TON Culture Kings is back again! This is where the TON Foundation explores meme coins in the TON Ecosystem. Today, we’ll be talking to Hydra, a coin with a Telegram Mini App that aims to simplify user interactions with the TON Blockchain and breathe new life into the ecosystem NFT market. The Hydra team will join us today to share more about their mission, progress, and future plans.

Let’s dive in to learn more about Hydra’s journey, its community, and what’s on the horizon. The team put a lot of effort into this interview, so grab a coffee or your favorite drink, sit down, and relax. This one is quite long, but we're sure it's worth every second.

IMPORTANT: This interview is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement, approval, or recommendation of the project. The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of the TON Foundation. This is not investment advice.

Guys, welcome to TON Culture Kings! Can you start by telling us about the inspiration behind the Hydra Project and what motivated you to launch a Mini App?

We have been working with the TON blockchain for over two years and deeply understand its structure and features. During this time, we have identified many aspects that frustrate us. It is no secret that there are many scammers and idle talkers in the Web3 ecosystem. Hydra Coin's goal comes from the opposite: we aim to create a high-quality product with unique farming mechanics and support projects that have run into difficulties or have been abandoned by their creators.

First of all, we do not divide tokens into ‘meme coins’ and ‘serious coins.’ We view each token as a tool. Each of the 65 tokens is our partner, to whom we will give the best utility, namely: extremely profitable earnings on liquidity supply and tight integration into Hydra services.

The situation in the NFT market is even more dire. The NFT era will end in 2022, and that ending was tragic for most holders. TON Hydra also has noble goals in this field, and with our game, we want to revive some NFT projects.

We have been searching and interviewing specialists for a long time to realize our idea but have only encountered misunderstandings and unscrupulous teams, which resulted in the loss of considerable time and money. Even people deeply involved in the IT sphere could not understand our service's concept or the mechanics of cryptocurrency in general. However, in January 2024, luck smiled on us: DEX DeDust.io was equipped with functionality similar to what we had planned to implement.

Currently, the TON blockchain is experiencing a ‘token era’. We have realized that many token holders will soon be left with useless tokens instead of the promised revenue. This is because most teams are either not positioned well or too inexperienced to fulfill the promises they make or are inherently fraudulent and only seek instant profits.

Therefore, we developed a unique mechanic for our $HYDRA coin by integrating the DeDust boost mechanism. We are applying a similar approach to our NFT @Hydrant. Together, implementing these ideas will allow many investors to offset the losses incurred in other projects with our infrastructure. Below, we will explain in detail how it all works.

Can you tell our readers, just for clarity, what exactly a “liquidity-to-earn jetton” is?

When we say that TON Hydra is a unique project with innovative mechanics, we do it not for the sake of pathos, but because it really is. And here's why:

Let's turn to history. Bitcoin mining mechanics was revolutionary for its time, but by today's standards, it is outdated and extremely energy-consuming. The Proof of Work algorithm consumes a significant amount of electricity and requires “meaningless hardware” while showing low KPI metrics. The new generation of cryptocurrencies, such as TON, have offered new mechanics and integrated a more advanced algorithm: Proof of Stake. This algorithm has significantly higher KPIs than PoW and allows investors with small budgets to earn passive income. However, staking has its disadvantages: it provides low returns while not increasing such an important indicator for blockchains as liquidity, and it does not contribute to the development and support of coins created based on this blockchain.

TON HYDRA offers an innovative mechanism called Proof of Liquidity (PoL). PoL eliminates the need for significant capital investment for staking, validation, or mining. Liquidity providers receive commissions on exchange transactions and are rewarded with new $HYDRA, making participation in the liquidity pool affordable and attractive to a wider audience. $HYDRA has 65+ liquidity pools with various prospective tokens on the TON platform, with a TVL of $3,000,000 already. TON Hydra encourages each holder of these coins to supply liquidity to any pool. Through this, $HYDRA receives collateral from 65+ third-party coins, each backed by the other 65+ coins, with Hydra serving as a bridge for them. DeDust also automatically reinvests swap fees into the liquidity pool, increasing the share of providers in a particular pool, further incentivizing participation, and increasing returns.

In this article, we won't go into exactly how the 65 pools incentivize $HYDRA growth, as this is difficult information for newbies to understand. To that end, we maintain a YouTube channel where we teach users the mechanics of DEX and Hydra. Our video tutorials help the TON audience to easily master the basic processes and effectively utilize the blockchain's capabilities.

