bull case for the adoption thesis is that Telegram and TON become crypto’s next killer app, bringing the massive adoption that Web3 is looking for.

Introduction

Onboarding crypto’s next wave of new entrants is becoming an increasingly relevant initiative. Web3 applications are nowhere close to their Web2 counterparts in user count. Blockchains often feel like an echo chamber, populated mostly by crypto-natives waiting for the rest of retail to move onchain. Investors also need incremental liquidity to sustain asset prices over time, meaning the sought after “supercycle” is unattainable without mass adoption events.