From the satisfaction of primitive hunting and gathering to the instant feedback easily obtained through various digital media in modern society, human development seems to have always been in pursuit of a key neurotransmitter in the brain: dopamine.

Dopamine is not just a simple “happiness factor” but is the core force driving humans to seek, learn, and adapt. However, dopamine is both a reward and a dilemma. In the crypto market, the influence of dopamine is further magnified: whether it’s the speculative crypto market or the recent rise of Telegram Mini Games, various addictive reward mechanisms cleverly tap into humanity’s craving for dopamine, resulting in unprecedented user engagement and economic models.

Existence justifies its reason—so, temporarily setting aside the criticism of blind addiction mechanisms, and delving into the thriving mini-game trend within the current Telegram×TON ecosystem, we can’t help but ask: Does this economy, built on the foundation of instant gratification, have genuine sustainability? The “click-to-earn” game model undoubtedly triggers the reward center of users’ brains constantly, but dopamine comes and goes quickly. Can a game model that relies on short-term pleasure evolve into a long-term, stable economic ecosystem?

Following Notcoin’s explosive success, the “Tap to Earn” model has once again garnered market attention. Catizen, viewed as a product in the same category, has sparked widespread interest. On the surface, Catizen is another representative “Tap to Earn” game following Notcoin. However, if Catizen is merely seen as another short-term project playing with dopamine mechanisms, one might miss the opportunity to grasp its true potential.

With the TGE imminent, this article will deeply explore Catizen’s development and plans. By analyzing Catizen’s operational data, strategic layout, and token plans, we will examine how this phenomenal game seamlessly transitions from its impressive “first half” to the potential-filled “second half” post-TGE.

Catizen’s first half witnessed a surge in traffic driven by its phenomenal success.

With its carefully crafted game mechanics and the market’s high expectations, Catizen has taken the lead in the “Tap to Earn” craze. The challenge of user growth, which has troubled many projects, is naturally not an issue for Catizen, as it fully understands the allure of dopamine economics.

The dopamine-driven growth myth.

Catizen has fully embraced the massive traffic boom brought by “Tap to Earn,” and the data already reflects impressive achievements. As of September 16, Catizen has attracted over 3 million on-chain active users and 2.2 million Telegram premium users. Recently, weekly user growth reached 4.7 million, the total player base surpassed 39 million, and revenue exceeded $31 million.

The strong monetization model has also attracted a significant number of high-quality paying users. High traffic, strong retention, and robust monetization make Catizen’s current performance remarkable, especially for a Telegram Mini Game.

These outstanding results are backed by an experienced and highly capable operational team. Catizen is developed by Pluto Studio Limited, a game studio with over 30 developers focused on technology. Pluto Studio Limited also provides technical support for various games in the Catizen Miniapp Center.

Pluto Studio Limited has earned the recognition of multiple institutions, receiving investment support from Binance Labs, HashKey Capital, Folius Ventures, and The Open Platform.

However, Catizen is not merely passively capitalizing on traffic and limiting itself to the simple “click-to-earn” model. Instead, it actively channels this hard-earned user attention into deeper ecosystem participation. Millions of active users are not just chasing short-term rewards, but are gradually becoming part of a thoughtfully designed ecosystem network.

Traffic sets the stage, the ecosystem steals the show.

From millions of user growth to strong paid conversions to gaining favor from well-known investment institutions, Catizen’s first half was undoubtedly a success.

The team knows this is just the beginning. The real challenge is not how to acquire traffic, but how to convert that traffic into long-term value in the heavily involuted Tap2Earn circuit. From the very beginning, Catizen’s goal has not been to crazily “volume inventory” on the mini-game track, but to “increment” and regard the advantages accumulated in the first half as a springboard to more ambitious goals, relying on traffic Start to expand the comprehensive ecology and build a truly sustainable business ecology with huge value.

The second half is not just an application hub but the core of the ecosystem.

