Telegram Escape Roomer

The decline in the ratio of real users has further exacerbated the market's false prosperity. “In the early games, like Hamster Kombat, the ratio of real users was relatively good, probably around 60%. But as the ecosystem expanded, this ratio kept decreasing, and by the end, having 40% is already considered remarkable,” Xiaoguang revealed to BlockBeats.

Even within this 40%, the “airdrop tax” from professional airdrop hunters has not been excluded; their goal is not to play the game but to receive airdrop rewards. “When we calculate paying users, among the remaining real users, 90% of the addresses are held by the same group of people. They are specifically here for airdrop benefits, play and leave immediately afterward.”

This user structure directly determines the vicious cycle of the Telegram mini-games ecosystem. In the short term, data inflation masks the true situation, allowing investors and trading platforms to continue footing the bill. However, in the long run, the entire ecosystem suffers from extremely poor user quality and low stickiness.

From the perspective of trading platforms and investors, the surface-level monthly active data of Telegram mini-games is astonishing, with immense traffic. However, the real user retention rate and conversion rate are abysmally low. "If the sole purpose is to manufacture monthly active data and wallet addresses to show trading platforms and investors, then this low-cost traffic is sufficient," said Sleepy, the founder of the Ghost NFT, who confirmed this month that they have temporarily suspended mini-game development on Telegram.

"But if you want truly active users, users who are willing to play your game, use your app, then it is absolutely impossible to obtain them with such low acquisition costs," Sleepy expressed. "It seems that, looking at it now, the saying still holds true—one gets what one pays for."

Our promotion method still relies on Crypto Twitter, community promotion, and crypto ad channels, along with exchanges between projects," Sleepy stated. "However, in these exchanges, we have never been able to break out of this circle."

In other words, the traffic only flows from one project to another, but the water in the entire pool remains stagnant, with no fresh inflow.

The TON ecosystem has never truly bridged the gap between Telegram's 9 billion users and Web3. It seems that the TON Foundation and Telegram have not built a truly effective distribution channel to allow Crypto apps to reach a broader audience. Sleepy remarked, "Perhaps they are trying, but I have not seen the results yet."

TON and Telegram have never been the same.

TON Foundation: Vacuum of Power and Uncontrolled Direction

In the past six months, when discussing the TON Foundation with industry insiders, they always mention the "factional struggles" within the TON Foundation: the Russian team, the Taiwanese team, and the Dubai team after TON obtained the Dubai Financial License. These three teams did not bring synergies but instead made the resource allocation within the TON ecosystem extremely uneven—whether one can receive support within the TON ecosystem often depends on the relationship with the Russian team.

The TON Foundation was originally founded by two core members, one of whom is the current Foundation President, Steve Yun, who is still active in various online and offline events. The other member is Andrew Rogozov, who was the former CEO of VK (the predecessor of Telegram, the first social platform created by Telegram's founder, similar to the Russian version of Facebook), and is considered by some to be a "key figure" in the inner circle.

However, at some point, the power structure of the TON Foundation underwent a subtle change—Andrew Rogozov seemed to fade out of the core management of the Foundation and founded TOP (The Open Platform). This organization now seems more like a true foundation than the TON Foundation, or perhaps like Consensys in the TON ecosystem, and even leads the core ecosystem development of TON.

"To be honest, as a foundation, the information we actually receive from Telegram is not much. Pavel Durov and his team do not discuss anything with us at all. In fact, they only communicate with the wallet team because the wallet is the only real integration point. And that is not our team, it's a completely different company called TOP." This was said by Jack Booth, the Marketing Director of the TON Foundation, in an interview in July 2024, indirectly confirming the influence of TOP.

TOP's influence has gradually surpassed that of the TON Foundation, not only investing in and supporting the most crucial projects on TON but also controlling the ecosystem's infrastructure. They are responsible for running the Telegram official wallet TON Space, supporting the most active wallet in the TON ecosystem, Tonkeeper, and the largest DEX Stonfi in terms of trading volume. Even the only staking protocol Tonstakers is also supported by TOP. From the perspective of key nodes in the TON ecosystem, TOP has become the de facto "core builder" of TON, while the TON Foundation seems more like a publicity organ, with its power gradually being marginalized.

Then on January 14, 2025, the TON Foundation announced the appointment of board member and Kingsway Capital founder Manuel Stotz as the new CEO, with former CEO Steve Yun continuing to serve on the board.

In the face of such "power erosion," it is also understandable why there are rumors that "the TON Foundation, mainly led by a Taiwan team, has almost no say in many affairs."

The vulnerability of the TON Foundation's Chinese community in ecosystem resource allocation has become more apparent. "The Taiwan team has little say, and core technical decisions are still in the hands of the Russian team," Xiaoguang pointed out. "If they can maintain a good relationship with the Russian team, they can get the most support. For example, Catizen has a very good relationship with the Russian team, received investment, and gained a lot of resources."

Xiaoguang's words were indirectly confirmed in TOP's investment list, which includes Catizen's game developer, Pluto Studio.

