Original author: Mu Mu
Original source: Honeycomb Tech
On December 23, the number of users of a Mini App called Zingo on the social software Telegram exceeded 500,000, and as of press time, it has added another 200,000 users, which is the achievement of the app in more than a month. Although Zingo currently focuses on games, it positions itself as Social Payment Finance, and games seem to be just its preface.
The phenomenal level of Zingo once again proves the strong attributes of Telegrams 1 billion user traffic base. Of course, not all Mini Apps can dig out traffic gold mines from it. Zingo seems to have mastered some tricks from social + games. Recently, the official Zingo revealed that version 2.0 will add Web3 wallet functions, which fully exposed Zingos intention to dig traffic.
Just like “Internet celebrities have to promote products when they are popular”, Web3 applications will inevitably move towards encrypted assets and digital currencies. However, Zingo has never publicly mentioned the issuance of coins and financing. Compared with other Web3 games, this platform application seems to have found the combination of the advantages of Web2 and Web3 - strongly binding scene experience and digital assets, and exploring new traffic entrances.
The growth history of various Web2 giants tells us that after becoming a new species of social traffic, there are many things that can be +, and Zingo, which links Web2 and Web3, has an extremely broad imagination.
Using games to earn the first bucket of golden traffic from Telegram
You can directly access and use various functions within Telegram without downloading and installing additional software. In September 2023, Telegram officially launched this new feature of being able to run Mini Apps in Telegram (hereinafter referred to as TMA). Chinese users who use WeChat may be more familiar with this feature. Chinese users call it Mini Program.
Compared with WeChat, the open-source and globalized Telegram has quickly attracted a large number of developers and users with its mini-program function. More than 500 million of its 1 billion users interact with TMA every month. Telegram has thus become the third largest traffic portal after Google and Facebook, and has also become the new cake of global traffic.
In the second half of 2024, this traffic entrance was targeted by Zingo. Relying on the modular innovative public chain Nal, Zingo initially packaged itself as a Web3 entertainment platform, using a variety of mini-games such as the Tap To Earn mini-game as a starting point to quickly capture traffic. According to official data, one month after its launch, the number of registered users in the Zingo ecosystem exceeded 500,000, and the monthly active users of ZombieRush, the first zombie-themed game on the platform, exceeded 1 million.
Zingos first game, ZombieRush
Well versed in the rules of Internet traffic, the games on Zingo are not complicated, and many of them are similar to traditional casual games. The difference is that the gameplay is deeply bound to tasks + incentives + fission, and an account system is formed in the form of on-chain addresses, leaving room for commercial realization for subsequent entertainment content providers, and also providing users with opportunities to realize encrypted assets.
Subsequently, Zingo launched popular TG games such as The Last Vistor, Meworld, PEPE Battle, OUTA, etc. The gameplay of gold farming and airdrop quickly captured knowledgeable Web3 users. In the crypto asset market, some startup Web3 projects will distribute or airdrop tokens to users based on the completion of tasks as interaction traces. These tokens can be turned into valuable crypto assets in DeFi applications on the blockchain, such as DAI, USDT, ETH, etc.
The concepts of earning while playing and making money have become popular since 2021. The once popular Axie Infinity blockchain game brought hundreds of dollars of real income to 150,000 Filipinos every month. Many people relied on playing games to subsidize their families during the epidemic. However, blockchain games later became krypton gold black holes - many projects require the purchase of props to play, cross-chain, recharge and other operation procedures are complicated, and props are usually expensive. Some games are simply a loss-making business.
However, due to its reliance on Telegram, Zingo’s users are more likely to be Web2 social users. This can be seen in Zingo’s Telegram community, where users mainly discuss game play, bugs, and modification suggestions, while rarely mentioning Web3 terms such as tokens and airdrops. This means that if a large number of Web2 users enter Web3 without being noticed, this will open up a new way for the Web3 world to acquire incremental users.
Zingo has indeed tried to lower the threshold for gold-making games, and it can even be called simple and crude.
For example, The Last Visitor only requires a single-digit dollar to recharge props, and supports fiat currency recharge, so Web2 companies can also easily enter the market. The points that users earn by recharging to purchase props or by completing tasks for free will be converted into income in the form of tokens in the future.
Another Zingo game, Meworld, is more direct. It will airdrop popular Meme coins in the current crypto asset market to users, and the receipt is the gold coins collected by users in the game.