However, it is worth noting the unique "routing" mechanism of the DeDust exchange, which allows strong tokens to support weak tokens through arbitrage performed by special trading bots. Only Hydra was able to effectively utilize this mechanism to its own benefit, as well as to the benefit of all our affiliated projects. In our team, we call them “bees” that transfer “honey” (money) from one pool to another, helping to rebalance liquidity. By the way, you can also observe the honeycomb in our logo.

All of the above contributes to the fact that Hydra Coin takes the leading position in the number of transactions with tokens.

Thus, we created a self-sustaining token that allows users to earn from various cryptocurrency mechanics. Users can observe trading between pools and between DEX and CEX exchanges and capitalize on arbitrage opportunities. You can follow this activity through our affiliate channel: @Hydra_Radar.

What kind of feedback have you received from the community about Hydra so far?

Our project has a special section on the forum where users can leave feedback. These reviews are not moderated, and everyone can express their opinion. We welcome constructive and reasoned criticism to help improve our project. We receive most of our feedback during live broadcasts, which we hold several times a week. These broadcasts provide an opportunity for open communication with the audience and prompt feedback.

Community engagement is crucial for any project’s success. How are you fostering a sense of community among Hydra holders, and what strategies are you using to keep them engaged and excited?

We hold 10-15 AMA sessions every month, lasting from 2 to 10 hours. These sessions occur on the main channel, on our forum, and in two closed chat rooms, one of which already has over 600 active participants, each of whom has paid to participate. During these sessions, each participant can ask questions and express criticism, receiving reasoned answers. We also discuss off-topic topics, which helps to strengthen the community. These events bring the community together significantly, and we are proud of the open and friendly atmosphere we have created with our audience. Many great people have joined our project, making the community even stronger.

What are some of the key milestones you’ve achieved with Hydra so far?

1. The cumulative TVL of our coin has exceeded $3,000,000.
2. Hydra Coin's capitalization has reached $160,000,000.
3. Listings have passed:

• DeDust.io
• @xRocket
• @OpenShieldBot
• CoinGecko, Dyor.io, GeckoTerminal, and OpenViewer
• Tonex
• EXTON
• TonBubbles
• Jetton.vote
• At the time of writing, we are verified on CoinMarketCap

4. Took third place in Open League season 4, receiving a prize of $100,000 for the development of our project.
5. Created @TonHydraBot, which simplifies interaction with DEX for inexperienced users.
6. We gave away $20,000 worth of retrodrops.
7. Over $1,000,000 was mined in 6 months from liquidity pools.
8. Recorded several tutorial videos on YouTube, and spent more than 250 hours at open AMA conferences, answering all questions about the project and teaching newbies the nuances of our mechanics.

Hydra Coin currently supports about five tokens whose creators cheated and abandoned their audience. Hydra helps holders of these coins convert unprofitable tokens into liquid assets. The first service we partnered with was @xJetSwapBot. Unfortunately, this service was hacked, and 1,000 Hydra coins have not yet been returned, although, according to our records, the attackers have recovered the stolen funds. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

You’ve mentioned plans to expand your use of NFT collections. Can you elaborate on how you intend to use NFTs? Which collections in particular do you have your eyes on?

We are very saddened by the fact that many worthy NFT collections on TON have fallen victim to fraud due to the greed of their founders. These collections, with excellent visuals and a close-knit community, deserve to be supported.

We intend to give NFTs real utility. The first collection to be integrated into our ecosystem will be TON DOODLES. We plan to integrate other projects in the future for mutual benefit. As part of the initial phase, we will offer the ability to change the skin of the main character using NFT, as well as customize individual NFT attributes directly within the game. Our ambassadors' NFTs will be integrated as additional locations in the game and stylized to the ambassador's project.

HYDRANTS NFTs released by us will provide players with additional bonuses. These NFTs will include a token mining mechanism on our smart contracts and will be integrated into our @farmizen game, providing additional value and functionality to our community members.

What has been the most memorable moment within the Hydra community so far?

We have accomplished a lot in such a short period of time and we are proud of what we have achieved. There have certainly been events that have left their mark on our memory, but Hydra is, first and foremost, about the people who create it and the projects that integrate it. In this section, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who helped us overcome difficulties and supported and continues to support our aspirations to create a truly historic project not only within The Open Network but also in the crypto world in general.

First and foremost, we extend a special thanks to the DeDust.io exchange for giving us the opportunity to realize such a unique project as Hydra Coin.

