TON Gaming and NFT Activity Still Strong Following Catizen and Hamster Kombat Airdrops—Report

• An additional 100,000 players have joined Telegram’s gaming ecosystem in the last month.
• Nine games command an active wallet user base of 3 million.
• TON on-chain active wallets and on-chain activations are still down from September highs.

The Open Network’s (TON) popular gaming ecosystem is reportedly performing well, as Telegram’s Web3 offerings continue to draw and retain players.

Helika, an analytics firm focused on the video game industry, has released an analysis dubbed “Telegram Games Report: Key Data and Emerging Trends” that covers the ecosystem’s developments over the third quarter of 2024.

It analyzed data from hundreds of applicants to the Telegram Gaming Accelerator (TGA), as well as games from Helika’s partners.

Focus Is on Long-term Retention

The findings revealed that the ecosystem remains robust after the gigantic airdrops from Hamster Kombat and Catizen, last month, with both retaining players and new players joining the ecosystem.

In addition to Catizen, the analysis highlights the sizeable growth of titles such as X Empire, Rocky Rabbit, and Banana, all of which have pulled in millions of players. They are part of the most popular “Simulation” category, wherein Hamster Kombat is one such simulation title.

Commenting on the matter, Anton Umnov, CEO at Helika, said:

“We have received several hundred applications for the TGA, and I see Telegram games evolving into more engaging and immersive experiences. With the rise of deeper game mechanics and stronger in-game economies, developers are moving beyond simple gaming mechanics. The focus is shifting toward long-term retention.”

Telegram Gaming Sees an Unusual Demographic Trend

Player demographics reveal that 55.9% of the gamers are European, 21.3% are from Asia, 13.2% come from Africa, and 8.6% are American.  The remaining smaller percentages are divided among Australian, Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian player IDs.

It contrasts with the typical Web3 gamer profile, which usually comes from Southeast Asia and Latin America.

As Joonmo Kwon of Delabs Games shares in his recent opinion piece, in his home country of South Korea, Web3 games have faced strict regulation, but that could soon change:

“South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee signaling plans to shift game rating duties to the private sector could pave the way for blockchain-based games like GameFi to flourish in the country. This is good news for the South Korean gaming community and could foreshadow what’s to come in other highly regulated countries, pushing Telegram gaming to even greater heights.”

Last month, a similar report from Bitget noted that Hamster Kombat and Catizen were leading TON network usage metrics. Somewhat contrary to Helika’s findings, the report found that a vast majority of Hamster Kombat users were from Russia (22.18%) and India (19.63%).

Mixed Network Activity

Helika’s report  also highlights that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are relishing in some notable activity gains, with the number of unique wallets transferring NFTs rising in Q3 2024.

According to TonStat , the number of NFTs minted on TON has risen from roughly 14 million on Sept. 18, 2024, to approximately 16.8 million as of Oct. 17, 2024. That said, activity overall is still yet to recover from the steep decline in TON wallet and smart contract activity.

To put things into perspective, after the Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) and Catizen (CATI) airdrops, the number of on-chain wallet activations per day fell from just under 300,000 to a low of 39,000.

The number of daily active wallets also fell off a cliff on Sept. 30, dropping from 1.4 million to under 500,000 in under two weeks.

So while it would seem that there are still plenty of Telegram gamers and an increasing amount of games, they may not be playing with the feverish airdrop-chasing fervor they once had.