GM. This is Milk Road, where we make crypto feel like a party you never want to leave.

Grab a virtual drink, put on your dancing shoes, and let's HODL our way to financial freedom.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ What’s going on with TON?

• ✍️ Most expensive album ever is onchain for $1

• 💰 Its Funding Friday

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: TON & Telegram crypto revolution 

• 🍪 German government offloading Bitcoin

WHAT'S GOING ON WITH TON? 📈

You may or may not have noticed, but right now, everyone's talking about TON.

They’re making headlines daily and taking the crypto world by storm. ⚡️ 

TON, short for “The Open Network”, is a Layer 1 blockchain designed by none other than Telegram. 

Yep, we’re talking about the 4th largest messaging app in the world with over 900 million monthly active users.

So, what’s fueling all the excitement around TON? Why is it skyrocketing right now?

Let the Milk Man break it down for you with some snazzy charts to show you what’s really going on...

1/ Daily active users

TON's popularity has jumped from just 10k daily active users (DAU) at the start of the year to over 350k as of today. 

That’s a staggering 35x growth in just six months! 

With Telegram's vast distribution platform, it's no wonder everyone’s jumping on the TON train.

2/ Transaction volume

This metric is key because it shows how much action a blockchain is actually getting.

In other words, is it alive and buzzing or a ghost town like Luigi's Mansion?

The graph below shows a steady rise in transaction volume since early 2023, with some big spikes around mid-2023 and onwards.

The most striking highlight? The surge in Q2 2024, with transaction volume skyrocketing to $1.6 billion. 🚀 

3/ Total value locked

Its biggest flex? The Total Value Locked (TVL) department, where TON proudly holds the #16 spot among all blockchains. 🔒️ 

TON's growth has been nothing short of meteoric.

It skyrocketed from $22M on March 1, 2024, to over $600M today—that’s an explosive 27x increase in just a few months.

This hockey-stick chart says it all: TON is becoming a liquidity magnet and shows no signs of slowing down.

4/ Holder count

This chart shows the number of on-chain token holders of TON, and the growth is absolutely bananas. 🙈 

Right now, there are 32M holders, up from just 2.9M a year ago.

That’s a mind-blowing 11x increase in just one year—talk about explosive adoption and crazy network effects! 

5/ Price

The reason you are reading this is because TON’s price has jumped from $1.20 in August 2023 to $7.12 by today—that's in just 10 months.

P.S. If you’re wondering where TON’s price is headed, we have a pro report coming out soon. You can upgrade here to be prepared.

🥛 The Milk Road Take: Some folks might say this surge is driven by low-quality activity (aka games and airdrops).

BUT here's the deal—they're onboarding users like no other, and once they're in, they're sticking around.

Turns out leveraging Telegram’s massive user base has been a genius move.

And get this—they're aiming to onboard 30% of Telegram's active users to TON by 2028. 

That's about 500 million monthly active users based on Telegram’s estimated growth. Mind-blowing, right? 🤯

If you're hungry for more juicy details, The Milk Road Show has you covered. 

We scored an exclusive chat with Alenka Shmalko who is the Ecosystem Lead at TON Foundation.

She spilled the beans on TON’s unique bromance with Telegram and why it's being hailed as the strongest narrative of the bull market!

Trust me, you won’t want to miss her insider scoop! 🎙🎧

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE: POLL QUESTION 🥛

We wanna make sure our content is as creamy and delicious as possible for YOU!

To do that, we need to understand why you subscribed and what you're looking to get from us.

Here’s the milky results from Wednesday's poll, it looks like a good mix of crypto experience across the board!

Vote in today’s poll and help us help you! 👇

Your feedback is the secret ingredient to our recipe for success! 🥛

THE MOST EXPENSIVE ALBUM EVER IS ONCHAIN FOR $1 🎶

Recently, as part of Base’s Onchain Summer campaign, PleasrDAO announced they were bringing Wu-Tang Clan’s 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’ to the masses.

Here’s the kicker: PleasrDAO snagged the album for $4 million and is now selling access for $1 – a wild flip!

