Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | Nan Zhi
With the explosion of Notcoin, the TON ecosystem has ushered in a viral growth model through Telegram invites. This method has been used in various WeChat mini-games such as “Sheep Sheep Sheep,” “Synthesis Big Watermelon,” and “Cute Dog Transformation.”
However, due to licensing restrictions, domestic games cannot adopt a direct payment model and most commonly rely on advertising for monetization. In the Telegram ecosystem, there are no such restrictions, and the convenient link with the TON wallet provides a seamless payment channel. After viral marketing, how do these TON ecosystem games monetize users?
Paid Props
Taking the most popular click-type games as an example, the in-game tokens or points in these games are directly related to the number of clicks, and some click games have added enhancements using TON in the game, but at a reasonable cost. In TapSwap, users can pay 0.5 TON (worth about $3.5) to permanently double their points. If users believe that the game token’s final coin issuance expectation and value are high, purchasing Boost becomes a must for long-term participants.
Beyond click games, there are also projects with genuine gameplay, where users are not solely motivated by the expected coin issuance in the Crypto sector but are willing to pay for the game itself.
Take the most well-known Catizen as an example, the game follows the same gameplay as the popular Cute Dog Transformation on WeChat years ago. Users can raise pets of various levels, collect their output tokens, and then continue to cultivate higher-level pets. While Cute Dog Transformation could only monetize through ads, Catizen has adopted a different strategy in the TON ecosystem.
Firstly, Catizen introduced a game props payment module, allowing users to pay TON to obtain Fish tokens, which can accelerate the pet hatching process in Catizen, with marginal input costs increasing rapidly. For users ranking high, the motivation is more about supporting the game rather than seeking rewards. According to Catizen’s official disclosure, over 50% of users have become paying customers, indicating a very high conversion rate. In addition to paid props, Catizen plans to become a game Launchpool platform, which will be discussed later in this article.
Targeting Exchange Startups
Exchange Rebate Registration
While other games are still incentivizing users through referral tasks, TapSwap is the first to introduce a Binance new account registration task, where the registration link is verified with an invitation code.
Telegram has surpassed 900 million users, compared to Binance’s 200 million users, indicating significant room for development. However, it is worth noting that the top five download regions for Telegram are India, Russia, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil, most of which are non-crypto industries and Binance-friendly countries, casting doubt on the achievable user increment.
Exchange Product Diversion
Pixelverse is a nurturing combat game where users automatically receive game tokens over time and then train pets for battles. In the task list on the Dashboard, Pixelverse has collaborated with the Bybit Web3 wallet task, with participation reaching 700,000 addresses after eight days of launch. Odaily’s query of past completed activity data shows that the duration of nearly six events ranged from 3-4 weeks, with participation numbers of 320,000, 250,000, 580,000, 120,000, 70,000, and 80,000. It is evident that the TON ecosystem can capture a significantly higher number of users than native Web3 projects, indicating a clear advantage in traffic growth.
Traffic Monetization
As seen in the previous section, traffic growth is a significant advantage of Telegram, where projects with large communities can redirect their traffic to other projects for monetization.
Returning to Catizen, the official disclosure outlines the next steps for the Launchpool and game platform development roadmap. Catizen has signed contracts with over ten WeChat mini-games, planning to gradually launch these games on the Catizen game platform. Transitioning from Gaming Bot to the game Launchpool empowers governance token holders.
Projects employing this method are widespread, with varied practical paths. For instance, the educational app XPLUS diverts traffic from Catizen through homepage ads, while the click game PocketFi allows users to consume tokens from another app, TON PUNKS, to gain click enhancements.
Conclusion
By analyzing the closed-loop logic of TON ecosystem projects through user visits, payment conversion, user retention, and repurchase, it is evident that leveraging Telegram provides a natural and significant advantage in attracting sufficient user visits.
However, in terms of user conversion, except for a few projects with genuine gameplay, projects relying solely on coin issuance expectations lack sufficient reasons to attract paying users. Moreover, there is a high degree of homogeneity, making it challenging for non-top projects to convert paying users.
Therefore, becoming a “success guru” or a “seller of shovels” remains the only way for the current business model of the TON ecosystem to close the loop, i.e., taking the lead and selling traffic to other projects for revenue.
The current TON ecosystem projects have initially demonstrated the feasibility of the free game viral growth + paid value-added approach. However, how to truly leverage Telegram’s unrestricted dissemination capabilities, Crypto’s highly compatible wallet extensions, and the massive user base of 900 million users remains a question awaiting the next answer.
