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Welcome to the Chain Stories podcast, the podcast that celebrates disruptors who defy convention. Here, we dive into the bold stories of trailblazers who turned audacious ideas into billion dollar ventures.

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welcome everyone to another ChainStories podcast. Today I have a very special guest directly from TON Foundation. I have Alena that joined us directly from Dubai. How are you doing today, Alena? Great, great Tony. Thank you very much for having me. I think you have a very interesting background and I would like to start by diving into this before we dive into your work in the day operations at TON. I know you started your career in working in diplomacy, and I'm very curious to hear about how did you start and how did you transition into the digital assets space and your day to day work now? Yeah, sure. This is a very interesting way to start a conversation with me because very few people know my background. So I never got to actually working in the industry, probably luckily, I would say luckily. But I did finish my both bachelor's and master's degree in diplomacy and international relations. My master's degree was mostly about like European studies, European governance, including both political and economic studies. But yeah, that was the original plan to become a diplomat, to probably work for some international organization. That was always a dream, but then something, something changed, something shifted. I always knew that I'm very keen on digital technologies in general. And even within my studies, when I probably started realizing this not something I will be doing in the future. I started focusing really much on everything that regarded digital new technologies like AI, blockchain, whatever. And every essay, every paperwork that I needed to do at uni that would be necessarily about some kind of interesting new technology. And especially in Italy, where I did my master's degree, it was a very open space for exploring, for doing research and development and just learning new things. So during my last two years at uni, everything was about blockchain for me. So I did a lot of studies from the academic standpoint, and then I finally joined the industry from the startup standpoint, cause I was involved in a number of startups and then even founded my own accelerator for early stage founders of Web3 startups. So, yeah, this is some kind of introduction. Fascinating. So at the time you're in uni and everyone's talking probably about blockchain. Maybe it was the peak of the bull market and you start diving into this. Yeah, exactly. And then there was this shift towards the bear market as well. And then, all those professors that were talking about blockchain at that time, they looked as really, stars to everyone, probably except for me. Cause, I knew that those things that they were saying were very basic and very evident and obvious, right? And they didn't know a lot of stuff. But still it was a good first introductory step probably for many people. But yeah, that was fun. And then I actually, my first like practical experience was a startup, at the intersection of real estate and tokenization. So we would trying to build a platform for investment in tokenized real estate in the US. Then we shifted to the Dubai market actually. I did a lot of research on the Dubai market, which actually helped me find an apartment here when we decided to move into Dubai. So that was very fun to find all those contacts that I had got back then. Probably more fintech, so not pure Web3 and crypto but still with some elements of crypto. And then there's accelerator that actually got me in touch with some people from TON as well, because they came to, help founders, choose their ecosystem and tell people more about TON. It was back in September of last year, 2023. Right after the announcement of this exclusive, partnership between TON and Telegram. So it was really the right moment to learn about TON, about the whole ecosystem of Telegram mini apps and how they can now operate on blockchain. And so this is how I met some people from the BD team of TON Foundation. And then I figured out that they needed a person who would, just curate projects in the ecosystem and they're responsible for different support programs and incentive programs that we launched from the foundation side. And then I'm luckily, now I say luckily, compared to what I was saying about uni, I joined the team and really enjoy my time there. And going back to that moment in uni, did you felt and clicked in your mind, this technology is going to completely change the world? I have to go on and pursue this as a career. Or it was maybe I'll do this and see where it goes. Totally. No, I wasn't really considering it as a serious career because everything was so confusing back then. I really didn't know what exactly I want to focus on. And actually when I joined TON, I finally felt that I'm really in the right place. I think that was the only time, like after uni, when I really felt it because I actually, I was explorig a lot. I'm a very open and enthusiastic person as such, I'm very curious, naturally curious. So I do a lot of things at the same time. I keep on exploring, keep on learning. And this becomes a problem at a certain point because you understand that you like a lot of things and you don't really know and understand what to focus on, what would give you the best result or the most joy just in general. And I was lucky enough to finally have found it after so many years of seeking. I definitely did know