How to Onboard the Next Billion Web3 Users, Julien Paredes, TON Foundation | ETHSofia 2025

[Music] So good morning everybody. Good morning Sophia. So where I can do that I think I need someone to switch uh the screen but yeah here it is. So facing web free adoption problem how to on board the next billion users. So first of all, let me introduce myself a little bit even if the moderators have done an insane job.

So I am Julian Paredes. I am leading the Europe hub hub hub for Ton Foundation. So if you don't know Ton Foundation, we have a close partnership with Telegram. I think everybody here knows Telegram, but I will go deeper into that. So I'm really happy to to be here.

And first of all, I would like also to thanks the world if Sophia team for welcoming me and inviting me. So you can also get connected with me on X. You can see here my te my ex handle metaproggy but actually on telegram is exactly the same without the underscore. So now let's dig into that. I think you have heard this famous phrase let's on board the next billion users multiple times.

I am in crypto since 2013. I have done different works and each time I was in the hiring process everyone was telling me that and I was laughing at some point. But here I guess let's start you know with a global picture. Global picture we have more than 200 active L1 blockchains thousand of L2s rollups side chains and app chains but everyone is trying to show the same thing speed quantability and decentralization and in our opinion that's good metrics but that's not how you can reach adoption and you can reach crypto to the masses. So let me explain how we are doing it differently.

So we like to say that as Bill Gates said content is king but we believe that distribution is queen and as a builders when you are building a project basically you can be an awesome developer but with zero customers or users you will die and that's what telegram and ton is offering you the distribution channel and I will show you why. So here before I would like to start with different use cases and so on. I think uh how many people here are using telegram in the room. Okay. So everybody but uh how do do you know that in telegram you can have many apps you can play games you can buy stuff also.

How many of you knows that? Okay half of the of the room. So I am not here for nothing but here I was speaking about distribution as queen. Right. So here you can see the social platform ranking around the world.

So you can see that Telegram is ranked on the seventh place. You have you have Facebook and other stuff. But what is the difference between Telegram and the other one? This is that. So I don't know if here in Bulgaria you are um aware of this concept that we call super app but basically it comes from Asia.

So I think many of people many of us here knows what it what WeChat is is the number one super app around the world. So what is a super app is a single platform where you can uh chat obviously that's the main uh goal of a social platform but where you can also play games spend your money earn cash back uh go I don't know to book your travel booking all that kind of stuff one place to handle your digital life that's the kind of thing and it's not a small market as you can see which has more than one billion uh users and telegram also so we are chasing them a little bit Here you can have a look at the growth of telegram to show you that it's not only you know numbers and you remember what I was saying at the beginning how to on board the next billion users telegram has already more than 1 billion user so that's also a good thing for you just to give you some statistics also 40% of that one plus billion users are actually using telegram mini apps so for you as builders when you try to build product you will have more than 400 million people that could be your potential users and I would show you how here. So if we zoom a little bit out what I showed you is that Telegram could be your distribution channel to reach your next users. Then with Ton blockchain you can own and build product on the blockchain obviously and now with the wallet all integrated all the people can have access to that. So basically with this kind this kind of reverticals you have like a really boost project which is the super app but that's not it.

So you can wonder why Julian is here we are at if conference so what are you doing here? My job also is to first educate empower and then unlock the talent like you to come and build with us. It's not because ton is another chain that you cannot build here. Telegram miners basically are a web app that everyone can build on. So if you have a successful project on Eve, Solana or whatever, you can definitely port that into tone into Telegram.

Super easy to do that. But what are we building this year? So we are laser focused on five verticals right now. It doesn't mean that you cannot think outside of the box obviously but that is something to just guide you right. So obviously we are in gaming huge on gaming.

I think you have heard some beautiful stories on games. Then Telegram assets. I will dig into that because it can be a complicated word but it's basically everything around gifts, stickers, username, social file, right? And mini apps obviously. Simplify DeFi.

We are not only speaking about DeFi but we like to to call it simplified DeFi and you will understand why a little why a little bit later. Then payments obviously that's the main power of super app. how you can buy um buy crypto but also spend crypto on different apps for the day-to-day life and it would be crazy for us to not speak about AI and to not have a focus but we are taking it a little bit differently for from other ecosystem. So what I like to do it's also to show you some use some use cases about these different verticals because payment can mean anything for everybody. So here you have three different examples.

So when we speak about payment in crypto first you have to buy that crypto right. So here you are off on and on ramp application. So this one is a famous application mini app for Nigerian people but also for other people because as you know in third countries um a lot of people are unbunked right and when you take a look at Kenya for example there is a lot of unbunked people but all their life is under their own just one phone and say they can do everything in their one with just one phone. So that's the power of that. Second, when you have this money, you need to spend that, right?

