Telegram tap-to-earn game Catizen’s token has gone live for trading with 150 million tokens, or 15% of the total 1 billion supply, airdropped to users as part of its Season 1 distribution, following a two-month delay to its initially planned launch.
Trading began for the TON blockchain-based CATI tokens at 6 a.m. ET on Friday morning. They are listed on several centralized exchanges, including Binance, Bybit and Bitget. Deposit registrations for CATI to non-custodial wallets opened on Thursday, and the tokens were also distributed to eligible participants at 6 a.m. ET today based on their game activity, the team said.
This is part of a larger allocation of 340 million CATI tokens dedicated to airdrops, with the remaining 190 million used for quarterly airdrop campaigns, according to the team.
Pluto Studio, the developer of Catizen, began the airdrop process on Sept. 14, revealing token allocations to players. Users could claim and stake CATI tokens on selected centralized exchanges ahead of Friday’s token generation event.
Some Catizen players were upset about their token allocations during the airdrop process, as the team had initially allocated a larger percentage of the supply. However, shortly before the airdrop, the allocation was reduced, with 9% of the token supply diverted to the Binance Launchpool instead. They also criticized the eligibility weighting for some players.
Of the other 57% of the total CATI supply, 5% is reserved for liquidity purposes. 15% is allocated to the treasury, 20% to the team, 10% to investors and 7% to advisors, each with a 12-month cliff and 48-month linear release schedule.
Citizen claims to have more than 39 million total users and 18 million monthly users. It surpassed $16 million in revenue from in-app purchases in July, according to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
Telegram clicker game craze fuels TON blockchain growth
Telegram mini apps are lightweight, web-based applications that can be embedded and accessed directly within the popular messaging platform.
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Telegram has expanded its crypto footprint in recent months, with millions of gamers using the messaging app to play tap-to-earn games like Catizen, as well as Hamster Kombat, Notcoin and Yescoin in the hope of earning corresponding tokens on TON blockchain.
Notcoin’s token NOT went live on the TON blockchain in May, peaking at a market cap of around $1.5 billion before dropping back to $816 million, according to The Block’s Notcoin Price Page. Hamster Kombat’s token is scheduled to launch on Sept. 26.
Capitalizing on the games' explosive growth, Telegram also introduced a mini-app store and an in-app browser with support for Web3 pages in July.
According to a recent report from Bitget, TON blockchain now has a 900 million active user base and hosts more than 1,159 crypto projects.
The TON ecosystem's daily transaction volume has grown twelvefold from 100,000 to 1.2 million over the past year. Bitget said its TVL currently stands at $350 million, up 1,800% in less than six months, driven by DEX trading volume growth.
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