How Crypto Could Help Telegram Become the West's First 'Everything App'

In a matter of months, Telegram-based, crypto-backed mini apps like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat have taken over the world. But one developer building out the blockchain that is closely aligned with Telegram’s crypto endeavors says the messaging app could soon support crypto-backed versions of Uber, Amazon, and almost any other app out there.

“This mini app structure and design is just the beginning,” Dr. Awesome Doge, a pseudonymous core developer of The Open Network (TON) and the founder of TONX, a venture studio for the network, told Decrypt. 

The developer of Telegram’s blockchain of choice believes that the incredibly simple first wave of Telegram mini apps showcase only a sliver of the technology’s full potential. Most existing Telegram mini apps—which allow users to earn points that are then convertible to real crypto via token airdrops—involve just pushing a button repeatedly.

“We cannot make the final [version of] mini apps in the first stage,” he said. “We had to make a really simple game, like Catizen or Notcoin.”

Over the next year or so, though, Dr. Doge is confident that Telegram mini apps will become far more complex. This is due to several factors, he says. One, independent companies have now seen the potential to engage with massive portions of Telegram’s 900 million-plus active user base with mini apps, which can be accessed within the messaging service’s app itself.

Hamster Kombat, for instance, has already surpassed 250 million users, making it, in the words of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, “the fastest-growing digital service in the world.”

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Further, the recent integration of stablecoin USDT with TON and Telegram now allows such companies to offer digital goods and services without fear of engaging with fluctuating crypto prices; tools created by studios like TONX can now aid in the creation of more sophisticated mini apps that can facilitate those offerings. 

All together, these developments could soon lead, by Dr. Doge’s estimation, to Telegram’s emergence as an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat, that offers integrated access to food delivery, banking services, car rides, online shopping, you name it—all under one roof. 

“WeChat already did it,” Dr. Doge said. “We have seen a huge appetite in the Asian market for what we have created so far.”

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Elon Musk has ambitions of turning Twitter (aka X) into the same kind of all-in platform. But with its first prominent crypto-powered mini apps already reaching hundreds of millions of users, Telegram may be a lot further along in becoming the Western world’s answer to WeChat.

By integrating TON and the network’s native cryptocurrency Toncoin with Telegram, the app has already overcome one major hurdle: Users of the app can easily interact with complex financial software useful in countless situations.

And as the runaway success of mini apps like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat has proven, these systems can not only handle massive user loads—albeit with occasional server hiccups—but are also simple enough to broadly appeal to everyday Telegram users.

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With the addition of USDT capability and TON’s developers working on empowering richer and more complex mini apps, Dr. Awesome Doge thinks the innovation is closer than it’s ever been to its “final version.” 

Over the next year, he expects the transition of Telegram mini apps to that fully realized phase will begin. At that point, he thinks the immense momentum that recently turned Telegram into a frenzied hotspot for tapping digital hamsters with massage guns could propel it to become a fulcrum of the global digital economy.

Edited by Andrew Hayward