Another blockbuster indie game, Notcoin, founder Sasha Plotvinov, openly stated that he has a close relationship with the TON Foundation. This relationship not only allowed Notcoin to take the lead in the TON ecosystem but also made it a benchmark project in the Telegram indie game track. It is worth noting that Sasha Plotvinov is also the CEO of Open Builders, and Open Builders' products largely overlap with TOP's and belong to the "core circle." "DOGS is also made by the Notcoin team. They are all part of Russia's own control," Xiaoguang said, "showing many similarities in trend."

Looking at the trend charts of the three coins from August last year to date, the trends are indeed very similar. Furthermore, looking at March 16 yesterday, influenced by the news that "Telegram founder Pavel Durov was allowed to leave France," some tokens in the TON ecosystem surged. Among them: TON's 24-hour gain is 20.7%, currently priced at $3.53; NOT's 24-hour gain is 18.7%, currently priced at $0.002543; DOGS' 24-hour gain is 10%, currently priced at $0.0001475. (Prices are as of March 17th at the time of writing)

From top to bottom are: TON, NOT, DOGS

The success of Catizen and Notcoin is to some extent not a success in the track, but a result of the high centralization of TON core resources. These two projects started half a year earlier than most indie games and received full support from the foundation. In other words, the prosperity of TON indie games is not a true "open ecosystem" but a game of resource allocation.

Another fatal problem in the TON ecosystem is the confusion and abrupt turn in strategic direction. At the resource support level, the TON Foundation's focus swiftly shifted from Telegram small games to DeFi, directly causing many small game developers to be forced to abandon their projects.

"When we were in contact with the Foundation, we could clearly feel that, at some point, they basically stopped paying attention to all game projects and started frantically searching for DeFi projects," Sleepy said. "This shift came too suddenly and was a huge blow to teams that were seriously developing products, causing a significant loss of developers and users."

Sleepy strongly disagrees with the direction change made by the TON ecosystem: "I think TON should not simply copy what other public chains are doing. Without relying on Telegram, TON cannot achieve its current user base in terms of performance, language, and development difficulty. Therefore, TON should plan its next steps according to the characteristics of a social platform, rather than blindly following other public chains."

"Our initial assessment of TON was that its ecosystem would be similar to WeChat Mini Games or TikTok Mini Games, becoming part of a social platform's traffic monetization." However, the TON Foundation's decisions completely deviated from this direction. "They are doing stablecoins, they are doing DeFi, these are all huge mistakes, just like WeChat creating a stock trading mini program. Would you use a WeChat mini program for stock trading?" Sleepy bluntly stated.

This strategic mistake by the TON Foundation not only caused the ecosystem to miss the right narrative direction but also directly triggered a crisis—In August 2024, TON founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France. This event dealt a huge blow to the TON ecosystem, plunging the Foundation into chaos.

"The reason is actually because they added a function similar to fiat-to-stablecoin, which involved compliance and political factors, especially against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war," Xiaoguang revealed to BlockBeats. Prior to this, BlockBeats had also heard similar opinions from other sources, indicating that a stablecoin-related feature drew regulatory scrutiny.

The original TON ecosystem had already been thrown into chaos due to strategic swings and uneven power distribution, and the founder's sudden event further deprived this ecosystem of its last support.

"Death Accelerator": Project Factory and Trading Platform

In addition to the traffic black box, factional struggles within the TON Foundation, and sudden shifts in resource support, the project factory and trading platforms were also key factors accelerating the demise of the Telegram mini-game track. The frenzy in this ecosystem was essentially a short-lived capital game, and true user growth had long been stagnant.

Within this track, game development was highly industrialized, with project factories mass-producing various mini-games in a assembly line fashion, experimenting in the market, and inevitably, a few projects would succeed. "For example, the game developer behind Catizen, Pluto Studio, initially ran more than a dozen games, and ultimately found that the cat-breeding model was the best, so they decided to focus on it," KinKin remarked.

In other words, Catizen's success was not accidental but rather the result of intensive project experiments. This model is essentially high-turnover, low-cost, rapid trial and error.

"The cost of this is actually very low," KinKin explained, "Many game developers directly go to the WeChat Mini Program market to find validated games, get the game code, change the H5 skin, then wrap it in a Telegram IDK (Integrated Development Kit), and they can go live directly. Moreover, in the later stages, the price of these mini-game codes becomes cheaper and cheaper.

Low cost, short cycle, quick deployment, have made these game projects highly speculative. More importantly, once a game model has been market-validated, it will be quickly replicated and scaled up, with the top players often having "pricing power." KinKin mentioned, "Catizen was very aggressive in negotiating with the trading platform and even leaned towards OKX, demanding $500,000."

Once a project succeeds, its bargaining power will increase significantly. The reason Catizen was able to negotiate strongly was that after the failure of multiple game projects, it accumulated enough market experience and precisely identified the user base willing to spend money. "Small games like Catizen that have been validated through a dozen projects do have mature products and have attracted a wave of users willing to spend money," KinKin said.

The success of top projects has also brought another problem—highly concentrated resources. "The traffic of a project like Hamster Kombat is almost equivalent to that of a medium-sized trading platform."