that like blockchain and crypto would change the way we live, just generally the world we live in. But I didn't really consider it as like properly direct career direction yet back then. Makes sense. I think it was something that you felt as you went along and you found the TON family. Going to the point when you started this accelerator, what was the main problem that founders were coming in and when joining this accelerator, was it funding? Was it not knowing what chain to build on? Was the tech stack and how did TON was able to solve this problem or be the right fit? So actually I was invited to join the team by my ex co founders, so it was originally the idea to resolve this entire set range of problems for early stage founders where they don't know where to get funding from, how to really test the hypothesis fast, just all those very basic problems for any like Web2 or Web3 founder. It's just all the same. The difference in Web3 is that, you can also pick an ecosystem, right? And expect some additional support from the ecosystem you want to build. And so I saw a lot of grant hunting, just those people who are applying to every single grant program they see. I didn't really like that from the very beginning. I was really surprised that people are so fast to change their direction and they're not really loyal to any ecosystem in particular. And in turn, we cherish it really much that people they stay, they stick and they make this very well weighted, well considered choice of building on TON because it's an entire different mindset. It's like completely different language, right? Completely different tech stack. And you need to make this decision seriously that, yes, I'm all in with TON. And now if you want to build a Telgram Mini app, since recently, you can do it only on TON if you want to build a Web3 app, but we can talk about it separately. So it's really a very important decision in your journey as a Web3 founder, right? And we were working with and we were all different chains, like probably only Solana was not there yet. But then when I already left the project to join the TON ecosystem, my ex co founders they actually launched a second bootcamp, second cohort with Solana only exclusively. Yeah, so we're not really focusing on any particular chain. And those people, they weren't really loyal, like none of them were loyal. They were just going where anyone waited for them when anyone expected them and was ready to provide some, first of all financial help. But it was really fun and it was, a very precious experience for me of spending 30 days without any weekend, without any rest. With all those 20 teams that joined our accelerator. We basically lived together in a hotel. We had those sessions online and offline. And I really immersed myself into the life of a founder. The conclusion I made for myself was that I would never ever become a founder of a startup myself. I think it was also a very important inclusion to draw for me. But yeah, I do think that we help those founders a lot in terms of connections, in terms of clarifying their vision. A lot of them made collaborations between themselves. A lot of them shifted their idea completely, like pivoted into something completely different. So it's really all about, connections and just repeating your idea multiple times to many different people, especially when you're early stage, getting a lot of feedback, just practicing like that was very important. And with all that knowledge and practical experience, I joined TON a couple of months after. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You mentioned in order to go to TON, it's a commitment. It's a different tech stack. It's a different set of applications. Diving into TON, why should I as a founder, as a builder, go into TON instead of Solana? I do know there's over almost a billion users on Ton and that's super exciting. What is what do you think, what makes you feel really excited to be like, okay I'm part of this much bigger ecosystem than maybe others. And Mr. Founder, you should come in and build here and commit yourself day and night to this. Yeah, TON obviously doesn't have 1 billion users yet, unfortunately, it's Telgram that almost has that one bill monthly active users. And those are just simple Web2 users yet. And indeed our aim is to onboard, all that large audience into Web3. I keep on repeating that and we do have some good results already, right? There's been this large trend for tap to earn, probably your followers, your audience heard about such apps as NotCoin or, Dogs or Blum, YesCoin, et cetera, Major as well. All those apps, those are very simple onboarding games where you basically needed to perform super easy actions like tapping on a coin, performing some simple social tasks like follow or tweet. And then those people were very progressively and gradually onboarded into crypto. They all received airdrops of course, from the project. And then some on chain tasks were being added, progressively to the app itself, to do the mini apps. And so that was really a large trend, that is now silent, which was very much expected. Nothing can live forever. We just need new trends to come. But what really helps TON stand out is obviously, the potential for mass adoption, because TON is the only chain that you can use if you want to build for Telegram users, you can build a Telegram mini app that would be a part of the interface of the messenger, right? It's just a separate app that you open directly from Telegram. You don't need to leave our favorite messenger anymore. You can do whatever you want inside. And so this concept of a