Dialogue with Catizen Co-founder: The post-TGE retention rate is still higher than traditional games, planning to release short dramas and other potential hit content

Interview: flowie, ChainCatcher

Guest: Ricky Wong, Co-founder & CFO of Catizen

Organizer: flowie, ChainCatcher

Catizen is one of the hottest Telegram/TON ecosystem mini-games this year, with over 44 million registered users and more than 3.3 million on-chain users.

After the TGE in September, how will Catizen continue to maintain ecological growth? What strategic plans are in place? How does Catizen view the current status and future trends of Telegram/TON ecosystem mini-games?

Recently, Ricky Wong, co-founder of Catizen, delivered a keynote speech at the "DeInsight 2024" annual summit co-hosted by the Web3 asset data platform RootData and ChainCatcher. He reviewed how Catizen incentivizes user participation in the Web3 shared economy era and announced a subsequent token buyback plan, committing to repurchase over 10 million CATI tokens annually to give back to the community.

After the event, ChainCatcher also invited Ricky Wong for a dialogue interview, where he shared more detailed insights into Catizen and the successful experiences of its issuer, Pluto, including how to ensure sustainability in the future and his views on the future of the Telegram/TON ecosystem.

The Three-Part Issuance Behind Catizen

1. ChainCatcher: How did you first get into the Crypto field, and what prompted the core team to establish Catizen?

Ricky Wong: Before joining the Crypto space, I worked in auditing and was familiar with risk control. Later, around 2013, I transitioned to private equity and hedge funds, investing in various fields. When the blockchain boom began in 2017, I initially used my personal funds to invest in Web3 projects, including Ethereum, experiencing both profits and losses along the way.

I met another co-founder of Catizen, Tim, during my auditing career. During my investment period, we frequently discussed investments and Web3.

During the pandemic in 2021, Tim and I coincidentally met two other co-founders of Catizen, who each had extensive experience in the blockchain and mini-game sectors. We often discussed how to integrate our experiences and resources from various fields to find a platform for deepening our work in Web3.

We considered how Web2 became popular and found that a fundamental approach was to spend money to attract users and scale up. For example, internet giants seek investors to scale up. We believe this approach is also applicable to Web3, but the key is who is willing to pay.

We think the most willing to pay might be public chains, so we focused on which public chains have a sufficiently large market and user base. We discussed many public chains and ultimately decided to issue on Telegram and TON first, as they were willing to provide us with the most support, and Telegram has a massive user traffic.

2. ChainCatcher: Catizen has somewhat driven the trend of mini-games on Telegram; why did you choose to start with mini-games? What were your initial thoughts on sustainability?

Ricky Wong: We focused on the mini-program mini-game platform launched by Telegram. It already had so many users from the start, so we thought that to establish a sustainable economic model, we needed to make people willing to spend our tokens in this project or ecosystem, ensuring that the tokens have application scenarios.

First, we considered services that would be most easily accepted by the general public. We felt that games were a good choice. But should we go for deep games, Tap to Earn games, or mid-level games?

After some consideration, we concluded that Tap to Earn might not be sustainable; it could make the project popular initially but would struggle to maintain the ecosystem afterward. Therefore, we ruled out the Tap to Earn game route. Additionally, we knew some Russian teams were working on Tap to Earn, and we didn't want to compete directly with them.

So what are Chinese people best at? Of course, it's the WeChat ecosystem; we have developed many high-quality mini-games over the years. Thus, we wanted to bring our experience and resources from the WeChat ecosystem to the Telegram ecosystem. We chose a middle path between Tap to Earn mini-games and AAA games. We not only issue Chinese mini-games but may also release various types of games, such as those loved by GameFi users that are both fun and incorporate GameFi concepts, or games that satisfy men's pursuit of excitement, and even games specifically tailored to women's preferences.

Additionally, I want to emphasize that our business model is actually that of an issuer. Many people may not know that even the Catizen game was not developed by us; we are merely its issuer.

We have a three-part issuance strategy that provides three basic services for these potentially successful games. First, we help game developers connect their SDKs and game engines with our system, significantly shortening the time they need to handle things themselves and quickly integrating with Telegram and TON's payment interfaces. Second, we assist in optimizing the user experience in the first 30 seconds of the game. In today's era of short videos, users' attention spans are very limited, making the first 30 seconds of gameplay crucial. Therefore, we focus on enhancing the appeal of this part of the content.

Moreover, during the testing phase, we initially promote the game on a small scale to see its response in the global market. If successful, we will fully promote it, leveraging our resources and partners, such as KOLs, to drive more traffic to the game.

Thus, every time we release a new type of game, we can open up a new market and attract different user groups into our ecosystem. This is also one of the reasons we can continuously expand our influence.

As a publishing platform, Catizen is not limited to the gaming field; we will also incorporate short dramas, DeFi projects, and more.

Retention Rate Post-TGE Still Higher Than Traditional Games

3. ChainCatcher: Can you share some key data about the Catizen mini App ecosystem?

Ricky Wong: Our registered users have reached 44.7 million. In terms of user demographics, we pay special attention to on-chain users, those who have linked their wallets and have accounts. Currently, our on-chain user count is close to 3.3 million. In promoting the large-scale application of Web3, we have successfully attracted many Web2 users, but how to convert them into on-chain users is a significant challenge we face.

