Telegram passed one billion monthly active users in March 2025, and the number that matters for game studios is the share of those users who now treat the messenger as a games platform. The Mini Apps surface that Telegram opened to developers in 2023 turned a chat client into a runtime for bot-driven, tap-to-earn, and arcade-style games that load inside a conversation thread without a separate download. By the second half of 2024 the platform was hosting hundreds of titles, and three of them, Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and Catizen, each crossed tens of millions of players in their first six months. Two years later, the experiment has cooled and matured at the same time. Many of the early viral games have shed users, while a smaller cohort of better-built Mini Apps has settled into steady weekly engagement that resembles a proper mobile gaming category rather than a hype cycle.
That maturation has also pulled the line between gaming and gambling closer to the surface. Inside the same Mini Apps surface, game studios sit alongside bot-based casino fronts that operate through Telegram channels and mini-app frames, often using the platform’s Stars currency or external crypto wallets for play. Players who picked up the habit of tapping a hamster for tokens last summer can now find themselves a few clicks away from real-money tables wrapped in similar interfaces, which is why a clear consumer guide on the topic, like this primer on Telegram gambling explained for general readers, has become useful reading for anyone moving across the platform. The line is not always obvious from a player’s perspective, especially on mobile, and that ambiguity is shaping how studios, regulators, and Telegram itself talk about the next phase of the ecosystem.
How Mini Apps Turned Telegram Into a Games Runtime
Telegram added direct Mini App launches and inline support through Bot API 6.7 on 21 April 2023, and the platform expanded with version 7.8 in July 2024 and 8.0 that November. Each release added richer device features, full-screen modes, and better monetisation hooks. The result is a runtime that loads HTML5 games inside a chat without an App Store install, which collapses the friction between seeing a friend’s message and entering the game. That friction reduction is the most important shift in mobile gaming distribution since the move from web-based Flash titles to native app stores, and it explains why studios that built TON-native games saw user counts climb past anything a traditional indie release would normally reach. Discovery happens inside group chats, completion rates on first sessions are unusually high, and viral loops compound across contact lists in a way that bypasses the algorithmic gatekeepers on TikTok and Instagram.
The Notcoin Origin Story and the First Tap-to-Earn Wave
Notcoin launched in January 2024 and reached 4.1 million players in its first week. By the time the original tapping phase paused on 1 April 2024 and balances were locked for an airdrop snapshot, the game had crossed 35 million total players with around 6 million daily active users at peak. The NOT token went live on exchanges on 16 May 2024, distributing 80 billion tokens to participants based on their in-game balances. The mechanic was deliberately simple. A user opened the bot, tapped a coin on the screen, and watched a balance increment, with multipliers tied to invites, daily logins, and progression milestones. There was no graphics engine, no voice chat, no inventory, and no PvP. The product worked because it converted attention into a measurable balance and then converted that balance into a tradeable asset, which is a pattern that previous web3 game launches had attempted at much lower retention.
Hamster Kombat, the 300 Million Player Peak, and What Came After
Hamster Kombat launched on 26 March 2024, hit 100 million users by May, and by the summer the developers were claiming more than 300 million total registrations. Daily active counts were estimated near 185 million on 24 June 2024 according to figures shared on the studio’s social account, with the usual caveat that bot accounts and duplicates inflate any tap-to-earn measurement. The HMSTR token launched on TON on 26 September 2024, with 60 billion tokens distributed to 131 million qualifying accounts. First-day trading volume exceeded 1.2 billion dollars. After the airdrop the player base contracted sharply. Monthly active users dropped below 100 million within weeks, fell to 41 million by late 2024, and by April 2026 industry trackers estimated only 13.1 million monthly users. The post-airdrop cliff has shaped how every subsequent TON game plans its token unlock and retention strategy, which is the single biggest lesson the category took from the first wave.
Catizen, Major, and the Move Toward Game Loops With Real Depth
Catizen launched in March 2024 as a cat-themed merge game and reached 36 million total players, 7 million daily active users, and 1.4 million on-chain players by mid-2024. The CATI token launched in September 2024 alongside reported milestones of 34 million users and 800,000 paying users. By later updates, the project claimed more than 55 million total players. Catizen mattered because the gameplay loop was deeper than Notcoin or Hamster Kombat. The merge mechanic provided real session length, cross-game leaderboards, and a portal that pointed users to other Mini App titles, turning Catizen into a discovery layer for the rest of the TON gaming ecosystem. Major, Yescoin, TapSwap, and a tail of smaller titles followed similar templates with mixed results, but the Catizen blueprint of a long retention loop combined with a discovery hub became the design pattern that better-funded studios adopted for the second half of 2025.