super app, which is super popular in Asia, everyone knows WeChat and their success. So Pavel Durov is trying to do exactly that, but on Web3 rails, and they picked TON for obvious reasons, as an exclusive partner for the Web3 bots. Which means that developers, even though learning our languages is quite hard, especially if you were coding on Solidity or Rust before, they need to make this choice. They need to learn the languages and they need to come build the Telegram mini app and add some on chain functionality there if they want to tap into that potential for mass adoption, right? So there is no clear recipe, obviously, there is no clear set of steps that you need to do to onboard masses into your crypto app on Telegram. Well, there are some, and those tap to earn apps they helped us understand that, for example, you need a referral system, you need to make the sequence of actions in the app very simple. As simple as you can. So trying to leverage this social thought, social nature, which would then turn into SocialFi of Telegram. And so there is no successful recipe, a unique one. But we do have some best practices of those teams that have been building in the ecosystem for a while. So it's there, but still we are in the process of discovery of those new cases. And what is different from Solana, for example, which has shown enormous results in terms of trading volume, especially recently, after the launch of Trump and before that the concept of pump fun as such, tables turned really, because if you want to launch a meme coin, you'd probably want to do it on Solana now. So TON is not really about trading per se. It's more about consumer facing apps with different social features, utility apps, games, right? So something that is aimed at masses rather than a niche group of people that just wants to speculate to earn some money on trading. But there are some good meme pads on TON, by the way, with social features. If anyone wants to explore, I would really recommend going to for example, Blum or Hot Wallet. Or other apps as well, which have been doing a really great job. So I would say that TON is, for those who want to try to onboard a lot of people at once, right? Web2 people. And those teams, they need to think of really cool and useful and sustainable use cases, through which they want to bring those people into crypto and make them stay. It's much easier on Telegram because you don't need to think about the distribution because the audience is there. Of course you would need some marketing channels like Telegram ads. You will need to develop and grow your Telegram community, your Telegram chat. You can use some external marketing resources, of course, different channels. Those people are there that almost 1 billion people is there waiting to be on board into crypto. I think it's fascinating because you can experiment with different use cases. You can try to replicate something that already exists on other chains, which doesn't really work to be honest, but you can still try, but more creating something new, creating something that has not been tested yet. Yeah, absolutely. I actually experienced launching a meme coin on TON. It was so easy and we could just apply it on the chat in three clicks. And even the UX was so clear and intuitive that I just didn't understand why don't more people do this? Why did pump.fun became so popular when there's so many friction, so many hurdles that a user has to jump, like you can't even do it on mobile. And here on TON, I could simply just click three times and I launched like a meme coin, but I think that was fascinating. I'm still super bullish on the ecosystem and the ease of deploying. And for our listeners, I think everyone should really try and interact. Yeah. Do you remember the name of the app, by the way, through which you launched it? It was a meme pad, right? Yeah. I believe it was gas.pump. Yeah that was the very first meme pad on TON. They launched like, I think a month after the original pump fun. Yeah. Look, exactly. This is about the user experience. So you don't need to leave Telegram at all. You can just get an invite link from your friend or see some ad or see a post in your favorite telegram community. You can click on that sharing link and join, even the team. So there are a lot of SocialFi trading apps right now on TON and Telegram, where you can, for example, join a Cabal and trade together. So a lot of things really, but yeah, answering your question, like why do not so many people come yet? It's probably because we don't really have this trading culture on TON because once again, it's more about Web2 users and they don't care about memes. And they can try, and for example, I saw the stats a couple of days ago. Like 50 percent of those users that bought Trump through Moonshot were new users, right? 