Currently, our conversion rate is about 7.5%, which is a significant improvement from the initial 6%, and we believe this figure will continue to grow. As more Web2 users around you transition to Web3, the convenience in terms of discounts and interaction experiences will increase. Additionally, referrals among friends and some activities we launched to encourage users to link their wallets will continuously boost this conversion rate.

Beyond monthly active user data, our daily active user data is also noteworthy. During the TGE, daily active users approached 8 million, and afterward, it maintained around 2 million.

The third key data point is our retention rate. We previously discussed with investors comparing our retention rate with the traditional gaming industry. Before Catizen was listed, our seven-day retention rate exceeded 25%, which is an astonishing figure for a game that had already been released for seven months, especially with such a high retention rate just before listing.

Outsiders might think that once listed, users would stop playing the game after receiving tokens. However, for our project, even on the fourteenth day, the retention rate remains around 6%, indicating that many users still choose to continue playing, showing that after introducing Web3 Token Economics, user retention is much higher than traditional games.

Even after the token issuance phase, our game's seven-day and fourteen-day retention rates remain comparable to those of high-quality traditional games. Therefore, developing quality games is still crucial.

Additionally, we have another important data point: the number of users following our channel. Due to our large number of registered users, the number of users following our channel has also reached over 8 million. These users continuously follow our new mini-programs, mini-game releases, and new Launchpool activities. This means that if we want to add advertising to the ecosystem, it is feasible to do so even outside of the games, just within our channel. However, we have not taken this step yet; we still prioritize content and ecological layout.

4. ChainCatcher: Looking back, achieving tens of millions of users with good retention rates and conversion rates from off-chain to on-chain, what did you do right?

Ricky Wong: First and foremost, the early support from Telegram and TON provided us with a lot of traffic and resources. Their support for our Chinese team was even greater than that for Russian teams. For instance, Telegram founder Pavel Durov tweeted for us, bringing a lot of traffic from outside the Web3 circle.

The reason we could gain their tremendous support is that we have a well-defined medium to long-term plan with a five-year cycle, which differentiates us from some short-term teams, and we continuously communicated our philosophy to the Telegram and TON teams, earning their trust.

Moreover, I believe we excelled in exploring some underdeveloped markets, which actually have strong payment capabilities. For example, in the Japanese market, we spent considerable time and effort collaborating with local teams for promotion.

5. ChainCatcher: You experienced some delays in TGE and airdrop timing; what considerations were behind this?

Ricky Wong: Our delays were not too late; our idea was to launch the token at the fastest monthly growth period, so we initially set it for September.

However, whether it would be at the beginning, middle, or end of the month, we were also communicating with exchanges to finalize a mutually agreeable time. In September, some important macro data was released in the U.S., and we were concerned that results might not meet market expectations, which could affect investor confidence. So we ultimately decided on a date no later than September 20.

Expanding Multi-Chain Ecosystem, Not Limited to Mini-Games

6. ChainCatcher: With the airdrop expectations ending after the token listing, what actions will Catizen take to ensure continued growth of the ecosystem?

Ricky Wong: On one hand, we will continue to launch quality mini-games to attract users. For example, our released game "Bombie" attracted 6 million users and generated 6 million in revenue within three months, surpassing Catizen's performance during the same period. We plan to release a similar community-favorite mini-game every month. At the same time, we are not limited to mini-games; we will expand into short dramas, DeFi, and other fast-paced content with blockbuster potential.

Additionally, besides TON, we will also expand into other public chain ecosystems to attract new users from other chains to participate in our ecosystem. Furthermore, the projects we launch weekly in the Launchpool will also provide us with new users.

7. ChainCatcher: Do you think the wave of mini-games on Telegram has passed? How do you view the future of the Telegram gaming ecosystem, especially since many Telegram game tokens struggle to exceed their valuations after listing?

Ricky Wong: From our perspective, the enthusiasm for the Telegram and TON ecosystem is actually increasing rather than decreasing. When I went to places like Dubai, Singapore, and Bangkok to communicate with local project teams, they showed great enthusiasm for entering the Telegram and TON ecosystem through us. Catizen can help them lower the barriers to entry into this ecosystem.

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, looking at Catizen's on-chain users, the conversion rate from Telegram's 1 billion users to on-chain is still very low, indicating a vast space for development.

The reason many Telegram game tokens struggle to exceed their valuations after listing is that games have a lifecycle, especially mini-games. Many project teams initially did not think through sustainability issues or how to surprise the community.

However, as an issuing platform, we have already considered how to continuously deliver blockbuster content after Catizen and how to seek more new users in various public chain ecosystems.

8. ChainCatcher: What are your feelings and takeaways from participating in the Devcon event week in Bangkok?

Ricky Wong: Although it wasn't a deep dive into the Devcon conference, I had many discussions with some project teams and local compliant exchanges. One takeaway is that the Crypto atmosphere in Bangkok is much stronger than I expected; it is a region with great potential for Crypto development.

9. ChainCatcher: How do you evaluate the industry rankings selected by Rootdata?

Ricky Wong: There has always been concern and skepticism in the Crypto market regarding the various manipulations or conspiracy groups behind projects. I believe the Crypto market indeed needs more credible, transparent data reports and industry rankings to provide a reference for the market. As the credibility of such rankings gradually gains recognition, they will be increasingly accepted by more market participants.