However, the Telegram mini-game ecosystem never saw a "living water" influx, lacking external incremental market entry. The high-density "bombardment" by project factories left almost no room for other mini-games to survive, let alone Web2 game developers—they hold a large amount of abandoned, unlisted games, with very low trial and error costs. In this competitive environment, the Telegram mini-game track accelerated its decline.

Another driving factor is the game theory of the trading platforms. The traffic brought by the TON mini-game has shown the platforms a new growth point. In the short term, frequent listings have led to the market being oversold prematurely. Looking back at Binance's listing timeline, it can be observed that the interval between listings for new projects is becoming shorter:

May 16: Notcoin listing;

84 days later: TON listing;

13 days later: DOGS listing;

23 days later: Catizen listing;

13 days later: Hamster Kombat listing

"During the DOGS listing, all trading platforms were competing for this data, even offering rewards through activities like 'Withdraw from my platform, and I'll give you back some DOGS.' Why did they know DOGS had traffic? Because NotCoin had already proven it once. NotCoin and DOGS are from the same team, just with a different skin repeating the same path as NotCoin," KinKin told BlockBeats.

A deeper issue is that the user growth rate in this cycle has fallen far behind the previous cycle. At least before Trump launched his coin, the market's anxiety about Web3 user growth was very evident, and this anxiety naturally transferred to the trading platforms. Although the user quality in the Telegram mini-game track is uneven, at least in the early stages, the conversion of TON's traffic could still bring some data growth to the trading platforms. However, this data growth is fundamentally unsustainable.

Ultimately, the more projects in the pipeline of the project factory, the faster the listing frequency on trading platforms, and the faster the cool-down of the race track.

After several rounds of listings, the user increment on trading platforms gradually dries up, losing the motivation to continue listings. For latecomers, the first-mover advantage has been maximized, and the space for latecomer projects and coins is getting smaller and smaller. All of this makes the collapse of the Telegram mini-game ecosystem inevitable.

TG+ Web3, Is It Really a False Proposition?

"Have you ever envied those projects that can list on Binance?" Faced with BlockBeats' question, Sleepy responded quickly, clearly having considered this question long ago.

"It depends on how you define success. Many people think that getting listed on a trading platform is a kind of industry recognition, but I don't feel that way. For me, issuing a coin is not the project's end point. If you treat it as the end point, it will be very hurtful, hurting yourself, the community, and the investors. Because everyone can see that the performance of these coins after listing is very poor, and the effect of attracting new users is far from the trading platform's expectations," Sleepy said.

The "Fast Money Logic" of the TON ecosystem makes everything simple and brutal—changing to a new narrative every three weeks, the quick-money traders lead the market's rhythm, while teams that truly want to build become the eliminated "outliers." In this ecosystem, idealists ultimately have only two choices: either abandon their beliefs and go with the flow, or be eliminated.

Sleepy and his team ultimately chose the latter. He cut 80% of the team, several core members agreed to delay their salaries, and allocated some resources to do Web2 design outsourcing to sustain the team.

"In addition, we are also in talks with some public chains for grants. We have already received the first Launch Grant and will continue to do some development work to complete the remaining KPIs. We have also applied for hackathons like Monad Madness to see if we can achieve some results. Currently, the income from the past few months is already more than what we earned from gaming on TON," he self-deprecatingly said.

After the collapse of the TON ecosystem, various people who were once active in it have found their own new paths.

KinKin has now shifted to the AI Agent track and is very optimistic about the future of the BASE chain. Meanwhile, Xiaoguang, who excelled at creating narratives, is researching memes. He understood early on that "Telegram mini-games business is structural, not a sustainable model, and the window of opportunity is only a few months." A former member who once worked hard to promote the TON ecosystem at the foundation has left and started studying the Kaia public chain that merges Korea and Japan.

In an ecosystem that prioritizes traffic above all else, only traffic remains in the end. The TON ecosystem did not become the "future of crypto-social," it was merely another cyclical Web3 narrative, a market game that is shorter, faster, and more extreme in profits than public chains or ZK tracks.

Looking back on this frenzy today, for developers, the TON ecosystem once disguised itself as the hope for "social + Web3," attracting them to enter this market, but ultimately turned them into producers of black-box data; for players, airdrops created the illusion of "overnight wealth," but the result was simply a $0.99 game bundle becoming the "cyber incense money" of a new era.

Looking at the entire industry again, the rise and fall of Telegram mini-games is not an isolated phenomenon, it is merely an extreme "microcosm" of the entire Web3 industry. In fact, whether it is a public chain, ZK Rollup, or Layer 2, the essence of many tracks is the same, just packaged more "grandiosely," with higher costs and longer cycles. Most Web3 projects are essentially running a large-scale Telegram mini-game, some with longer lifecycles, some shorter.

「Telegram + Web3, Is It Really a False Proposition?」

Each interviewee gave their own answer, but I decided not to write it down because, dear reader, this time, I want to hear your thoughts.

This article thanks all the interviewees for providing information. To protect privacy, some interviewee information has been blurred.