How ambitious is Zingo, the rising star of TG mini-programs, in terms of driving traffic and opening wallets?

On December 23, after the ecological user count of a Mini App called "Zingo" on the social software Telegram surpassed 500,000, it increased by another 200,000 users by the time of publication. This is the "achievement" of the application after being launched for just over a month. Although Zingo currently focuses mainly on games, it positions itself as "Social Payment Finance," suggesting that games are merely its prologue.

The phenomenon of Zingo once again proves the strong attributes of Telegram's 1 billion user "traffic base." Of course, not all Mini Apps can tap into this "gold mine" of traffic; Zingo seems to have grasped some insights from the combination of "social + gaming." Recently, Zingo's official announcement that "the 2.0 version will add Web3 wallet functionality" has fully exposed Zingo's intention to mine traffic.

Just like "internet celebrities need to sell goods," Web3 applications will inevitably move towards crypto assets and digital currencies. However, Zingo has never publicly mentioned issuing tokens or fundraising. Compared to other Web3 games, this platform-based application seems to have found a combination point of Web2 and Web3 advantages—strongly binding scene experience with digital assets, exploring new traffic entry points.

The growth history of various Web2 giants tells us that once they become a "new species of social traffic," there are many things that can be "added." Zingo, which connects Web2 and Web3, has an extraordinary imagination.

Mining the First "Gold Flow" on Telegram with Games

Without the need to download and install additional software, users can directly access and use various functions within Telegram. In September 2023, Telegram officially launched this new feature that allows "Mini Apps to run within Telegram" (hereinafter referred to as "TMA"). Chinese users familiar with WeChat may be more accustomed to this feature, which is referred to as "mini programs" in China.

Compared to WeChat, the open-source and globalized Telegram quickly attracted a large number of developers and users with its mini program functionality, with over 500 million users interacting with TMA each month out of its 1 billion users. Telegram thus became the third-largest traffic entry point after Google and Facebook, also becoming a "new cake" of global traffic.

In the second half of 2024, this traffic entry point was targeted by Zingo. Relying on the modular innovative public chain Nal, Zingo initially packaged itself as a Web3 entertainment platform, quickly capturing traffic with various mini-games such as "Tap To Earn." According to official data, within a month of its launch, Zingo's ecological registered users exceeded 500,000, and the monthly active users of its first zombie-themed game, ZombieRush, surpassed 1 million.

The first game on Zingo, ZombieRush

Understanding the laws of internet traffic, the games on Zingo are not complicated; many show the shadow of traditional casual games. The difference is that the gameplay is deeply bound with "tasks + incentives + viral growth," forming an account system through blockchain addresses, leaving room for subsequent entertainment content providers to monetize, while also planting opportunities for users to realize crypto assets.

Subsequently, Zingo launched popular TG games such as The Last Visitor, Meworld, PEPE Battle, and OUTA. The "gold mining" and "airdrop" gameplay quickly captured the attention of knowledgeable Web3 users—some startup Web3 projects in the crypto asset market distribute or airdrop tokens to users based on interaction traces from completing tasks. These tokens can become valuable crypto assets in DeFi applications on the blockchain, such as DAI, USDT, ETH, etc.

The concepts of "play-to-earn" and "gold mining" became popular in 2021, with the once-popular Axie Infinity blockchain game bringing real earnings of hundreds of dollars per month to 150,000 Filipinos, allowing many to supplement their household income through gaming during the pandemic. However, later blockchain games became "pay-to-win black holes"—many projects required purchasing "items" to play, and the processes for cross-chain transactions and recharges were complicated, with items often being expensive, making some games a losing business.

However, due to its reliance on Telegram, Zingo's users are more Web2 social users. This can be seen from Zingo's Telegram community, where users mainly discuss gameplay, bugs, and modification suggestions, with little mention of Web3 terms like tokens and airdrops. This means that if a massive number of Web2 users enter Web3 in an unperceived manner, it will open up new ways for user acquisition in the Web3 world.

Zingo is indeed trying to lower the threshold for gold mining games, which could even be described as "simple and straightforward."

For example, in The Last Visitor, item recharges only require single-digit dollars and support fiat currency recharges, making it easy for Web2 users to enter. Users can recharge to purchase items to earn points or accumulate points by completing free tasks, which will eventually be converted into earnings in the form of tokens.

Another Zingo game, Meworld, goes even further by airdropping popular meme coins from the current crypto asset market to users, with the proof of receipt being the coins collected in the game.