50%, which is a very great number, right? So a lot of newbies came, but now they're not active on the chain. They don't know what to do. There was just a very popular story. It was really, it was hype. But we need to onboard those people. Web2 users are not so excited about meme coins as those Solana traders. And there are a lot of them. And they just stay with Solana and it's fine. Like we just have our own path, we just have our own strategy. And going back to last year, when was this frenzy about tap to earn, was this something that your team was seeing coming at all or you guys are completely like, Whoa, this just happened. No, look, of course, like my colleagues knew and those who were in touch with the NotCoin team, of course, cause they also got some support from TON foundation as well. But I literally just joined the ecosystem. I joined last November. And Notcoin launched in December already. And the active mining phase started in January of last year. And when I met Sasha for the first time, the founder of Notcoin, and then multiple very cool games on TON further on, we were just talking about some serious stuff, like educational programs, educational apps for TON users, how to onboard them, different collaborations with existing, for example, DeFi apps. And he was like, yeah, and then we will launch a new app where you would just be clicking on a coin on the screen. And I was like, what? Is it really your plan? Maybe we should talk about something else, something more serious and something more substantial, right? And then they launched it. And I understood that I was completely wrong because that thing went really viral. That's fascinating. Sometimes, we don't see things coming in angle and completely surprises. And there's previous podcasts where for example, the founder of Virtuals Jansen was totally unexpecting and the team and virtuals took off as the AI agent narrative in a week. I do think it's fascinating how this space can shift gears so fast and users interacting with things that we never really expected. And now after all those users that came in and tapped to earn, what are those users? I know it was over 300 million users at certain points. What are they demanding now? Do they still are onboarding into crypto? They are on telegram and on the TON ecosystem, in a sense, where do you think the market is going and what are the plans for the future? Oh yeah, of course it was obvious once again, from not the very beginning, but from a certain point that there were a lot of bots among those users. But look, airdrop farmers are everywhere. We can't really deny it in any ecosystem, any large projects, especially DeFi. All those farmers are everywhere, but still. So what are these people doing now? That's a good question. I would love to have an answer to that as well. According to statistics, of course, the conversion rate turned out to be quite low, from that tap to earn on the screen into an on chain user even though, Notcoin, as the first very successful case showed good results in terms of conversion. So I think, still have around 2 million on chain token holders. The peak was about 2.5 mil or 2.8 mil, I don't remember. And then DOGS another successful meme, they reached even, I think more than 5 million. At a certain point it was really the largest meme one in crypto by hold account. But this is just holding the token, which is already a good step, but still those people need to be active on chain. So for that, we're working on a whole range of interesting use cases from multiple different standpoints. The ecosystem in general, it's obviously first of all about those independent teams that are building inside the eco. It's us from the foundation side trying to support them as much as we can. Also trying to navigate all those trends because it's obviously not us who set the trend, right? And I think no foundation in the world, Web3 foundation can really set the trend. It's something organic, something that just pops up. And this is it. Our role is more supportive, let's say, like facilitating the growth in general. And what we're seeing now and then Telegram, of course, through launching some new functionality of the messenger itself, they obviously drive attention and drive trends as well. So what we've seen recently, for example is the launch of Telegram gifts, that has really been the hype in the ecosystem for a couple of not really weeks, even before that. They were first launched off chain, you could buy them for Telegram stars, Telegram starts to drop some exclusive collections with limited supply and people understood that, okay, we probably need to draw more attention to that and they did, and the volumes were really great. So it was almost a million dollars in volume off chain on one single marketplace on TON, which was, yeah, that team was fast enough to create this secondary marketplace. place for telegram gifts. And now for only a couple of days, some of those gifts are already on chain and they exist as NFTs. So imagine you got the gift from a friend on telegram, I don't know, for your birthday, for example, I would send some birthday cakes to my friends as Telegram gifts. And then they can convert those gifts into NFTs and trade them on chain and probably, get some exclusive access in some games, in some cool mini apps inside Telegram. So those gifts will probably have some interesting utility. And there are already some use cases popping up in the ecosystem. For example, a game, Ducky Gram emerged just a couple of days ago. So you can upgrade your duck and you can gain something in the game if you have a particular gift on your balance. So this is the first case of utility for telegram gifts, but the hype is really there. A lot of people are trading them. Off chain, on chain through O2C. And this is something exciting. This is something that no other ecosystem has, right? Because it's the conversion from off chain to on chain inside the messenger. We're also expecting NFT stickers. There was by the way, an independent third party product sticker store launched, I think a couple of months ago, I think it was before the new year and Pudgy Penguins launched their collection of stickers there. They're still off chain, but this is not the Telegram's official project, but this is also exciting. And so what I'm saying is that we want to really focus on new and exclusive and extraordinary and interesting use cases that can exist only