How Web2 will eat Web3

TL; DR

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We’ve seen a bit of saltiness online about Telegram’s TON coin making it into the coveted ‘Crypto Top 10’.

Especially since Telegram isn’t entirely crypto-native (it’s a web2 app that now integrates web3 features) and is suddenly outperforming some deep-rooted crypto projects – but its rise makes perfect sense to us.

This will sound strange at first, but hear us out…

They are established web2 companies that have the biggest opportunities in web3.

Here’s an oversimplified left curve framework we came up with to explain it all…

When companies build value, it is typically due to an advantage in one or more of these four interconnected edge factors:

1. Time (It will take other companies a minute to build/compete with them)

2. Talent (They gathered and kept the smartest people)

3. Network (They have all users)

4. Distribution (For example: why do so many small beverage companies sell to Coca-Cola? To take advantage of their tight global distribution agreements)

AI and crypto threaten more than three out of four of these key factors.

AI is already increasing efficiency for technology-focused companies, reducing the time and talent required to build/grow/maintain a product.

While crypto networks are open, which means…

Damn, how are we supposed to explain this?

Remember when Instagram created Threads (the Twitter/X clone) and allowed anyone with an IG account to automatically transfer their IG followers to Threads?

Instagram could do that because they owned it both networks. But no entity “owns” a particular crypto network. So if you build a popular web3 social app, competitors can come along and say:

“Hey, come use our app instead. And don’t worry: all your followers and content will come with you to our new platform.”

That makes distribution a bit of a superpower in this new internet age.

And Telegram has distribution up the wazoo!

Anyone who builds games/apps on the TON network will then have their creation distributed to Telegram’s 800 million monthly active users (via the ‘Mini Apps’ feature).

For context:

The top two wallet apps on Ethereum and Solana are MetaMask and Phantom – which have a combined monthly active user base of 37 million.

That means that with this single web3 integration, Telegram was able to outpace the combined distribution of two deeply rooted crypto-native apps 20x faster.

Crazy!