And I don't know if you want to buy some bread, if you want to invite your boyfriend or your girlfriend to the restaurant, something like that. So then you need to spend it. That's what it is about the crypto debit and credit card. So here you have the app called card made by super powerful app where you can have your credit card inside a ton and start your spending. But then also you need loyalty program, right?

So you have you can also build this kind of e-commerce and cashback application and ton cash app is a perfect example of that. So here you have the full journey kind of of how we see the payment on ton then simply simple defy or simplify defy and real world asset. So what is that? what we think you know I'm here for too much time I would say and as of today defi is kind of complex even for me sometime to understand how I can use the yields how I need to chase the different pools and thing like that it's not good for adoption at least from our opinion we need something really simple one click you have the APY or your interest you have the stable coins boom one click done and now you relax and you just compound and you just have your money that's what you are building what we are building And we are building that inside many different project but one is the wallet. So if you go on Telegram, you click on the cheers bar, you tap wallet is the official one directly inside, you can buy crypto and as you can see you can also stake and start earning APY.

But that's not all. you have other product right like I we know that defy on if is super powerful I think it's the main one of the main platform to do that and so obviously if you are more advanced user you can borrow lend but that's also you know a little bit more riskier but with EVA protocol you can do that simple simply and easily as you can see the API you know I think we are not competing with every ecosystem it's kind of the same but here you have the ease of use here you have just you If we zoom out a little bit just to show you how the the architecture could work. So obviously as I mentioned you need to start with payment. So we have built all the different layers for you as a builder to come and directly start your your journey by using the different architecture. So payment on off cash back remittance app.

It's super important if you want global adoption. And then when you people ask crypto, boom, they can jump into DeFi and RWA super easy gaming. I'm hardcore gamer. I I have a lot of friends who are esport champion and now they are also building games on ton and telegram. Why?

Because it's super super viral and super easy to do. You don't have to download anything. You just download Telegram, then you click uh on the game and that's it. Here I just wanted to show you that it's not a gimmick at all. The numbers are actually crazy and it's growing super fast.

That's the number one strength of Telegram. The virality, the distribution. So here I just shared with you two games. One is City Older. They have one, they have more than 1 million active monthly user.

It's just crazy. And the second one they just launched like some months ago and now they have more than 300 monthly active users. So it shows you that if you have the good acu acquisition strategy the retention is here. So you are here you can build for the long term not just you know for to pump and dump that's something really important here to see gamefy. So what are the different ingredient when you are building a game on obviously you have some social task in it.

So follow follow your account uh like this tweet referral and so on that could be also revenue opportunity for you because you can sell the different ads the different task to your different partners. So that's something really important. Obviously everything that games as leaderboard, referral program and competitions. Here we are speaking more about what are the telegram assets. I think on telegram you are all using gifts you know to share your emotions and thing like that.

But that's not all. You have also the stickers and here just the different kind of product that we have. You have the gift that are issued by telegram onchain and offchain obviously stickers anonymous number. So I think all here are using the local number. But if you want to be more private on Telegram, you can also buy this anonymous numbers that are NFTs and then you can be a little bit more anonymous in the in the digital area and obviously you can tokenize your different communities but I will dig more into that later.

So here I wanted to show you some numbers. I like to speak about global uh topics but I like to back my words with actal numbers to show you how the opportunity is. So here this is the telegram gift overview in term of volume. You can find that on June uh you can come to me and I will show you the ex the exact dashboard if you want to but here as you can see the current market cap I think it's a little bit um more than that because I've done the the pitch a little bit uh for uh before in the months. So now as you can see there is more than 170 million as a market cap.

It's quite huge right and uh we had in ATH so all-time high more than 9 million we uh we went um uh it was bigger than openc at some point the active wallet trading gift on uh since the beginning it's more than 480 people that are trading that. So it's not just weights and it's not just manipulated. It's really overall and global markets. Snoop Dogg have launched some gifts. So it's really something really huge that is happening right now on Ton and Telegram.

Here is how you can use that and how you can buy it. You have the in app store where you can buy that with Telegram stars which is basically the Telegram currency. You can buy that with fiat, Apple store, Google pay. So zero friction. Then you can flex you know what uh you have by putting the different gifts into your profile because we know that on Twitter the profile picture is something for you to flex or to see to show that you are part of a community is exactly the same on telegram and people can know which asset you own.

So that's pretty simple. If you have your telegram account you can see if you are holding some gift how it looks like. Then obviously you can buy it natively. But as every ecosystem when it comes to NFTs you have marketplaces right. So here are the three different but you have more than that right but are these are the the leading platform.

So I invite you also to see how they are building because there is far more to build right now. Market aggregators all this kind of stuff for you to tap into that niche. Then stickers it's also something different. I think as I mentioned everyone are using stickers but let me show you a number daily on a daily basis on telegram more than 700 millions people are are using are using stickers to exchange ideas emotion so that's something super huge and here you can see um some people are started to sell sticker pack onchain and offchain and see you have some volumes here since the start more than 10 million on premar sales and that's not only for a niche board Apot Club, Pudgy Penguin, Azuki, Sappiils, everybody have launched web 3 IP have launched some stickers and that's only the start. We have AAA web two brands that are coming in the next months.