on Telegram. And here we can also mention SocialFi, of course, because, we saw the very fast rise of Friend.tech and people got excited, but then it just faded away and now we can see new apps on Solana, for example very similar to the same model of Friend.tech, just with some additional functionalities. Like what's it called? The tribe and cloud, right? Recently there were a lot of talks about them on Twitter. But you can't really build them without such a cool distribution channel as Telegram, right? People will probably pay some attention and show interest for a couple of weeks, months, whatever. But those are still, I think, same like Solana traders. Once again, as much as I admire what Solana achieved, but it's, I think actually the same, just the same people who are trying to speculate on that. And this is a very cool use case. What we're trying to do is we're trying to really show the Web3 potential to Web2 users. And we want to leverage those telegram communities that already exist as large groups, with particular influences driving them. And we want to bring them on chain inside the messenger. And we have an entire social graph to utilize here. We don't need to attract those people from scratch and to retain them. They are already in one single place. We just need some interesting use cases for them. So SocialFi as well. And then AI, as you mentioned Virtuals. We have a lot of plans for AI as well, like AI agents must exist on Telegram, this is such an amazing platform for them to exist. I think some news will be released very soon about our strategy on AI, but yeah, once again, this is something I'm like personally very excited about. I think among all the trends that we see currently in the crypto market and on Twitter. I think AI is the most sustainable trend in the long run, because this is obvious, we will not live without AI anymore. We can live without L2s, right? Or without BTCFi, whatever, but we can't really, we will not live without AI. This is already an intrinsic part of our lives and we should really bear it in mind, whatever we do in crypto. And then DeFi, of course, even though DeFi is not for newbies and Web2 users, we can also see others like DeFi super apps emerging, like Infinex, for example, or DeFi app. Very good project with amazing founders, very strong teams and backed by very strong hands, let's say. And this is, once again, a sign of the right direction of Telegram, because we don't need to bootstrap the audience. We already have those people. We just need to ensure that those mini apps that are being built on Telegram, they have good UX UI, and they can ensure this CEX like experience but on chain. Just exactly, I think the mission of both Infinex and DeFi app. So onboarding people into DeFi is very hard, it's risky. No one wants to take responsibility. But this is also definitely part of the strategy. So in terms of DeFi on TON, we've done a great job, I think, recently. So all the metrics are up, they're not at the peak now, but still a lot of progress has been made, a lot of new projects emerged. So just to give you an understanding, I think at the beginning of 2024, we had around 10 DeFi projects on DefiLlama. Now we have more than 50. So it was really fast growth of different DeFi cases on TON starting from very basic stuff like lendings, like DEXs. we finally got some stable swaps and concentrated liquidity market makers on TON. A lot of different farming opportunities, like Leveraged Yield Farming, from one project on TON, new algorithmic stable points, CDPs, a lot of things really, and they are growing, gradually growing their TVL and volume. We're doing our best to support them from the standpoint of audits and VC funding, connecting them with relevant VCs in the ecosystem. So we need to ensure this basic and a foundational DeFi layer. And then we can go further and, apart from just providing those interesting yield opportunities for large whales and those just DeFi users from other ecosystems, we want to build very simple DeFi apps, what we call simplified DeFi, just all those one click investment opportunities inside the messenger. Obviously with not as high yield as we would provide to DeFi users ready to take risks. But for those newbies that want to explore new opportunities and want to just make some profits, basic profits with their funds. So that's about DeFi and also Bitcoin is coming to TON as well. So a native bridge is being built, TON Teleport that's what we call it. And TGBTC, this is the name of the asset that will exist on TON. It will be launched around April, May of this year and we plan a lot of interesting incentive programs around it. And once again, what would be different from any other chain is what not only will we give incentives for just those Bitcoin whales that we're probably bridging to farm more rewards and get yield. But we want this TGBTC to be directly integrated into some utility apps, into games, into social apps, so that this asset is really available to the crowds, not only to DeFi users that want just to earn and then go to some other ecosystem that would give them a higher yield. We want it to be sustainable and to be really intrinsic into the ecosystem. So on TON and Telegram, it's all about cases for mass adoption. I know everyone says it and it's so hard to achieve, it's so hard really. But we're trying our best and it's really a path of exploration and continuous experiments. This is what it all is about. Yeah. Very exciting. It sounds like the ecosystem is growing in so many different fronts in the occuring value as it goes. And you mentioned this thing about yields. And