As a key component of Catizen’s ecosystem development strategy, the Miniapp Center plays a vital role in bridging the first and second halves of Catizen.

Miniapp Center

The Miniapp Center serves as the ecosystem application hub for Catizen, offering a variety of application options tailored to different user profiles. By integrating directly within the Catizen app, the Miniapp Center seamlessly captures Catizen’s traffic.

Currently, ten applications are live within the Miniapp Center, including Catizen itself. Besides the main game, notable applications such as the Mini Game Bombie, aimed at GameFi and meme enthusiasts, and the Telegram trading bot Vanilla Trading Bot for crypto investors have shown impressive performance since their launch.

Bombie: A Playable Meme Game

When discussing mini-games, it’s impossible not to mention the world’s most popular mini-game platform—WeChat Mini Programs. Over the past two years, various WeChat mini-games have flooded social media with advertisements, thanks to their simple yet addictive gameplay and mechanisms that trigger users’ desire to spend, making WeChat Mini Programs the current top money-making platform globally.

Bombie successfully replicates the irresistibly engaging game mechanics of WeChat mini-games on Telegram, while also incorporating some Web3 innovations. It introduces a token airdrop mechanism similar to that of Dogs, combining the gameplay of “opening boxes to upgrade and defeat monsters” with Memecoin airdrops. This design encourages players not only to spend actively for blind box rewards but also to have the motivation to earn actively based on the random drops of Memecoins in the game.

Within less than three weeks of launch, Bombie has achieved impressive results: the total user count exceeds 1.7 million, daily active users surpass 700,000, and daily paying users exceed 40,000. The game’s total revenue has exceeded $200,000 in just two weeks.

Vanilla Trading Bot: Making BTC Trading Accessible

Vanilla Trading Bot is an innovative trading tool that allows users to participate in BTC trading with minimal cost and risk. Users can trade an amount equivalent to a full Bitcoin for less than $10.

The operation of Vanilla is quite creative: it actually provides already purchased BTC in the background, allowing users to profit from price fluctuations on the bot without needing to buy or hold Bitcoin. This approach lowers the entry barrier while eliminating liquidation risk, as users do not have to worry about massive losses from extreme market conditions since they do not actually “hold” the assets being traded.

Since its launch on September 4, Vanilla Trading Bot has gained 1.8 million registered users and 500,000 active traders, achieving a daily trading volume in the millions—all without any promotional efforts.

Catizen Task: A Specific Use Case for Traffic Integration

As previously mentioned, the Miniapp Center opts for an embedded entry model through the Catizen game interface. Similarly, Catizen employs an “internal traffic diversion” strategy within its ecosystem: it drives traffic to other applications directly from the Catizen game using the Catizen Task and airdrop rewards. Additionally, the Miniapp Center’s pinned feature itself serves a traffic-driving function.

Behind the Multiple Successes

The rapid launch and success of Bombie and Vanilla Trading Bot highlight the team’s exceptional capabilities in application development, migration, deployment, and product optimization.

This systematic success is the result of over six months of continuous debugging of the SDK and testing engine by the Catizen team before the project’s launch. Therefore, although the ecosystem has quickly gained popularity and achieved profitability in a short time, the entire Catizen ecosystem is not a product of overnight success. Replicating such achievements requires considerable time and experience.

Overall, the Miniapp Center is positioned as an application incubator and traffic hub within the Catizen ecosystem, facilitating the rapid incubation and launch of new applications through a combination of application launches and ecosystem-driven traffic. The success of Bombie and Vanilla Trading Bot further demonstrates the effectiveness of the Catizen Miniapp Center and its sustainable business model from a data perspective. This mature business model can continue to be applied in future sub-sectors of the ecosystem.

In Catizen’s planning for the second half, the Miniapp Center will not only break through existing model bottlenecks but also ensure that the $CATI token runs through the entire ecosystem, serving as a vital link connecting users, games, and the overall ecosystem economy.

