TON Ecosystem: The User Growth Playbook — From Social Viral Marketing to Traffic Monetization

In the rapidly evolving blockchain space, the TON ecosystem has carved out its own distinctive growth path. Drawing inspiration from WeChat's Mini Programs success, TON's MiniApps are not only driving ecosystem-wide user expansion but also giving Web3 projects innovative business models and effective traffic acquisition strategies. These MiniApps demonstrate powerful traffic-pulling capabilities across Telegram channels, enabling Web3 projects to rapidly reach a massive user base. This article takes a deep dive into the TON ecosystem's rapid growth, analyzing how it leverages MiniApps to provide valuable business model references and traffic acquisition solutions for future Web3 users on Telegram and other Web2 channels — helping them succeed in an increasingly competitive market.

Remarkable Growth in TON's On-Chain Data Common metrics for evaluating ecosystem growth include transaction volume, active address count, smart contract development, total value locked (TVL), network fees, validator participation, token transfer volume, and MiniApp interactions. These metrics collectively paint a comprehensive picture of an ecosystem's development and activity level.

User Acquisition Strategies on TON Social Viral Marketing: An Effective, Low-Cost User Growth Strategy Social viral marketing is a highly effective user acquisition strategy with broad applicability, particularly on social media platforms. By leveraging users' social networks, it achieves rapid user growth through relationship chain propagation. Compared to traditional advertising, social viral marketing is both more cost-effective and more persuasive — users are far more likely to trust recommendations from friends or family. Furthermore, social viral marketing exploits network effects and viral gameplay mechanics, producing exponential spread and highly targeted user growth. Users acquired through viral marketing tend to share similar interests, needs, and behavioral characteristics with the target user base, making the spread more efficient. Additionally, because these campaigns are built on social products that people use daily, user stickiness is higher, allowing users to engage more frequently with the platforms and products.

Learning from WeChat's Viral Marketing Strategies As a proven success story in social viral marketing, WeChat's regulations around Mini Program operations, external link management, and personal account usage offer valuable lessons for other platforms. Viral marketing tactics that were once banned on WeChat can now be tested on Telegram. By studying WeChat's operational experience, projects on Telegram can apply these social viral marketing strategies to achieve viral spread and rapid user growth.

Application Scenarios: Games Depending on product and business complexity, there are different tiers of viral marketing for user acquisition:

Zero effort, earn money: Attracting users through simple earn-to-play mechanics — projects like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, which amassed hundreds of millions of users and massive Telegram subscriber counts.
Probability-based games: Combining viral marketing with probability-based lottery features such as red envelope sharing, lucky spins, and mystery box openings. Representative projects include Catizen (cat breeding) and TonGifts (red envelope distribution). These projects leverage social networks to rapidly spread users.
Casual games: Attracting users through more complex gameplay and entertainment scenarios, such as Catizen and PixelTap (robot combat). These casual games deepen user engagement and participation through richer user interactions.

Application Scenarios: Memecoins User acquisition strategies apply not only to traditional products but are also critical for promoting Memecoins. The viral spread of Memecoins can be compared to the difference between natural and lab-grown diamonds. Natural Memecoins spread organically through community-driven initiatives, typically expanding from Reddit to Telegram or Discord and then to broader social platforms. Artificial Memecoins, on the other hand, use social viral marketing strategies to achieve viral spread within Telegram.

The key to creating a breakout Memecoin lies in the "high-effort + crowd mobilization" strategy. This involves leveraging low-cost, high-explosive social scenarios for promotion. A developer-friendly environment and fair-launch design are also essential factors for attracting users. In addition, generating FOMO (fear of missing out) encourages broader participation, which in turn builds strong consensus and user traffic.

These user acquisition strategies are not only critical for incubating Memecoins but also serve as a powerful engine for user growth across the Telegram and TON ecosystems. This strategy opens up enormous opportunities for the future development of the Web3 ecosystem.

An Extraordinary Success Story: Notcoin Notcoin is a social clicker game (Clicker App) accessible via Telegram. Since its official launch on January 1, 2024, it rapidly attracted a massive user base. The game reached staggering milestones within just a few months: 40 million Telegram users, 8 million Telegram channel subscribers, and 6 million daily active users. Here are the key milestones in its growth:

January 1, 2024: Official game launch.
January 26, 2024: Cumulative user count reaches 20 million.
February 29, 2024: Joint event with Binance.
March 8, 2024: Pre-market opened on Getgems; 10 million Notcoin points exchangeable for one NFT voucher (ultimately equivalent to 10,000 $NOT).
March 30, 2024: Tokenomics announced, declaring 100% of NOT tokens would be distributed to players.
April 12, 2024: Mining ends and the official tokenomics model is announced.
May 16, 2024: Simultaneous listing on Binance, OKX, and Bybit.

Notcoin's success can be attributed to three key factors:

Telegram's need: Telegram needed a thriving ecosystem — a large number of apps similar to WeChat's Mini Programs — along with a path to profitability for developers. Notcoin addressed exactly that need.
TON Foundation's need: The TON Foundation aimed to establish TON token utility and business models by building an application ecosystem. Notcoin provided an ideal application scenario.
Exchanges' need: In the current bear market, exchanges were hungry for new Web3 users, and Notcoin's massive user base provided just that opportunity.
Web3 and Web2 users' need: Notcoin's success also stemmed from meeting the needs of diverse user groups — experienced Web3 users seeking fairness, and Web2 newcomers seeking low barriers to entry and high potential returns.

