Why I think TON ecosystem looks promising in 2023 (while everyone and their dog hates blockchain)

The mere word "blockchain" sounds cheesy for many people. "It was supposed to revolutionize everything but failed to do so, right? Isn't the crypto world full of scammers and criminals? Weren't NFTs and FTX the greatest scams of 2022? And hasn't that blockchain fad passed anyway? Why even bother looking that way in 2023?''

But I think there's much more to blockchain than this, and TON ecosystem in particular is especially promising. I think it might be a place where new successful projects will emerge and careers will be built. Why do I think so?

From hype to value

The Gartner hype cycle tells us that many technologies go through the "overhyped phase" and "disappointment phase" before they eventually become truly useful:

Even the internet had its "disappointment phase" in 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst. But that didn't stop it in the long run. And I think the odds are blockchain is going the same way. 

There was a peak of inflated expectations when the Bitcoin price was going through the roof. It seemed to many that to be successful you should just make "X but on a blockchain". "Hey look, we made a decentralized dating app! Find your love on blockchain!" (Store your private life in a public append-only database, what could possibly go wrong?)

Most such attempts crashed and burned. Blockchain didn't magically make everyone a billionaire or solve the world hunger problem. The Bitcoin price stopped going to the moon, NFT-trading was half-faked, and with all the scams and hacks many users lost their money. So lots of people were disappointed in all things blockchain.

But even though the haters gonna hate, things might be heading to the "plateau of productivity". To get there a technology needs to solve real problems that people have. Most of the blockchain hype for the past decade was about "getting rich quick and easy". It's a shiny promise, but it comes true for a few, it leads to scammy stuff and it doesn't really solve problems for most people. Now there are things that might do that. 

TON comes into play

I see several reasons why TON ecosystem might be a great example of emerging "productive blockchain":

1. The "new internet" concept

TON is more than just another cryptocurrency. TON Storage, TON Sites and TON Proxy form a decentralized alternative to the usual web, with "new torrents" and "new cloud storage" where anyone can get paid for storing someone else's files. Remember that Pied Piper project from the "Silicon Valley" TV series? Well, that comedy show had always more to it than laughs.    

Will this "new internet" become popular? To be honest, I have no idea, and no one does at the moment. It's impossible to accurately forecast the future of the most ambitious ideas. They can turn out to be a "new Google" (wildly successful) or "new Google Glass" (forgotten in a few years).

But at the very least it shows a possible "productive" direction for blockchain. "Cloud storage" doesn't sound as catchy as "become a billionaire overnight", so there's much less hype. But the cloud business solves a real problem. And that business has been growing for the whole past decade. And there are reasons some people might prefer decentralized TON Storage to more traditional forms of cloud storage. So there's less hype but more value, which is important for getting to the productivity plateau.

2. TON-Telegram interplay

TON isn't directly run by the Telegram team, but there is a high degree of interaction between those two projects. One can use TON to buy a Telegram username at the Fragment auction platform or send some TONs to a friend via the Telegram @wallet chatbot. And this interaction keeps growing.  

Telegram is a messenger with a gigantic audience. So if TON will successfully complement its features and will let Telegram users do what they want (e.g., pay for the premium content), it will solve real problems that people have and bring the blockchain world to a whole new audience.

3. Emphasis on the UX

The Achilles' heel of the blockchain world was always the lack of user-friendliness. One could do a lot of things with blockchain, but it required jumping through hoops and being tech-savvy. Why would "Average Joe" be interested in that?

Contrary to that, Telegram is all about the mass adoption and friendly UX. And TON inherits that approach. If all that's required to create a wallet (admittedly a custodial one) is to use a nice chatbot in a familiar messenger, that lowers the entry barrier significantly. And if the non-custodial wallet app looks slick, it helps to get the mass appeal.

Of course, it's impossible to accurately predict the future. But for the reasons listed above I think we might see a whole wave of TON / blockchain success stories in the foreseeable future. 

You might ride that wave

While regular users just passively watch events unfold, developers and entrepreneurs have the option to actively participate in TON ecosystem, building new things on top of the TON itself.

Not only does TON let you make third-party apps (as other blockchains do), it encourages that. For instance, a Hack-a-TONx with Dorahacks will be held on Jan. 30 through March 31, 2023. With a prize pool of $180,000, it's sure to attract attention of some developers and probably lead to more successful TON-based projects. If I was a developer of blockchain-related projects, I would surely want to participate in that.

I'm more of a writer than a developer, so instead of the hackathon itself I decided to participate in writing blog posts about it. And that's how this post came to life. But that doesn't mean I praise TON only because of that writing initiative: it just made me want to write down thoughts that were already in my head.

By the way, who am I to make bold claims about the future of tech? A guy who writes about tech on a regular basis since 2010 and uses Telegram heavily since the day it was launched in 2013. I also happen to know some of the people behind the TON ecosystem. So I have some knowledge, but I might be wrong. Don't take my word for granted, make up your own mind. And if your conclusions differ from mine, let's meet here in a year or two and see who was right. You can always write me in Telegram: my username is @expectfun.