🍌 How scammers steal gifts

⚫️ In our #antiscam section, we have long been talking about fraudulent schemes. To understand them, we often pretended to be naive users and responded to scammers' messages. Recently, blogger Kharchevnikov went even further to understand the topic: he infiltrated the ranks of scammers. What useful information for our channel can be gleaned from his video?

⚫️The main scheme he described is simple: scammers write to gift owners, offer to sell them, and send a link to a fake marketplace. We have already written about such fake resources. But the video reports an interesting detail: the marketplace described there uses verification from Roskomnadzor, which is obtained with the help of "drop" persons willing to give their personal info.

⚫️ Another mentioned scheme is more sophisticated. Scammers say they want to check if the gifts were received with "refunded" stars. They ask to install Nicegram (an alternative Telegram client) and send them a specific file "for verification." However, this file allows them to log into Telegram as the user and seize their gifts.

⚫️ Other interesting details in the video include the scale of what is happening. A huge number of different people are involved in the fraudulent project: ordinary "workers" (who write to gift owners), "traffickers" (who look for new "workers"), "mentors," and the leadership that remains in the shadows. So, if you receive a lot of messages about your gifts, it's not surprising.

💡 The conclusions are quite standard, but no less important. Do not send any "system files" to anyone. Do not use unfamiliar marketplaces, even with a verification badge (in our #gifts series, we listed the most popular ones, they are more reliable). Do not trust those who write in private messages offering to "buy gifts." And if you don't care about showing off your gifts, you can even hide valuable ones in your profile to avoid attracting scammers' attention in the first place.

@thedailyton

⚫️ As is customary on Fridays, we publish a subjective #opinion on what's happening in TON. This time, even within our editorial team, a discussion arose, and here we present one side's view — so later we want to publish a rebuttal to ourselves with a different perspective. In the meantime, feel free to share your opinions in the comments.

⚫️ Our ecosystem creates perfect conditions for mass onboarding: integration with Telegram, free transfers, intuitive interface. A regular user might suddenly receive a gift or a check in a chat — and just like that, they're "hooked" and have to figure things out. This is the best bridge between Web2 and Web3 for a newcomer.

⚫️ But what happens when a user stops being a newcomer? A month or two, a year or two passes, and the question arises: "What's next?" They want to diversify their portfolio, try DeFi, participate in complex farming strategies. And here, TON faces a problem: 2025 was supposed to be the year of DeFi, but a developed financial ecosystem is still absent, and the number of abandoned protocols exceeds the number of newly launched ones.

⚫️ TVL, which has shrunk 8-fold from its peak values, doesn't allow developers to deploy complex products. A striking example: ex-Crouton together with the previous TON DeFi Lead are now building a project on Ethereum. The project is in its early stages but has already attracted almost $4M TVL — more than most active projects in TON.

⚫️ Experienced users quickly hit a ceiling: there are no perpetual contracts with high leverage, no advanced derivatives, and a meager choice for yield strategies. As a result, they are simply forced to look for new opportunities, because treading water is definitely not an option.

⚫️ TON Foundation focuses on quantity, not the depth of user experience. Onboarding a billion people is ambitious, but without a developed financial infrastructure, a significant portion of the audience risks remaining "one-time" users.

🖊 Thus, TON risks becoming a perpetual incubator for newcomers, but not their home. Until the problem with liquidity and complex financial instruments is solved, users will come for easy money — and leave for complex opportunities.

@thedailytonrus

👁 How to win in a game without knowing its rules?

⚫️ TON Foundation launched a large-scale meme contest, but instead of hype, FUD is spreading in the community. The reason is a completely closed formula for determining winners. The top of the leaderboard is firmly occupied by old memecoins, and new projects see no point in entering a fight where the rules are hidden. We are publishing an #opinion on this:

⚫️ On the one hand, such opacity can be a tool for creating equal conditions. As long as no one knows the exact criteria, large players cannot purposefully inflate specific metrics. Participants are forced to act intuitively, developing their projects comprehensively, rather than optimizing them for a known formula.