Just like all those NFT traders who bought high and sold low, but this time, it’s on purpose.

Here’s a quick recap of the album’s legendary journey:

• The album was recorded in secret over 6 years with just one physical copy made in 2014. Talk about exclusive!

• In 2015, the album was auctioned off to Martin Shkreli, the infamous "pharma bro", for a cool $2M.

• After Shkreli’s 2018 conviction for securities fraud, the album was seized by the US DOJ and PleasrDAO bought it for $4M in July 2021.

• PleasrDAO held their first private listening event recently, giving fans a rare musical treat.

The catch? This album comes with a unique restriction. It can't be commercially exploited until the year 2103.

That's right, we'll all be rocking our hoverboards and flying cars by then.

BUT PleasrDAO has come up with a clever plan to get around this… it involves moving it onchain – it’s like buying a backstage pass to a concert centuries away.

So what’s the big release plan look like?

The album is encrypted and being sold as multiple $1 NFTs. Each purchase moves the decryption date up by 88 seconds. 

Currently, the $1 NFT only grants access to preview snippets. If all ~28 million NFTs are sold, it’ll unlock the full album immediately. 🔓️ 

Proceeds are shared with the artists, motivating them to tweak the original no-commercial-exploitation clause.

Here we have a beautiful display of token gated content via NFTs displayed with a real world use case. 

NFTs as visual art are cool, but NFTs in music? That’s groundbreaking. Access is the key here – imagine NFTs gatekeeping new songs, ticket perks, IRL events, and more.

Rolling Loud (the biggest hip-hop festival) is already experimenting with NFTs through Loud Punx: Lifetime festival access, VIP perks, the whole shebang.

🥛Milk Road Take: This new model could revolutionize how artists release and monetize albums. 

PLUS, this album has been through the wringer, making it a prime example of NFT innovation.

NFTs have gotten a bad rap. And in most cases it is deservedly so. But the underlying tech is cutting edge. This experiment is a glimpse into the future of their evergreen use case.

FUNDING FRIDAY 💰️ 

Welcome back to Funding Friday! This week, $55.35M was raised by crypto companies.

Here's the scoop on who secured the bag:

1/ Particle Network Raises $15M

• What they do: Particle Network focuses on building robust API, data service, and infrastructure solutions for Layer 1 and Multichain ecosystems.

• Who led the round: Spartan Capital

2/ Renzo Raises $17M

• What they do: Renzo is a DeFi platform specializing in staking, designed to optimize yield for its users.

• Who led the round: Galaxy

3/ Sonic Raises $12M

• What they do: Sonic is a gaming and infrastructure project built on Layer 2 solutions in the Solana ecosystem.

• Who led the round: Bitkraft

Honorable Mentions:

• Zeek Network raises $3M for its seed round to expand its bounty and social network capabilities.

• ZKX raises $3.10M to develop DeFi derivatives within the StarkNet Ecosystem. 

• Bitwise raises $2.50M for its seed round focusing on asset management and finance/banking innovations. 

That's a wrap for this week's Funding Friday, folks!

Remember to keep an eye on these projects as they continue to innovate and potentially reshape the crypto landscape.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

First Solana ETF in Canada filed. 3iQ, the digital asset juggernaut, filed for North America's first Solana ETF. If approved, it'll trade on the TSX under "QSOL". Canada: where crypto gets its maple syrup faster than the US!

Winklevoss twins drop $1M each on Trump's campaign. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the Gemini co-founders, backed Trump with a cool $1 million each. Their contribution was almost as high as Bitcoin's last bull run.

German government to start Bitcoin sell-off. The government has started selling off a large Bitcoin stash, worth over $195M, which was seized from the operators of a movie piracy website, Movie2k.to. The market's now jitterier than a cookie on the edge of the counter.

New AI portfolio management tool on PancakeSwap. The new AI tool, CupcakeHop, promises to sweeten your DeFi experience with automated strategies and real-time risk management. It's like having a financial wizard in your pocket.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

RATE TODAY’S EDITION

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.