We express our gratitude to all the teams on TON who support us. Among them are SCALE, JVault, Raffles, Web3, Lucky, Microdiving, Dyor, Bolt and DHD Holders, Sharks Club, IVS, ScamScore, Potato, Grabs, CAVI, Fish, Kingy and DAO LLama. These teams and members have been with us since the inception of Hydra.

Seeing all the support from these teams and their commitment to our project, we realize that we have achieved our goals. Our name and logo symbolize the mythical Hydra, where ruby-shaped heads represent liquidity pools, each representing Hydra's invulnerability and cohesion with partner tokens. With this concept, we will be able to jointly overcome any challenges that are bound to arise on the TON blockchain.

We are confident that only by working together can we achieve great heights and overcome all obstacles in our way. Therefore, we feel it is our duty to mention all the teams and people who have made TON Hydra what it is, for they deserve it.

How about the team behind Hydra? Are you guys doxxed?

Our CEO, Sonya, is engaged in the most important tasks of strategic development of the project and is responsible for its successful implementation. Under his leadership, the project is steadily developing and reaching new heights. He actively interacts with partners and investors, representing the interests of the project. Ton Foundation has all the detailed information about him.

The second member of the team: Ihor.ton (whose text you have been reading for the last ten minutes and who apologizes for his lack of brevity) deals with various tasks related to coordination of the development and design team, provision and validation of their work; writing texts and programs; collaboration issues; development of identity; video/text instructions; and site/channel/chat moderation.

Also worth mentioning is our development team from Taiga.Labs - Bauman graduates with excellent discipline and experience in working with startups, which is crucial for effective development in Web3. In particular, thanks to Mikhail for his high professionalism.

We are grateful to Kirill for his contribution to the project's development. He successfully negotiates with various projects, popularizes Hydra in the information space, promotes the project on personal media resources, and provides support in project management.

We want to emphasize the professionalism and contribution of our illustrator, Artemy, who easily understands all our ideas and provides high-quality and creative work. Thanks to designer Maxyao, who created the illustrations for this article. Special thanks to Andrei from Microdiving for the high-quality merch with our project's identity!

We express our gratitude to our volunteers: Marina, Helena, Victor, Roman, Vladislav, Signor Tomato, Andrey, Rulet, Alexander, Mark Avreliy, Groot, Nikolay, Pill, Michael, Serge Che, Desoto, as well as to AlphaTon community, and many other holders and participants of our project, all of them are the standard of a cohesive community, the analog of which is hard to find on TON!

In conclusion, we would like to thank TON Foundation for the opportunity to publish this article. Your support is a key factor in developing our ideas and the TON blockchain ecosystem!

Have there been any major challenges or setbacks that Hydra has faced? How did the team address these issues, and what lessons did you learn?

We face difficulties and challenges daily, but that doesn't mean we will back down. Various methods were used against us: threats, blackmail, reports on our channels, and on the founder's account. Every possible “stick in the wheel” has been used against us. But fortunately, our rocket has no wheels, so we continue to move forward calmly and confidently. ;)

Looking ahead, is there anything else we haven’t already mentioned that the community can expect from Hydra in the near future?

As we mentioned earlier, we are making a game called Farmizen. While we can't give a lot of details yet, we can share some details. This game will directly interact with DEX mechanics, specifically liquidity provision and swaps. By its design, you can guess the setting and understand how the farmer game will be connected to Hydra Coin mechanics. This implementation will attract a large paying audience that we plan to actively engage with by integrating them into the blockchain and educating them on the possibilities of cryptocurrency through gamification so that their experience will seamlessly transfer to the actual mechanics of working with cryptocurrency. As for the logo, you can see in @Farmizen that it is simply an inverted Hydra logo. However, there is a lot more meaning behind it. In addition to the core Hydra concept, the logo features elements of various shapes and sizes to symbolize the islands in our game.

The game's setting includes a system of flying islands on which the player grows various plants. It's not hard to guess that these islands represent Hydra's partner projects.

TON Hydra's mission is to provide a service with easy integration for the audience and passive income opportunities. Most people do not yet realize the full promise of the TON blockchain. We believe that many promising services will soon emerge on this blockchain, and we will contribute to this by developing and applying them. Smart contracts on the TON blockchain have greater functionality and flexibility than other blockchains, which allows us to more effectively integrate various DeFi mechanics into the game setting.

We believe that the main breakthrough of the TON blockchain will be in the area of interactive and gaming applications, and Hydra aims to succeed in this area.

Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring memecoin creators looking to make it big in the TON Ecosystem?

Don't create projects for the sake of money.