⚫️ On the other hand, this raises the question from the post title. New memecoins find themselves in a catch-up position, not understanding what actions can bring them closer to victory.

⚫️ The result on the scoreboard: the leaderboard is stagnating, and traders and creators are losing interest. The initiative, designed to revive the ecosystem, risks having the opposite effect — cooling enthusiasm.

⚫️ Thus, the TON Foundation faced a classic choice: fairness through uncertainty or transparency that opens the door to manipulation. Nevertheless, the team has already stated that it will revise the formula and try to balance it in the second week of the contest.

💡 Was there a better option? Our editorial team believes so.

As an option — to distribute rewards retrospectively. Meme activity began not a week ago, but back in August. People, based on expectations and future actions from the TON Foundation, independently launched a small, but still a meme wave. During this time, in our humble opinion, there were tokens and teams that managed to gather truly friendly communities around them and show organic growth, instead of manipulations on the chart.

⚫️ The TON Foundation could have bought back similar jettons without loud announcements — not only delighting holders and showing that it monitors the meme sector of the ecosystem, but also inspiring other communities to honest work.

@thedailyton

⚫️ Yesterday, the unlocking of funds on the TON Believers Fund wallet began. It was created back in 2023, so many people who came to the ecosystem later do not even know: what is it anyway? Why were some people afraid of TON's price falling now? And why did their fears turn out to be groundless? Let's try to explain.

⚫️ One of the concerns in TON always sounded like this: "most of the coins belong to the early miners, their plans are unknown, they can start selling at any moment and crash everything." Various actions were taken to combat this, such as freezing inactive early wallets.

⚫️ A similar initiative was the TON Believers Fund: "Let everyone willingfully block funds (with interest) on a special address for years. This will show that whales are interested in the long-term success of TON, and not just want to quickly grab a penny and run away."

⚫️ The initiative was presented as "coming from the community," that was often disputed, but in the current context, this is not so important. The main thing is that the wallet was created, and people deposited a total of more than a billion TON into it. There were multi-million transfers from "whales," and deposits from ordinary users with a minimum amount of 50 TON.

⚫️ Now, after two years, the funds are gradually being unlocked, and owners can use them again. Due to the current sad state of the ecosystem, there were fears that "they will all rush to sell TON and crash the price completely." But yesterday this did not happen. One of the owners even bought GRAM token with the unlocked TON.

⚫️ Why? There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the unlocking is a very gradual process: it will take place in parts over three whole years. So thinking "a billion TON will hit the market now" was wrong. Secondly, an ordinary user with their 50 TON will not make a big difference, and "whales" probably deposited only a part of their reserves there. So, if they wanted to sell a lot of TON, they had the opportunity to do so even without any unlocking.

👁 So the worries yesterday turned out to be in vain. And instead of wasting your nerves, you can, for example, click on "details" on TonScan page and admire the unlocking schedule, which extends until the autumn of 2028.

@thedailyton

⌨️ The Weekly TON: highlights of the week

⚫️ Last week, we not only recorded what was happening in TON, but also looked at everything in perspective: what conclusions can be drawn from the past, what can be expected from the future?

⚫️ The main news: after postponements and renamings, the Meme Republic initiative finally launched, and we described the main things about it.

⚫️ And what happened to the heroes of a completely different initiative — the Future Giants section? We looked at the fate of the projects and drew conclusions. They turned out to be not the most comforting.

⚫️ But at the same time, we are not shouting "all is lost." This time, on the contrary, Friday's column was about how even in these difficult times, things are actually undpredictable.

⚫️ Almost a year has passed since Dune launched in TON — now we can evaluate what interesting and useful dashboards have appeared during this time. We made a selection of them.

⚫️ We compared the approaches of TON and Hyperliquid, which affect the price of their native coins.

👁 We also noted that an auction system is being introduced for the primary sale of gifts.

@thedailyton