The meme-themed game Meworld on Zingo

In addition, Zingo also has its ecological points, ZIN, which can be accumulated by playing games and completing tasks. According to Zingo's official introduction, ZIN is an important exchange certificate within the ecosystem.

The simple games and the instant rewards model quickly allowed Zingo to accumulate traffic. With traffic in place, what will Zingo do next?

Embedding Financial Foreshadowing with Wallet Functionality

How to retain users and maintain activity has always been a challenge for Web3 projects on Telegram.

Taking Catizen as an example, the website traffic of Catizen peaked after announcing two rounds of financing, and its data repeatedly hit new highs, reaching over 500,000 daily active users. However, after the team announced the start of the airdrop event on September 14, traffic plummeted sharply from 260,000 daily visits to 36,000, a drop of 86%.

How to avoid being abandoned by traffic?

In addition to continuously iterating content, increasing incentives, and their consumption scenarios, Zingo's recent actions have revealed its long-term strategy and ambition. According to official news, Zingo will launch wallet functionality in version 2.0, with PayFi as the core driver to bring new growth in demand and traffic.

Zingo 2.0 upgrade preview

Zingo's direction towards Web3 tool iteration can solve a pain point in Web2 gaming scenarios—it's difficult to integrate with financial methods, and monetization methods are singular. Most internet games only add financial advertisements or simple recharges to the monetization pathways of mini-games. In contrast, Web3, due to the circulation capability of blockchain, has a natural financial auxiliary nature, allowing crypto assets to become a bridge between gaming, traffic, and finance.

It is reported that Zingo's wallet functionality can provide acquiring tools for games within the ecosystem, supporting the transfer of in-app assets to the blockchain, allowing users to recharge, withdraw, and view transaction records. Since Zingo's blockchain capabilities are provided by the modular innovative blockchain Nal, which is compatible with Ethereum, its wallet can interoperate with the Ethereum and Ton chain ecosystems, thus supporting the recharge and withdrawal of multiple assets such as Star, TON, and Ethereum-compatible USDT.

This not only means that the game assets obtained by users on Zingo have convenient trading paths, but also that idle assets will enter revenue scenarios. As a B-end application developer, integrating Zingo's wallet allows seamless entry into the Telegram, Ethereum, and Nal chain ecosystems, adding a Web3 path for commercialization while also receiving traffic support from Zingo.

If Zingo is viewed as a gaming platform, these functions are actually basic operations. However, Zingo does not seem to intend to be just a gaming platform; instead, it plans to open its wallet capabilities to all Telegram Mini Apps (TMA), which fundamentally changes Zingo's attributes.

In publicly available information, Zingo 2.0 positions itself as Social Payment Finance (S-PayFi), which can be understood as expanding the "PayFi domain" by building a "social scene," thereby forming high-density traffic and constructing a PayFi ecosystem with real scenes, real traffic, and real demand.

From its positioning, the games currently on Zingo are one of the contents of the "social scene." According to its future plans, it will also incorporate AI experiences, audio-visual entertainment content, and even e-commerce, all of which are social scenarios or consumer content. The digital/data assets accumulated by users from these scenes will become part of value accumulation and can be realized through Zingo in diversified applications of payment/finance, such as instant transactions and on-chain wealth management.

When such ecological construction capabilities are delivered to all Telegram Mini Apps through Zingo's wallet, Zingo and Telegram will form a two-way integration of scenes and traffic, finance and social interaction.

On one hand, leveraging the "traffic engine" Telegram, Zingo can build traffic aggregation with real blockchain addresses through entertainment content such as games and streaming media. This is a "must-have" for both Web2 and Web3 applications and serves as the foundation for Zingo's commercialization. Secondly, traffic + scenes will generate a large number of digital assets that can flow across platforms through the chain rooted in Zingo, allowing the value within Zingo to flow outward while also enabling assets and infrastructure from other chains to flow into Zingo.

Through this construction path, Zingo will achieve a closed loop of scenes, traffic, and assets. If successful in creating a positive cycle, this innovative approach will bring new transformations to Web2 and Web3 innovative projects, including simplifying the paths for Web2 applications to go global and commercialize, and helping Web3 applications escape the "death spiral" of merely speculating on tokens.

The crypto asset market, which is keen on hype, will always give rise to bubbles time and again. The big drops after the big rises will burst the bubbles, and each cyclical fluctuation will solidify truly valuable species, such as smart contracts, DeFi, decentralized identity IDs, etc. Without exception, they are all "useful" products, and Zingo's goal is the same.