The Open Network’s nascent gaming ecosystem has emerged as one of 2024’s most interesting case studies in crypto as casual games like Notcoin, Hamster Kombat and Yescoin may have helped onboard tens — if not hundreds — of millions of people to web3.

Gaming on the TON blockchain (The Open Network) has grown exponentially in recent months after a series of clicker games, which offer players the promise of earning token rewards, became accessible to anyone with the Telegram messaging app.

TON Foundation’s Gaming Lead, Inal Kardan, said as recently as last December, only about 1% of Telegram’s monthly active users were playing games on the app.

"And I was saying it should be at least 10% to 12% as on other socials, or even 30%, as on WeChat," Kardan told The Block in a recent interview. "Now around 20% of users of Telegram play at least one game per month. So it grew 20 times."

Telegram, which recently said it has 950 million users worldwide, has become home to several mini-games that utilize the TON blockchain, which has a long association with the messaging app's creators.

For now, most of the games are focused on building their communities and spurring engagement, according to Kardan.

"All these games, their monetization model is not about in-app purchases, it’s all about traffic. They are all monetizing traffic in different ways," said Kardan. "You cannot monetize traffic the same way as they do it right now after the TGE (token generation event). So after their TGE, their model has to change."

Besides Hamster Kombat, other titles like Catizen and Yescoin will also likely be initiating a token airdrop in the near future.

Notcoin paved the way

So far Notcoin is the only major Telegram title to demonstrate how a tap-to-earn game with millions of users could, or should, approach executing a major token airdrop (TGE) with the goal of keeping players engaging with its ecosystem. After launching in January, the Notcoin team initiated a $1 billion token airdrop in May when the project airdropped 80 billion NOT tokens.

The game’s NOT token currently has a market cap of $1.1 billion, according to The Block’s Price Page. Last week, Notcoin's creators launched another game on Telegram to grow its ecosystem.

"They're launching companions, they're launching marketing campaigns, they want to launch new games. They even launched an acceleration program," Kardan said of Notcoin. "This is about finding a way to keep your existing audience engaged. You already have millions of users, and you have to offer them something interesting."

Hamster Kombat's next step

How Hamster Kombat will follow in Notcoin's footsteps remains to be seen, but the game is generating significant interest online as the project claims to have more than 300 million users. The team behind the title appears adept at convincing people to follow, join and subscribe to Hamster Kombat's social channels on X, YouTube and Telegram.

Although it's unclear how many of the users playing Hamster Kombat — or following its social channels — are bots, the game’s founders told The Block last month that they plan to address the issue before the game's token listing.

"Nobody knows what is the percentage of bots. We also don't know that," said Kardan. "Not even the Telegram team knows because many people have multiple Telegram accounts."

Hamster Kombat had originally planned to launch its TGE last month, but last week said that because it's planning the "largest airdrop in the history of crypto," the technical challenges of the airdrop have made it "impossible to predict" when the event will occur. When the TGE happens, the project's developers said 60% of its token airdrop will be dedicated to players, according to its whitepaper released last week.

Kardan is bullish on Hamster Kombat's chances of surviving the TGE and building a sustainable gaming ecosystem.

"They already have a huge audience," he said. "They can try to convert those users into players of a new game and if that new game is a mid-core game where people are more likely going to spend money on in-app purchases. They will have a really good revenue stream."

Future of gaming on Telegram

Mid-core games are popular on mobile devices. Games that classify as "mid-core" tend to be more complicated and strategy-driven than casual games like Hamster Kombat and Notcoin, but they also don’t require the same level of focus required for most console games. Mid-core gaming ecosystems can generate significant revenue from in-app purchases as players attempt to level up or improve their gaming experience.

Kardan sees mid-core games as playing a big role in the maturation of gaming on the TON blockchain and Telegram.

"There is a game called Gatto; this is a mid-core game on Telegram like Tamagotchi, where you have your own pets, and you have to play with them. We see that they have started getting lots of users, and they have good revenue as well," he said. "We expect that more games like Gatto are going to be launched on TON and Telegram in the next six months.”