Telegram's traffic surge: Prelude to a mass crypto era?
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Telegram's traffic surge: Prelude to a mass crypto era?
Telegram's encrypted ecosystem has begun to show its strength.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Samuel, OKG Research
According to statistics from OKG Research, Telegram's monthly active users have surpassed 900 million, ranking it fourth globally among instant messaging platforms as of April 2024. When this hundreds-of-millions-strong user base opens fully to the crypto space, its appeal is undoubtedly immense.
As previously noted in early reports by the research institute, stablecoins—barometers of demand in the crypto market—have seen their total market cap increase by approximately $30 billion since the beginning of 2024, a growth rate significantly lower than that observed during the previous cycle (H2 2021–H1 2022). As financial bubbles within the industry deflate and the contradiction between lack of new users and intensified competition among existing users intensifies, market expansion has stalled. Liquidity constraints in the crypto market are becoming increasingly pronounced. Whether the narrative around traffic built on Telegram can become a global consensus this cycle remains to be tested by time and the market. However, the emergence of Telegram’s crypto ecosystem is already showing early promise.
*Charts From Statista
In terms of openness and compatibility with the Web3 domain, Telegram offers greater composability and interactivity across several dimensions:
1. Bots enable automated embedded interactions, allowing users to trigger predefined actions via clicks or text-based conversations. For example, trading bots have gained popularity amid the memecoin craze, streamlining the process for users to participate in token launches. Data from leading trading bot applications show over 10,000 new users daily in the past six months, with cumulative users exceeding 200,000.
*Source: https://dune.com/whale_hunter/banana-gun-bot
2. Telegram Mini Apps (TMAs) offer functional aggregation, enabling developers to incorporate HTML, CSS, and JavaScript front-end designs into TMAs, along with development tools to assist integration.
3. Leveraging Telegram’s multi-platform reach, users enjoy consistent functionality across different operating systems and devices, ensuring a seamless cross-platform experience.
4. A deep strategic partnership with TON in blockchain development. Built upon TON’s sharding architecture, Telegram can support massive user interactions at scale. Starting in 2023, Telegram began integrating the wallet feature previously launched by TON directly into its main interface—a critical step toward enabling users to seamlessly enter the on-chain era.
5. Development based on TON’s underlying infrastructure allows projects to leverage centralized platform traffic for user acquisition, followed by commercial growth and product iteration—forming a closed-loop ecosystem powered by Telegram and TON.
Since April this year, numerous mini-apps have gone viral through simple tap-based operations. Currently, top projects have achieved over 140,000 daily active users (DAU) on-chain within just three months of launch. Wallet addresses on TON and those holding TON-based tokens (Jetton wallets) are also showing clear upward trends. As users engage, they are effectively learning the full workflow of participating in Web3 applications on Telegram. Unlike earlier web-based DApp models, the integration between payment and messaging apps is now emerging—laying the groundwork for encrypted payment relationships akin to WeChat Pay.
*Source：https://www.tonstat.com
Since Tether announced the issuance of USDT on TON in April this year, the net circulating supply has reached approximately $680 million, making it the fifth-largest chain by USDT circulation. The large volume of stablecoin transactions indicates strong demand for crypto-related services on TON.
*Source：https://tether.to/en/transparency/?tab=usdt
Web3 developers must rethink how to leverage Telegram’s traffic to achieve commercial closure. Historically, user acquisition relied heavily on exposure through channels, with user retention driven primarily by a project’s financial attributes rather than utility, fostering speculative expectations rather than practical use. While these fundamentals are unlikely to shift in the short term, recent cases involving Web3 mini-games on Telegram demonstrate that integrated payment systems allow users to voluntarily top up while discovering a product’s utility (or entertainment value), helping sustain early-stage operational costs. Additionally, advertising placements, passive content pushes via channels, and peer-to-peer sharing within communities enable significantly shorter user acquisition funnels—creating self-sustaining loops entirely within Telegram.
However, Telegram’s open environment also brings complex information security challenges. Particularly in the context of Web3, which emphasizes decentralization, incidents such as phishing scams and fraud become easier to execute. Balancing openness with robust protection against malicious actors threatening user data security will remain a critical challenge moving forward.
OKG Research will continue monitoring the evolution of Telegram’s crypto ecosystem and its impact on the broader industry. In collaboration with leading institutions focused on the TON ecosystem, we will soon release an in-depth report on Telegram’s crypto landscape, continuing our focus on Web3 innovation and decoding the next chapter of large-scale adoption!
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
@OKGResearch