So that's something for you to see how it goes and if you want I can put you in contact with the different also marketplaces to do the same. If you have some web 3 IP or even web brand that you want also to launch with us here is an simple flow. Fuse has been is one of the leading sticker store but you have others sticker pack elephant and other one. So you tap fuse on the chair bar you can discover the different uh stickers last we launch one with us the champion the boxer champion. So it's something also that we are trying to put to the masses.

You see the information you connect your wallet and you buy simple as that. Here are some ideas that you know you can help us to build on. I can also share some more. So as I was mentioning marketplace aggregators, secure contractor analytic tools, all these kind of early tools that everybody needs to scale. So it's super early.

So we are welcoming you also to to build some product with us that will improve all that verticals. AI we are as I was mentioning we are seeing AI a little bit differently that other people. We see DeFi as a way to empower all the different vertical as I was mentioning and I will uh dig into that just right now. Here we believe that the secret source to make a super powerful product is to mix different technologies. So here you have ducky it's a game on telegram but they are using and leveraging telegram assets.

So NFTs and gifts. So whenever you have telegram gift into your wallet you can unlock special pairs. It's what we all dream about NFTs with utilities. It's directly here and live. You also have that in DeFi.

If you are holding a telegram gift or NFT, you can have a multiplayer on your yield. That's what you want. More money, easy life. Then you have also another one dungeon of kitsune. Uh here they are leveraging gaming and defy.

Whenever you are playing, you put your money into a pool. So the project is earning APY and the user can uh share all that money, right? And also the project obviously the last one upscale it's educational pro platform to show you how to trade you don't need any crypto to go there you put you buy with telegram stars so basically with fiat and then the AI is helping you to start your journey with trading when you develop when you level up the different opportunities and option of trading will open to you so you start slowly slowly here is something super important for you so as I was mentioning I I'm leading the Europe hub frontton foundation and my job is eer to educate uh developers and builders because as as I have seen here I guess you know I spoke to 10 people in one hour no one knows known that you can build telegram mini app so I have a lot to do right and my job is also to support you when you are taking the bet to build with us so here we have a clear uh program support program I've been working with different chains and I can tell you that that for me it's kind of the maker because everything is documented and I will show you the platform after. So either you have an ID premp so um before you are building your product you can already get in touch with us you have different things you have tonest which is our educational platform and networking platform I will dig into that we can help you with technical and product support you can join some builder call to get in touch with other builders share advice share failures because failure also important to grow you can you can join the different hubs so we have five five hubs I will show you them but the other and And when you grow and scale, you have more support, marketing, um, support from the foundation. I guess it's the dream to every builder to have a tweet from the ATM foundation.

Solana so we can make it happen. That's the kind of thing that we do. And then when you scale, meaning that you are PTG and you want to raise money, we can help you with fundraising support. We are closed with different VCs, Kingway Capital, Animoka, all that kind of stuff. and we can help you also with your token listing, putting you in contact with different uh people.

Here is the famous platform that I was mentioning. So everything is documented. You don't need to come to me even if I would love to, but you can just go to tonbuilders builders.org and you can visit this beautiful platform. So whenever you have a product, you register there and for example, if you want to go and train your pitch or your product, you just click, you register and we invite you.

Super straightforward. You don't you you don't need to find me or to hunt me into linking Twitter or anything like that. Super easy. So here we are in Europe, right? But we have worldwide.

So there is US, US, United States, but also LATAM and Canada, East Asia, South and Southeast Asia and the CIS region. Right? So all that are here to help you. This is the kind of stuff that you can uh do with us. So regular community calls we have that like weekly co-working days we are working with different working space a co-working space all around the world so you can have discount or free places we help you with Q&A speed networking all that kind of stuff the most valuable for me at least have been the ro session because when you are in the early stage you might have you might think that you have a dream ID a killer ID but sometime other people have done it or sometime just a little bit of advice will kickstart better your journey so That's really something that I advise to everybody to do that instead of failing directly with VCs.

We can help you to shape your pitch and to shape your product. Then tonest as I was mentioning is your kind of entry point. It's where you will have all the major educational news but you will network with everybody. Community is key right? So that's the kind of thing that you can do all here.

I won't you know explain too much about that but basically here you can find all the different things that you can uh wait or expect from ton next. I think that's it for me. It was a great pleasure. So if you want to get connected with us pretty simple either you go to builders.org or you scan this QR code or you can find me on Twitter on telegram by just writing metaproggy_x and without the underscore on telegram.

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here and I hope you enjoyed [Applause] [Music]