#BinanceAlphaAlert Telegram games like 'Notcoin' and 'Hamster Kombat' helped chart a new path for web3 gaming

Quick Take TON’s gaming lead said “around 20%” of Telegram’s 950 million global users were actively playing games.

Thanks in large part to gaming, in roughly one year, the number of accounts on the TON network rose from approximately 4 million to 128 million.

User acquisition has long been the biggest challenge across the web3 gaming sphere. Then, in 2024, with the launch of mini-games on the Telegram messaging platform, it appeared that web3 gaming may have turned a corner.

Telegram has said that it has 950 million users worldwide.

With the introduction of clicker games that promised to reward players with token rewards, the messaging platform experienced a surge in gaming. In August, TON blockchain gaming lead Inal Kardan told The Block that “around 20%” of Telegram users were actively playing games.

TON, or The Open Network, is the blockchain network used by games published within Telegram.

TON, or The Open Network, is the blockchain network used by games published within Telegram.

The success of the mini-game "Notcoin" is credited by many as the title that kicked off the wave of game development within the TON ecosystem, largely due to the success of its airdrop. After launching in January, the "Notcoin" team then initiated a $1 billion token airdrop in May, with the project airdropping 80 billion NOT tokens.

"'Notcoin' was the one to sort of say this is how easy it is, anyone can do it," Martin Masser, chief business development officer at Ston.Fi, said when speaking at The Block’s Emergence crypto conference in Prague. "That was version one and now everyone is building on top of that."