In this current red crypto sea, TON ($TON) or ‘The Open Network’ is on fire. Since late February this year, it has gone parabolic. Only 4 weeks ago, it reached its $8.24 ATH, coming from $2.12. Its ecosystem also exploded. STON.fi is one of the eye-catching projects on TON.
So, we take a closer look at STON.fi and see if it is a gem.
Is STON.fi Trending?
Currently, TON is not trending on CoinMarketCap. Now, STON.fi is an AMM or DEX. It’s not listed on neither the CoinGecko nor CoinMarketCap lists for both categories. However, with the rise of the $TON token, $STON saw a similar rise. Both went parabolic between late February and mid-April. There’s one difference, though. Price wise, $TON kept going up and $STON lost some of its momentum.
So, STON.fi is currently not trending. $STON saw its ATH on 12th April with $32.82. The current price is $16.25, so 50% down from its ATH. The current Fear and Greed index is now at 38.05. This indicates ‘Fear’. A month ago, this was still at 64.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Trending sectors generate more transactions. However, there’s no information available for transactions on STON.fi. Nonetheless, we can take a look at transactions on TON. Unfortunately, their Tonscan and TonViewer explorers don’t give clear data on transactions. As an alternative, we can look at trading volume.
According to Tonscan, over the last two weeks, this was $657.9 million. That’s an increase of 52.86%. Over last month, this was $641.7 million, or a 64.11% increase. DeFiLlama tells us that STON.fi has a TVL of $282 million. This puts them in second spot on TON, behind DeDust, another DEX on TON. Their TVL is $335 million.
If we look at unique wallets, Tonscan shows us 37.6 million addresses on TON. That’s on 4th July 2024. That’s a serious uptrend compared to March, when there were only 6.2 million addresses. The address count shows a steep curve. See the picture below.
Source: Tonscan
STON.fi Fundamental Analysis
The STON.fi project has a website and an app. However, for info on the team, we needed to look at third-party websites like CryptoRank. The two co-founders have a background in software engineering and physics. They’re serial entrepreneurs. The core team seems to originate from St. Petersburg in Russia. Their entrance into DeFi seems to be their first step in this sector.
Their website doesn’t show any information on backers or partners. However, CryptoRanks comes to the rescue here, too. It lists CoinFund (Tier 2), Delphi Ventures (Tier 3), and the TON Foundation as main backers. You can also find Sergej Kunz and Anton Bukov, co-founders at 1inch as angel investors.
Their social media shows the following number of followers.
- Discord — Hard to tell but seems medium busy.
- Telegram — 1.3 million subscribers.
- X — 422k followers with decent interaction.
- Reddit — 19k members, not that busy with low interaction.
What Problem Does STON.fi Solve?
As such, STON.fi doesn’t solve any real-world problems. It’s a DEX at the end of the day. However, it has a couple of good things going for itself.
- STON.fi is on the TON chain. It also uses sharding. Think of sharding as a supermarket where only one cashier is open. This leads to a queue. Once the supermarket opens more cashiers, the queue will disappear. As a result, the platform boasts that it can handle millions of transactions per second.
- Cross-chain asset swaps without a need to use a bridge or wrapping tokens. Trade directly from your TON-compatible wallet.
- Very low trading fees and low to zero slippage.
However, DeFi is currently not a trending sector. Nonetheless, the TON ecosystem is faring well in the current market.
The long-awaited updates are already here ⚡️
🆕 Your wishes have been heard! Now you can trade in AlphaDex in the TON network@ton_blockchain @durov @ston_fi
Fast and secure transactions – right in your pocket🔔 Be aware of all the new products! Now you can receive… pic.twitter.com/7SwdlXY9wq
— Alpha DEX (@alpha_dex_io) June 25, 2024
Who Is Their Competition?
Their competition is in various crypto sectors. For example,
- CEXes — These are centralized. Remember, not your keys, not your coins.
- Bridges and wrapping tokens — This requires custodians to hold the original tokens. Bridges are vulnerable to attacks. STON.fi doesn’t use either.
- Cross-chain DEXes — They rely on trusted entities, like oracles. These are potential attack vectors for hackers.
- DeFi Aggregators — These make use of third-party DeFi protocols. This adds security and price slippage risks.
- Multichain wallets — The exchange rates may not be optimal, and they don’t offer the lowest fees.
So, to recap this, STON.fi has various advantages here.
Source: Whitepaper
Is the $STON Token Deflationary?
The $STON token is deflationary. This is something we like. Over time, the smart contracts will burn the $STON token. There are 100 million $STON tokens. However, currently, there are only 1.6 million $STON unlocked.
The current market cap is almost $25 million. However, the FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) is $1.47 billion. That’s a big difference between the two. The token price may suffer from this gap.
Vesting sees a cliff of 1 year. These unlocks should start next month, in August 2024. So, from August onwards, we will see monthly token unlocks for two years. Within two years from August 2024, most tokens will unlock. On the other hand, with a deflationary token, the total $STON supply will decrease over time.
How Many Holders Does $STON Have?
According to Tonscan, the $TON address count is 38.25 million on 5th July 2024. That’s an increase of 625k addresses in only 1 day. There’s no sign of how this looks on the STON app. However, it’s safe to assume that STON is riding the waves of new TON address inflows.
Where Can You Buy $STON?
The $STON token is not available on any tier 1 CEX. The closest it gets are BitMart and CoinEx. Furthermore, it’s available on the STON app and on DeDust. That latter is the TON DEX with the highest TVL. The $STON token could see an increase in price with some bigger CEX listings.
Does STON.fi Have a Strong Marketing Strategy?
STON announces a marketing strategy in their whitepaper. However, it’s difficult to find anything back on social media. That’s outside their own outlets. Most accounts on X that mention STON.fi are below 1,000 followers. Few accounts go up to 4k followers.
Their own social media outlets seem rather inflated. Still, their X account is active and has good interaction and mentions plenty of updates. STON relies heavily on the TON ecosystem.
Conclusion
We looked into STON.fi to see if it is a gem. STON.fi has a couple of good things going for itself. It has the advantage that it can ride the TON wave. STON is the second-largest project on TON by TVL, so that’s good. It also has an experienced team that has been active in various firms. However, this seems to be their first step in DeFi.
Their social media followers seem a bit high for the kind of interaction STON receives. It doesn’t seem organic. DeFi is currently also not one of the happening crypto sectors. So, right now, STON.fi doesn’t qualify as a gem. However, having said that, it could become a gem, if, for example, it could get listings on bigger CEXes.
It’s hard to find specific information on STON, since their app doesn’t have any public stats. However, as long as TON keeps growing, there will be a spin-off to the TON ecosystem. STON will profit from this.
Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to accepted levels of risk tolerance of the writer/reviewers, and their risk tolerance may be different from yours.
We are not responsible for any losses that you may incur as a result of any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments, so please do your due diligence.
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