I think this is such an important part of the ecosystem. And I did experience this with a friend when she was staking on Telegram Wallet at TON with a fairly sustainable APY that beats inflation. And in crypto we've seen over the past run or cycle there are so many unsustainable APYs and so much unsustainability in DeFi that created the whole issues that came with the collapse of Celsius, FTX, et cetera. So I think that's incredibly fascinating, and then seeing a sustainable equity system growing at this space, it's really exciting. And I wanted to ask you for all the devs, and even when we, sometimes we invest here in companies and I get this question a lot. In terms of building in TON, I know it's a different tech stack we have for deploy mini app, we need JavaScript, CSS, or HTML, but I do know that the equivalent of smart contracts is called Jetons. And in order to build these quite a few different languages, could you expand a bit more on this for builders that are interested in deploying a mini app or getting ready? Sure sure. Yeah. So simply speaking, we have, basically, okay, now three languages, used to be two, but we announced the release of a new one. Two languages, let's say, FunC and Tact. They are more from the C family of languages and they're obviously very different from Solidity and Rust, and they are honestly speaking, quite hard to get onboarded into, but it's totally doable. And a lot of devs, like the majority of our devs, they love it. With FunC it's more like low level language and Tact on the other hand is more high level language. And they both pick the opposite direction now. So FunC is trying to become more high level and Tact on the other hand is trying to become more low level, but anyways, and they also at the TON Gateway, which is our annual conference in Dubai, which is usually held in November. So last year 2024, they announced the release of new language Tolk, which will be something in between, and it will really be much more optimized and much easier to get onboarded into. So the first version will be released, I think, very soon. So we need to obviously learn those languages and Jettons are the token standard on TON. The analog to ERC20 on Ethereum. And every Jettons is a smart contract, if this is something that you're referring to. But look, it just takes a bit of time, it's a hurdle at the beginning, but it's totally worth it. And now, an important thing that I probably should mention is that just, I think, 10 days ago or two weeks ago Telegram announced that if you want to build a Telegram mini app on blockchain, it's inside the messenger, you need to go on TON only. So the only, for example, wallet protocol that you can use is TON Connect from now on, from February 1st. So you can't really build a Telegram mini app on Solana now or on Ethereum. You need to go exclusively for TON. So that was a strategic decision by the Telegram team. And, I'm talking about obviously those developers that would probably planning to launch something on other chains inside Telegram. So now it is not possible anymore. So people would need to learn the languages. We see some new tools popping up. Some even new like L2s, that are trying to allow developers to still use the solidity code, but then settle on TON. But this is all quite early stages. And this is an entire space for experiments. So we'll see where it will bring us. But just generally speaking, I would give it a try. It's really worth it and we have a very friendly and very active community of developers ready to help, ready to share the experience. And we have a lot of bootcamps and hackathons happening all across the world. And another interesting news, which is crucial and probably should have started with it when talking about plans, TON wants to go to the US. Really, really much. So this is a very substantial part of our strategy for 2025. Given all the shifts in the power, et cetera, et cetera. So I really want to increase our presence there and we plan to launch different events in bootcamps and local meetups and hackathons and collaborate with large American Web3 companies. Attract a lot of American devs, so guys come, we're very happy to host you and welcome you in the ecosystem. Is there any events that me as a founder of dev must go this year to learn more about TON and get involved? Look, can't tell you now. Not decided yet, but so we have a plan. We just need to finalize it and decide on the specific events. There's so many events happening. There was this like Bitcoin event as well, I think somewhere in May, and then an event in New York in June. It's going to be right on my birthday. I'll celebrate there probably. Yeah. So look, a lot of plans. We will definitely release a full list quite soon. We just need to take the final decision. Alena, just to close this great interview, where can our listeners follow you or learn about the latest updates on what's going on with the foundation? Look, so Twitter, of course, and you would be surprised. By the way, I'll ask you that question. What do you think? So my handle is Alenka and then UQ capital letters. What do you think UQ stand for? UQ, I'm not sure. Okay, so this is how TON wallet addresses start. UQ, yeah, that's one of the standards, they can also start with EQ as well. So yeah, just fun fact. I saw a lot of people putting like 0x, into the handles and profile names. And I was like, okay, I'll use EQ. No one's using it. Yeah. So yeah, Alenka, that's how I call myself in English. Yeah. Thank you, Alinka. It was a pleasure to having this interview. Thank you.

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