CATI Token: Capturing Diverse Ecological Value, Rejecting “One-Time Flow”

Although Catizen’s initial market appeal largely stems from the upcoming token launch expectations, its overall ecological layout demonstrates that Catizen does not view tokens as a one-off event. Instead, it aims to provide tokens with long-term, multiple value capture capabilities.

With the Token Generation Event (TGE) approaching, here are the details for the airdrop distribution

Catizen will distribute $CATI airdrops to players of silver rank and above. All shares from the TGE will belong to the community, and the distribution details are as follows:

• Airdrop and Ecosystem: 43%

• Airdrop: 34%

  • 15% will be released at TGE (Token Generation Event) for player rewards in the first quarter.
  • 19% will not be released at TGE for future airdrop activities.

Launchpool: 9%, with 100% released at TGE.

• Total release volume at TGE: 30.5% (of the total supply).
  • Player Airdrop: 15% (50% of the TGE release volume).
  • Launchpool: 9%
  • Liquidity: 5%
  • Treasury: 1.5%

Diverse Use Cases: Real Benefits for Holders

In light of Catizen’s long-term planning, it is clear that “a one-off wave” is not the ultimate goal for $CATI. Catizen has designed multiple use cases for $CATI:

1. Universal Currency Across the Ecosystem
   $CATI will serve as the universal currency within the Catizen ecosystem, Miniapp Center, Launchpool, and Open Task. Users can seamlessly interact throughout the ecosystem with $CATI, from in-game purchases to participating in new project launches, creating a constant demand for $CATI.

2. Discounted In-Game Purchases
   Users holding $CATI can purchase items and services at discounted prices in various games within the Miniapp Center. Combined with engaging game mechanics that appeal to human psychology, both spending and earning costs are effectively reduced.

3. Launchpool Staking Rewards
   Within Catizen’s ecosystem, Launchpool is undoubtedly a focal point. As early as May, Catizen conducted a trial mining phase in-game, and despite the high participation requirements, over 170,000 users successfully took part, yielding impressive results.

The current airdrop query page is now live, allowing Catizen users to check their airdrops in-game and stake their $CATI airdrops on various exchanges to earn corresponding exchange token rewards, with the potential to earn additional rewards of up to 600% APY. According to the latest data, nearly 1 million $CATI holders have participated in staking, with total stakes exceeding 14.4 million $CATI, which is over 10% of the circulating supply at TGE.

1. Long-Term Benefits
   As the main token of the ecosystem, applications within the Miniapp Center will share project revenues with $CATI holders in various forms. Given Catizen’s development pace, earning passive income through holding $CATI is becoming increasingly attainable.

2. Ecosystem Governance Voting
   In the future, hundreds of mini-games are planned to launch in the Miniapp Center. To ensure a diverse user experience, the Miniapp Center may also gradually introduce popular Web2 games. At that time, holders will be able to vote on whether to launch these ecosystem applications.

Through diverse long-term use cases, $CATI successfully integrates itself with various aspects of the Catizen ecosystem. The self-consistent design logic of “the more you hold, the more you have” not only protects holders but also reaffirms the future development approach of the ecosystem: sustainable growth is not just a slogan.

Conclusion

Through its continuously growing positive cash flow, Catizen not only validates the feasibility and sustainability of its business model but also highlights its competitiveness within the TON ecosystem and the broader crypto industry. In an environment saturated with the narrative of “Mass Adoption,” Catizen’s alternative approach is directed towards creating a more pragmatic and sustainable business ecosystem.

Unlike many projects that overly emphasize attracting external users through “breaking the circle” strategies, Catizen’s constructed business ecosystem genuinely considers the participation pathways for Web3 users.

This internal-to-external Mass Adoption may indeed represent the correct path to achieving a broader reach.

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1. This article is reproduced from [tech flow], the original title is “More than just clicking to make money, where is the sustainable second half of Catizen?”, the copyright belongs to the original author [ TechFlow], if you have any objection to the reprint, please contact Gate Learn Team , the team will handle it as soon as possible according to relevant procedures.

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