I noticed an interesting trend — mini-games in Telegram have long ceased to be just an experiment. When I first started exploring this area, it seemed like just another hype wave, but the real numbers tell a completely different story.

A year and a half ago, mini-games in Telegram were rare. Now, there are over a hundred launched, and forecasts predict thousands of projects. This isn’t just growth — it’s an explosion. And the most interesting part is that most people still don’t understand how these games actually make money.

It turns out that the main revenue source is not even player microtransactions, as I initially thought. The key is traffic. Projects pay for user acquisition, and mini-games in Telegram have become an ideal platform for this. It has essentially displaced old Web3 task platforms because here, there are real people, not bots.

One company, Vertex Capital, even developed its own game, Token Hunter, specifically for this ecosystem. They are confident that the market could grow to hundreds of millions of active users monthly. This is a market worth tens of billions of dollars.

But what surprised me the most is that people are genuinely willing to pay. Catizen has earned over $16 million through in-game purchases. Notcoin generates more than $300,000 monthly. These are not just microtransactions — this is serious money.

A simple scheme is at work here: mini-games in Telegram allow players to pay small amounts — $0.99 or $1.99. Think about how this works in regular mobile games. Small payments, but huge turnover. Traditional blockchain games required buying expensive items, which deterred regular players. Here, everything is more accessible.

The question of issuing tokens is a separate story. Many projects haven’t decided yet whether they need their own coins. Some are waiting for negotiations with exchanges, others simply don’t know how to do it properly. But the trend is clear — hybrid monetization will become the standard. Advertising plus in-game purchases plus potentially tokens.

What really impressed me is the speed of development. A year ago, no one believed in mini-games in Telegram. Now, it’s a real business with real income. And this is just the beginning. The TON ecosystem is slowly but surely proving that it can be something bigger than just an experiment. Perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new gaming market right now.