Social Graphs to Yield Graphs in APAC: Why Telegram Is the Next Stage for DeFi

This September, the TAC team went to Korea Blockchain Week and Token2049 Singapore to engage with local builders and communities. The team gained first-hand insights into how Asia is shaping the next wave of DeFi.

For years, the bottleneck in crypto wasn’t technology but user adoption. How do you get billions of everyday users to actually experience DeFi? 

We’ve had the infrastructure, the contracts, the liquidity, but the audience was missing.

The bridge between social graphs (the way people connect) and yield graphs (the way liquidity flows) is being built inside the one app where APAC already lives, Telegram. 

With TAC, Ethereum’s most battle-tested DeFi primitives are now within Telegram MiniApps, transforming group chats into potential liquidity hubs and social interactions into financial coordination.

This isn’t just another UI upgrade. It’s a distribution opportunity for builders. 

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Messaging SuperApps in Asia 

In APAC, messaging apps aren’t side tools, they are the internet. 

Kakao in Korea, LINE in Japan, WeChat in China, WhatsApp across India and Southeast Asia. These platforms function as SuperApps where users don’t just talk; they shop, trade, play, and coordinate.

Telegram, already the fastest-growing messaging app in Asia, fits perfectly into this paradigm. Unlike regional incumbents, Telegram is global, open, and crypto-native by design. When APAC users adopt it, they’re not just adding another chat app; they’re moving into a new internet layer where social connections and financial interactions can co-exist.

This cultural alignment is what makes APAC the testing ground for DeFi on Telegram. Here, the idea of coordinating financial moves directly inside chat groups isn’t strange, it’s natural.

The Opportunity: From Social Graphs to Yield Graphs

Think about a Telegram group chat. It already acts as a coordination layer, traders sharing alpha, gamers pooling resources, friends splitting bills. These are social graphs in action, networks of trust, coordination, and conversation.

Now imagine those social graphs connected natively to liquidity. A yield opportunity can be surfaced, acted on, and shared inside the same group. The yield graph, the flow of assets and rewards, overlays directly on top of the existing social graph.

The result is powerful: liquidity doesn’t just sit on AMMs or lending markets waiting to be discovered. It moves where conversations happen, and it can spread at the speed of memes.

Why APAC Distribution Matters

1. Cultural Fit: Messaging-First

Users in Korea or Japan actively use Kakao and/or LINE. Extending this pattern to Telegram is frictionless. Embedding DeFi in MiniApps mirrors how they already interact with FinTech inside messaging SuperApps.

2. Retail Energy

From the Philippines’ play-to-earn wave to India’s UPI explosion, APAC is home to some of the fastest retail adoption curves. Distribution here doesn’t trickle down; it surges bottom-up.

3. Community as Liquidity

In APAC, community isn’t a buzzword; it’s infrastructure. K-pop fandoms, gaming guilds, LINE sticker economies: these groups go beyond culture, they also have the potential to mobilize capital. Imagine what happens when these groups discover they can coordinate token strategies inside their Telegram chats.

The TAC Unlock

Here’s where TAC comes in.

Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem is unmatched in maturity, but it has never had a direct route into APAC’s messaging-first internet. TAC changes that by acting as the EVM-native infrastructure layer connecting Ethereum logic to Telegram distribution.

• Solidity stays intact. Developers don’t need to rewrite contracts for TVM. TAC ensures Ethereum backend logic is executed.
  
  
• Telegram feels native. Through the TON Adapter, the frontend lives inside Telegram MiniApps. The user never leaves their chat.
  
  
• Unified liquidity. TAC doesn’t fragment assets; it ensures DeFi primitives retain Ethereum-grade security while reaching Telegram’s billion-plus users.
  
  

For developers, TAC isn’t “another chain.” It’s the distribution layer that Ethereum always needed.

Social Graph → Yield Graph: Examples in Motion

1. Group Yield Sharing

A Telegram chat of 500 Filipino gamers can route stablecoins into Curve pools. Yields are tracked inside the chat and profits are shared transparently. 

2. Meme-to-Market Flywheel

In Korea, stickers and memes spread fast. 

For example, a sticker pack can create awareness and direct traffic into a Morpho lending vault, turning culture into capital. The meme is the marketing, the MiniApp is the onramp, and TAC is the backend.

3. Collective DeFi Action

Japanese LINE users are used to pooling money for shared activities. On Telegram, the same social behavior can route into DeFi vaults. A potential case study would be a travel group locking ETH together, earning yield until the trip, and cashing out when needed. The social graph drives yield without requiring centralized intermediaries.

Why Telegram Is the Ideal Layer

• Open and global. MiniApps allow any developer to embed experiences without gatekeepers.
  
  
• Crypto-native roots. From TON to Wallet in Telegram, Telegram has always embraced crypto’s open ethos.
  
  
• 1B+ distribution. Already a leading messaging app in APAC, TG is growing the fastest in emerging markets.

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The APAC Playbook for DeFi Builders

If you’re an EVM developer, the opportunities in Asia are straightforward:

1. Launch your MiniApp on Telegram. Use TAC to deploy your EVM DeFi logic without rewriting contracts. Your MiniApp lives directly where conversations happen.
   
2. Leverage collective group dynamics. Design products that scale with communities, not just individuals.
   
3. Ride retail adoption. MiniApps lower onboarding friction to zero, letting anyone with Telegram access DeFi.
   
4. Think hybrid. Your backend logic stays on EVM; your frontend is Telegram-native. This hybrid model allows you to launch quickly in the APAC region. 

The $TAC Incentive Layer

Distribution alone isn’t enough. Incentives matter. TAC aligns liquidity providers, developers, and communities through $TAC, the asset that secures the chain and rewards active participants.

In Asia, where community activity drives adoption, $TAC becomes the glue, rewarding developers who embed DeFi into MiniApps, and rewarding validators who secure the hybrid ecosystem.

DeFi Distribution Opportunity

With TAC, social graphs transform into yield graphs, not by dragging users into Web3, but by embedding Web3 where they already are: Telegram. For Ethereum developers, this is the chance to stop fighting for fragmented attention and instead ride the natural distribution of messaging SuperApps.

The next billion users will open Telegram, tap on a MiniApp inside a group chat, and join their friends in earning, lending, or staking.

When that happens, there’s a high chance the APAC region will emerge as one of the leading markets.

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DeFi dApps need distribution. It needs a way to connect the liquidity graphs of Ethereum with the social graphs of the real world.

That’s what TAC unlocks. 

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