Catizen, Hamster Kombat Dominate Almost All TON Network Metrics: Bitget Report

• TON daily active addresses (DAA) peaked at 900,000 in August, up from 50,000 in January.
• Transaction volumes have risen from 100,000 to 1.2 million a day in under a year.
• Hamster Kombat and Catizen are primary draws for Telegram and TON adoption.

A report from Bitget into The Open Network (TON) has further cemented the wild success of its play-to-earn (P2E)/play-to-airdrop (P2A) Web3 gaming rollout, revealing that Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) and Catizen (CATI) are the biggest draws for Telegram’s budding blockchain ecosystem.

Hamster Kombat Leads

Building on the P2E success of Notcoin (NOT), which “pioneered” the monetizable mini-app experience on Telegram, Catizen , and Hamster Kombat are the major drivers behind TON’s absurd growth.

As of August 2024, Hamster Kombat’s click-to-earn model attracted a whopping 200 million users, with almost 10 million subscribers to its X channel and an additional 28.7 million on YouTube.

Just to put things into perspective and show how tantalizing airdrops have become, its users now exceed 250 million, the YouTube channel now has 37.1 million subscribers, and its X channel now has over 13 million followers. That’s just a few weeks after the report’s data was gathered.

The HMSTR token airdrop could be the biggest ever, as it will distribute 60% of the token supply to players. Bitget premarket pricing data estimates that the total market cap of the token will reach $1.28 million, meaning the airdrop is worth $768 million.

Catizen Performance

Catizen’s performance has been nothing short of spectacular , either. As of June 21, 2024, Bitget reported the number of players had exceeded 20 million; today, it stands at 39.4 million. This has converted into the game currently having over 3 million on-chain users and 4.5 million daily players, more than double that of June.

According to the Catizen Telegram, the game has generated over $25 million and is the first Web3 app to reach 1 million paying users. Hamster Kombat has not yet disclosed its revenues, though judging by its user count and daily players , the game has probably raked in more than Catizen.

Geographic Appeal

These mini-apps and bots that reward players were found to be particularly popular in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) regions and South Asian countries.

The report shows that the top three countries for Hamster Kombat traffic are Russia (22.18%) and India (19.63%). This makes sense, given that in 2023, India and Russia downloaded Telegram 83.85 million and 35.06 million times, respectively.

These trends echo that of Axie Infinity, a Web3 game that at one time was providing Filipino players with a sustainable income. With emerging markets such as the Philippines and Pakistan also driving significant traffic to TON through Hamster Kombat, Telegram’s GameFi push may have lasting appeal in these regions.

Growing Pains

That said, these wildly high levels of growth may prove troublesome for Telegram. According to Bitget’s report, the TON ecosystem’s growth primarily comes from Telegram mini-apps, and this could cause some troubles for the TON token.

According to the report, a lack of “robust DeFi development” has left TON exposed to low trading volumes and weak lending demand. Much of this is attributed to a lack of utility for stablecoins and returns for liquidity providers, not an issue of liquidity itself.

Whilst Telegram’s Web3 gaming efforts are drawing in new users and paying players, there isn’t much else for crypto users to do on the platform. The TON team has said that it intends to take a leaf out of Ethereum’s (ETH) book and launch its own layer-2 network named the TON Application Chain (TAC).

Based on Polygon tech, TAC is set to make it even easier for Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and other developers to build the DeFi ecosystem TON desires.