I've always been more of a laptop guy but just recently I finally decided to upgrade my old phone with one that wallets and other apps actually work on. That eventually led me to explore The Open Network or in short, TON.
You've probably heard of it and perhaps witnessed the recent price surge of $TON token. The network itself uses technology designed by Telegram and pretty much everything happens on Telegram. This is the fact that will make TON extra interesting as it might be the first crypto stepping stone for many, many no-coiners.
My exploration with TON mini-apps started with the obvious ones - games.
Hamster Kombat
I came across a bunch of "tapping games" on TON and was wondering what appeals to those... I find the constant screen tapping extremely annoying, besides, we do that all the time anyway.
Luckily, gains from tapping are just peanuts when playing Hamster Kombat. A lion's share of daily profits comes from different cards that add to your profit/hour number. Also, these crypto-themed cards can be upgraded to bring in even more passive loot.
The other ways to earn these coins include the basic follow on X, watching YouTube videos, etc. options. Pretty nice game in my opinion and gladly not that addictive.
The most interesting part is that they haven't launched and airdropped their coin yet but once they do, it's pretty obvious that it'll drop on the faithful users.
Since the launch of the $NOT coin on TON, I won't be underestimating these cute little apps but the downside is that Hamster Kombat is probably really over-farmed and we might be a little late with this one...
Still, it's kinda fun game to a certain extent.
Catizen
Another game but slightly more annoying. This manga-style mini-app game kinda freaked me out a bit at first - so much weird stuff happening all around. Still, the basic gameplay rules seem to be very simple: combine cats with the same level to upgrade them to better-earning cats.
Very often the door will open and humans come in to lift the cats in the air and coins will burst all over the place. Yeah. I know.
Besides all that, you can also go fishing and meet some familiar faces such as the $DOGE dog and the friendly $PEPE frog.
Catizen has not only one but 4 in-game tokens: $vKITTY, FishCoins, $wCATI, and $xZEN. However, I still haven't figured out how to withdraw those to my TON wallet or if it's even possible at the moment.
As weird as Catizen may seem, they have an impressive number of daily users(1.6M of 24M total users). Also, their good-looking website includes the doxxed team and a list of well-known partners.
Even though I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing or if I'm playing it the right way, Catizen has that good feel to it... ok, I'll admit it. I'm addicted!
Tonkeeper
After all the craziness it's time to introduce the TON wallet I've been using - Tonkeeper.
To be honest, Tonkeeper was the first one I tested since it was featured on this TON explore page as the number 1 in the wallet category.
That being said, I've been really happy with it. Tonkeeper kind of reminds me of Phantom and it's very easy to set up, works on Android and iOS, and has the Chrome extension option as well.
So far I have been able to connect to all Telegram mini-apps with ease and the signing process has been pretty fast. Just like Phantom, Tonkeeper also has this browser feature to help us find new useful apps.
Simple, yet good.
BONUS: Snapster Trading Bot
As I mentioned, we might be somewhat late with Hamster Kombat so I'm also constantly looking out for TON apps that look promising and are just released or are in beta stage.
Snapster Trading Bot seems to focus on meme trading and why not, memes are and will be a thing, whether we want that or not. The best thing about this one is that it is still in the waitlist stage which means you can only do a couple of things such as daily logins, etc. Still, you might wanna check it out.
Conclusion
I'm pretty impressed with how easily and seamlessly everything works between my wallet and TON Telegram apps(bots). As I was writing this I also learned about the option of Telegram Telegram-integrated wallet and have to take a closer look at that as well.
As for the games... I'm not counting on airdrops so not gonna spend hours and hours grinding those. That being said, the ones I've been playing don't require that - a check-in once or twice a day is probably enough.
My TON journey continues. Next, I'm going to dig deeper into the Defi apps and other stuff...btw, did you know that there's also a TON dating app? 🙂
Thank you for reading!
Ongoing Airdrops To Farm:
🔸 deBridge — easily bridge assets across Solana & EVMs for example while farming their airdrop!
🔸 MilkyWay - stake TIA, farm MilkyWay airdrop
🔸 Grass - perhaps the easiest way to gain exposure for a potentially very big airdrop!
🔸 GRVT ZkSync Mystery Box - just log in and claim your first mystery box
Disclaimers:
Thumbnail background image made with Canva
Other pictures are from Hamster Kombat, Catizen and Snapster Trading Bot
This article contains referral links - remember to DYOR, and double-check URLs!