How Telegram Mini-Apps Are Onboarding A New Generation Of Crypto Users

Thanks to recent moves by social messaging app Telegram, the tipping point for blockchain technology suddenly looks a lot closer than it did at the start of the year.

“Web3” is a notoriously hard-to-define term, but broadly refers to a version of the internet powered by decentralized technologies, primarily blockchain. While our current Web2 is characterized by the influence of large corporations, and the control they exert over major web services and users’ personal data, Web3 promises a more egalitarian, user-owned web that is more akin to the internet’s earliest incarnation.

To date, Web3 has been relatively slow to gain traction. Usability issues are one of the chief reasons why. There’s a learning curve when it comes to working with crypto platforms, and for those used to popular Web2 services, it can be a jarring and difficult change.

Telegram To The Rescue

Help has come in the form of one of Web2’s most popular messaging apps: Telegram. The platform has around 900 million users, putting it in the top 10 of global social media apps. But Telegram’s founders have proven visionary in more than one way.

Firstly, mini-apps – web-based applications that run directly within Telegram – have enabled developers to build simple and fun games and other services that can be easily accessed by users, without leaving the platform. Secondly, the decision to launch a high-performance blockchain, named TON (The Open Network), and integrate this closely within Telegram’s user experience, makes handling blockchain payments seamless. Crypto tokens that trade on the open market can now easily be included within apps to serve as rewards, facilitate payments, and build complex economies.

Users are now downloading and using these blockchain-powered mini-apps in their tens of millions. Thanks to Telegram, Web3 now starts to look and feel a lot more like Web2.

The Challenge Of Tokenomics

One of the key difficulties for those who design these new crypto-powered games and apps is creating economic models that reward users and other stakeholders, but that are sustainable over the long term. The term tokenomics – “token economics” – refers to the way these in-game economies are designed to balance supply and demand for the token. Get it wrong, and the value of the token crashes as users sell what they earn: a very real illustration of the dangers of inflation.

One of the problems is to reach beyond Telegram’s relatively closed ecosystem to access revenue sources that will feed through to create demand for tokens. While the communities that grow up around mini-apps can number tens or even hundreds of millions of users, they are often quite self-contained. This isolation makes it hard for tokenized mini-apps to succeed; imagine an economy that consisted of exchange of goods and services within a large but closed room full of people, and you’ll get the idea. There’s only so much value they can provide each other without external input.

Breaking out of this closed system is a priority for businesses who want to create robust and sustainable tokenomic models that will underpin healthy in-app activity. Without this, any mini-app is destined to falter after an initial surge of interest, as new apps are released and users leave for better opportunities.

Connecting With The Outside World

In practice, there are many ways of generating revenues from external sources by leveraging a large in-app community. Adverts are one of the most obvious options, and these can easily be integrated, either within an app or in a group Telegram chat itself.

Another approach, pioneered by mini-apps like TimeFarm, is to treat the app’s community as more active participants. TimeFarm, which was launched by blockchain recruitment company Chrono.Tech, combines the social media reach of Telegram’s huge communities with crypto’s efficiencies for micropayments – transactions of a few cents or even less.

TimeFarm has attracted a community of almost 10 million users, who log in regularly to collect rewards – in the form of the $SECOND token – for engaging with the app and carrying out simple tasks. These might be as brief as liking or sharing a social media post, or referring a user to another service.

Businesses are crying out for this kind of social engagement online. The Web2 model involves a top-down process of buying ads and trying to induce social media users to share and comment on interesting or (increasingly) controversial posts. The Web3 model is more grassroots-based. Social media users can be directly paid in crypto tokens to interact with posts in their thousands and millions.

Crypto’s Killer Use Case

This is far more effective and financially efficient than existing approaches. In fact, it is impossible to achieve with legacy technology. Businesses have no way of making huge numbers of tiny payments efficiently, especially in real-time and across borders.

This is one of crypto’s killer use cases – and Telegram, with its massive user base, slick blockchain integrations, and fast-growing mini-app ecosystem, is at the forefront of a new wave of crypto adoption.

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