Furthermore, Notcoin's success benefited from serving the needs of these diverse user segments — experienced Web3 users seeking fairness and Web2 newcomers seeking low barriers to entry and high returns.

Telegram + TON Core Business Models

In-App Purchases (Virtual Value-Added Services) This model — a primary revenue stream for mini-games in the WeChat ecosystem — has generated countless blockbuster paid products, such as "Sheep a Sheep" in 2021.

As of Q2 2024, WeChat mini-games surpassed 500 million monthly active users, with estimated annual revenue of 40 billion RMB. The following is WeChat's best-selling mini-game list for June 2024:

Much like WeChat mini-games, in-app purchases have become a proven business model in the Telegram + TON ecosystem, particularly in gaming. Catizen is a prime example. Since its launch in March 2024, Catizen attracted over 50 million users in under four months and generated more than $20 million in revenue through in-app purchases. Notably, Catizen's success lies not just in its massive user base but also in its high ARPU (average revenue per user). Furthermore, 40% of Telegram Premium users are Catizen players, demonstrating a high degree of integration between virtual value-added services and social platforms — creating significant profit opportunities for developers.

Token Exchange Listings Exchange token listings are another major business model in the Telegram + TON ecosystem. The Notcoin project exemplifies this model's success. Since its official launch in January 2024, Notcoin rapidly accumulated 40 million users and successfully listed the NOT token through a series of events and strategic partnerships (such as the Binance joint event and the Pre-Market on Getgems). This model not only helped Notcoin rapidly scale its user base but also achieved a seamless transition from game to financial market through tokenomics. Ultimately, Notcoin's token was successfully listed on major exchanges including Binance, OKX, and Bybit, further cementing its market position. Catizen and Hamster also completed successful listings at the end of September.
Traffic Conversion — Sales, Joint Operations, Incubation Traffic Sales: An Effective Monetization Strategy In the Telegram + TON ecosystem, traffic sales have become an effective and direct monetization strategy. Projects such as Holdcoin, Tomarket, and Banana represent this model, generating significant revenue by selling user traffic from Telegram channels. Based on the volume, quality, and regional distribution of acquired users, the per-user selling price on mainstream platforms ranges from $0.03 to $0.10. This model not only enables rapid cash flow but also provides a convenient user acquisition channel for small and mid-sized projects.

Joint Traffic Operations: Incubating New Projects with a Mature Ecosystem The joint traffic operations model — known as the "Cheetah Model" — is widely used in the Telegram + TON ecosystem. Catizen's long-term plans include this strategy, with the goal of incubating 200 games that once thrived in the WeChat ecosystem. By leveraging an existing user base and traffic advantages, the joint traffic operations model helps these games rapidly acquire users on Telegram and find new life. This model not only reduces marketing costs for new projects but also significantly increases their success rate, allowing once-popular games to be reborn in a new ecosystem.

Meme Incubation: Full-Funnel Promotion from Community to Market The Meme incubation model is an extension of traffic sales and joint operations, combining the functionality of launchpads and DEXs to deliver an end-to-end solution for Memecoin projects — from incubation to market promotion. Blum is a successful example of this model, with 20 million Telegram channel users. Through the Binance Labs MVP program, the Blum project successfully promoted multiple Memecoin projects across social platforms and within the crypto market. The Meme incubation model leverages Telegram's powerful social network and TON's blockchain technology, enabling emerging Meme projects to rapidly capture community attention, attract initial traffic, and ultimately achieve trading on DEXs. This model not only drives the spread of Meme culture but also gives investors and community members the opportunity to participate in innovative projects.

Advertising Revenue Telegram's new TON-based advertising revenue model gives public channel owners a new path to profitability. Channel owners can earn 50% of ad revenue, paid out in Toncoin (TON), the native cryptocurrency of the TON blockchain. For channels that struggle to monetize directly — especially those in education and entertainment — this model provides more room to develop quality content. Telegram also offers the Telegram Star program, which allows channel or bot owners to place ads through the Telegram advertising platform and pay with Stars from their channel or bot account balance, enjoying discounts of up to 30%. This gives channel owners a more effective way to attract new users, further boosting the exposure and growth potential of their channel or bot.

Summary — Reflections on Telegram Traffic and Web3 Growth As Telegram's user base continues to grow, traffic sales and joint operation incubation models carry enormous potential in the Telegram + TON ecosystem. Going forward, these models may further integrate big data analytics and AI to improve the precision of traffic matching and marketing effectiveness. At the same time, as the TON ecosystem matures, the integration of traffic sales and blockchain technology will give rise to even more innovative business models, helping projects stand out in a competitive market.

In the Web3 ecosystem, the critical challenge today is acquiring new users and traffic rather than relying solely on narratives. Attracting a sufficient user base can organically drive narrative formation, and Meme culture is one of the most powerful drivers of both traffic and narrative. As the natural vs. lab-grown diamond analogy illustrates, while Pepe — as a natural representative of Meme culture — holds unique intrinsic value, carefully designed and marketed synthetic Memes can generate comparable value as well.

These trends demonstrate that Telegram, as a traffic monetization platform, offers tremendous flexibility and diversity, creating a wide range of business opportunities for project developers and investors. By effectively leveraging these traffic monetization models, project teams can achieve rapid growth in a short timeframe and reach their desired business objectives.