Why Studios Outside Crypto Started Building Mini Apps in 2025
During 2025 the conversation around Telegram gaming shifted away from pure tap-to-earn loops and toward broader genre experiments. Independent studios that had previously shipped on Steam, the App Store, or Google Play began porting smaller titles to Mini Apps because the distribution math is hard to ignore. A modestly produced casual title that would struggle to reach 100,000 installs through normal channels can reach a million Mini App sessions on Telegram with a single round of group-chat seeding. Studios working in puzzle, idle, social-deduction, and trivia genres reported acquisition costs that were lower than any other mobile platform they had tested. The trade-off is that monetisation per active user is also lower, since a meaningful share of users never connect a wallet or buy Telegram Stars. Studios with patient roadmaps and ad-supported designs have done better than those that planned around token launches as their primary revenue moment. A handful of studios in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia have also begun treating Mini Apps as the primary release channel rather than a port destination, building games that assume Telegram-native mechanics from day one, with friend lists pulled from group chats and progression that revolves around shared message threads rather than isolated player profiles.
Telegram Stars and the Shift to In-App Currency Monetisation
Telegram Stars launched on 6 June 2024 as the platform’s in-app digital currency. Users buy Stars through Apple, Google, or Telegram’s own PremiumBot and spend them on digital products inside bots and Mini Apps, including game items, e-books, and online courses. Developers can withdraw Stars as Toncoin through Fragment, the on-chain auction platform that Telegram has used for usernames and numbers, and they can also redirect earnings into discounted Telegram ad placements. The arrival of Stars matters for game studios because it gives them a compliant way to sell virtual goods inside Mini Apps without forcing the user to manage a self-custody wallet. That removes a large chunk of the friction that kept casual mobile players away from earlier TON games. The combination of Stars at the front of the funnel and Toncoin payouts at the back end has produced the first stable monetisation stack the platform has had.
The Continuous-Play Habit and How Mini Apps Feed Into It
Mini Apps slot into a broader pattern in mobile gaming where session lengths are short but session counts are high across a day. Editorial coverage of continuous play mechanics in modern gaming has tracked how players now expect to dip in and out of multiple titles in a single afternoon, and a Telegram bot that loads in three seconds inside an existing chat fits that habit better than a native app that demands a launch screen, an update, and a login. The most successful Mini Apps from late 2025 onward share a few traits: a session that resolves in under two minutes, a clear daily reward loop, social hooks that work even when only one of two friends is active, and progression that survives the hour or two between play windows. That formula is now visible in puzzle games like Pixel Tap, idle titles like Yescoin Quest, and asynchronous strategy games on the platform.
The Gaming Versus Gambling Question Inside a Single Surface
The same Mini Apps surface that hosts puzzle and arcade games also hosts bot-based casino fronts that route players to slots, table games, or sportsbooks operated outside Telegram itself. Some of these are well-built consumer products with clear terms. Others are less transparent, and the visual language of a tap-to-earn loop can blur into the visual language of a slot reel without a player noticing the transition. Telegram’s policy stance has tightened across 2025 and into 2026, with stricter rules around real-money flows and a requirement that all crypto Mini Apps migrate to TON rather than other chains. The shift toward Stars as the default in-app currency also pulls more activity into a settled compliance track. None of this removes the consumer education problem. Players who arrived from a viral tap game will encounter casino-style products inside the same chat surface, and a careful read of independent guides remains the most reliable filter for anyone who wants to keep gaming and gambling separate. The pattern is similar to the way casual web portals in the early 2000s sat next to early online poker rooms, except that the transition between the two experiences now happens inside a single chat thread rather than across a browser tab, which compresses the attention required to make a clear choice. For studios building straight games, the practical consequence is a stronger incentive to design interfaces, balances, and reward animations that read as decisively non-gambling.
Where the Telegram Gaming Category Is Heading Through 2026
The category that emerged from the first wave of tap-to-earn games is now visibly different in shape. The Block coverage of TON gaming charts how studios moved from minimal-loop tap games into genre-driven mini titles that hold daily attention without a token incentive, with TON Foundation funding programs and direct Telegram support pushing better tooling into developer hands. The next twelve months will test whether the platform can sustain a second cohort of hits. The likely winners are titles that lean into the social fabric of Telegram itself, that integrate Stars cleanly, that offer a session loop short enough for a commute and deep enough for a lunch break, and that resist the urge to launch a token before the gameplay justifies one. The pure tap craze is over. What replaces it will look more like a mainstream mobile gaming portfolio, hosted inside the largest messenger in the world, with a tighter line between play and bet than the ecosystem managed in its first frantic year.