Meme themed game Meworld on Zingo
In addition, Zingo itself has its own ecological points ZIN, which can be accumulated by playing games and completing tasks. Zingo officials introduced that ZIN is an important exchange voucher in the ecosystem.
Simple games and a reward-as-you-play model quickly helped Zingo accumulate traffic. Now that traffic was in hand, what was Zingos next step?
The wallet function will conceal financial foreshadowing
How to retain users and keep them active has always been a difficult problem for Web3 projects on Telegram.
Take Catizen as an example. The number of visits to Catizen’s official website peaked after the announcement of two rounds of financing. Since then, Catizen’s data has set new records many times, reaching more than 500,000 daily active users. However, after the team announced the start of the airdrop activity on September 14, the number of visits dropped 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 consumption scenarios, Zingos recent actions have exposed its long-term strategy and ambition. According to official news, Zingo will launch a wallet function in version 2.0, using PayFi as the core to drive social capabilities and bring new growth in demand and traffic.
Zingo 2.0 Upgrade Notice
Zingos iteration of Web3 tools can solve a pain point in Web2 game scenarios - it is difficult to integrate with financial methods and the means of monetization are single. Most Internet games are limited to adding financial advertisements or simple recharges in the monetization channels of small games. However, Web3 has natural financial auxiliary due to the circulation ability of blockchain, which can make encrypted assets a bridge between games, traffic and finance.
It is reported that the Zingo wallet function can provide payment tools for games within the ecosystem and support the transfer of in-app assets to the chain. Users can top up, withdraw, and view transactions. Since Zingos chain capabilities are provided by Nal, a modular innovative blockchain compatible with Ethereum, its wallet is interoperable with Ethereum and the Ton chain ecosystem, so it can support the top-up and withdrawal of multiple assets such as Star, TON, and USDT adapted to Ethereum.
This not only means that the game assets obtained by users on Zingo have a convenient transaction path, but also that idle assets will enter the revenue scenario. As a B-side application developer, access to the Zingo wallet can seamlessly enter the Telegram, Ethereum, and Nal Chain ecosystems, adding a Web3 path to commercialization and also receiving traffic support from Zingo.
If Zingo is regarded as a gaming platform, these functions are actually basic operations. However, Zingo does not seem to intend to be a gaming platform. Instead, it plans to open its wallet capabilities to all Telegram Mini Apps (TMAs), which has brought about a qualitative change in the attributes of Zingo itself.
In public information, Zingo 2.0 positions itself as Social Payment Finance (S-PayFi for short), which can be understood as expanding the PayFi domain by building a social field, thereby forming high-density traffic and building a PayFi ecosystem with real scenarios, real traffic, and real needs.
Judging from its positioning, the games on Zingo are currently part of the “social scene” content. According to its future plans, AI experience, audio and video entertainment content and even e-commerce will be added. These are all social scenes and even consumer content. The digital/data assets accumulated by users from the scenes will become part of the value accumulation, and Zingo can be used to realize diversified payment/financial applications, such as instant transactions, on-chain financial management, etc.
When such ecosystem-building capabilities are delivered to all Telegram Mini Apps through the Zingo wallet, Zingo and Telegram form a two-way integration of scenarios and traffic, finance and social interaction.
On the one hand, with the help of the traffic engine Telegram, Zingo can form a traffic aggregation with real blockchain addresses through the construction of entertainment content such as games and streaming media. This is a hard need for Web2Web3 applications and the basis for Zingos commercialization; secondly, traffic + scenarios will be able to generate a large amount of digital assets, which can form cross-platform flows through the chain rooted in Zingo, allowing the value in Zingo to be exported outward, and assets and infrastructure on other chains to flow into Zingo.
Through this construction path, Zingo will realize the closed loop of scenarios-traffic-assets. If the positive cycle is successful, this innovative method will bring new changes to Web2Web3 innovation projects, including simplifying the path for Web2 applications to go overseas and commercialize, and helping Web3 applications escape the death spiral caused by only hyping tokens.
The crypto asset market, which is keen on speculating on concepts, always creates bubbles again and again, and the big rise and fall will burst the bubbles again. Each cyclical ups and downs will precipitate real valuable species, such as smart contracts, DeFi, decentralized identity ID, etc. Without exception, they are all useful products, and the same is true for Zingos goal.
