TON and Animoca Brands Partner: Is it a Collaboration or a Collaboration in the Industry?

Animoca Brands’ partnership with TON has been the talk of the town, with a focus on how this partnership will reshape the gaming market and create new opportunities for players and developers.

Animoca Brands and TON launch a strategic cooperation to attract traffic to each other by expanding the chain game market

As a pioneer in Web3 and blockchain gaming, Animoca Brands has made significant achievements in driving the blockchainization of the digital culture and entertainment industries. TON, as an efficient and decentralized blockchain network, has a huge user base and social media presence due to its close integration with Telegram.

This partnership combines Animoca Brands’ rich gaming resources with TON’s technological advantages and large user base, and is expected to drive the innovation and popularization of blockchain games, providing users with a more colorful gaming experience. In addition, this collaboration has the potential to facilitate the generation of new business models and revenue opportunities, positively impacting the entire blockchain gaming ecosystem.

Poster of the collaboration between the two parties

First of all, Animoca’s investment in Ton, while the amount is not disclosed, includes an investment in Toncoin, which is closely tied to its role as a validator. This move highlights Animoca’s confidence in the TON vision and the potential of the Web3 space. The collaboration is not limited to financial investments, but also includes comprehensive market research on the TON ecosystem, focusing on its ability to drive cryptocurrency and GameFi adoption.

A key aspect of the partnership is the strategic support for TON Play, a gaming infrastructure project based on the TON blockchain. The infrastructure will enable developers to develop and launch gaming apps on Telegram, potentially reaching its 800 million users. Through the integration with Telegram’s PlayDeck bot, users can browse the mobile game catalog, opening up an unprecedented channel to the blockchain gaming experience.

In addition, Animoca plans to explore porting a portion of its more than 400 Web3 projects to Telegram, further enriching the platform’s game offering. This move is an important step in combining traditional gaming with the emerging blockchain gaming sector.

Animoca’s partnership with TON is not just a sign of trust in TON’s vision, but also aligns with its broader goal of driving the transition from Web2 to Web3.

This collaboration, following Animoca’s role as a validator in other blockchain protocols, highlights their commitment to facilitating a decentralized gaming ecosystem. This partnership is expected to significantly boost the growth of the TON ecosystem, especially the gaming sector, in the coming years.

Telegram and TON are interested in emulating Tencent, but it is unknown if they will succeed

Yuga Labs, which has a close relationship with Animoca Brands, is also one of the top projects in the market, and Yuga’s founders have previously compared their company to Tencent, but in terms of actual development model and strategic layout, Telegram and TON may be closer to Tencent’s development path.

Telegram has 800 million monthly active users, which gives it a large user base to promote products similar to WeChat Mini Games or other small and medium-sized games. In addition, TON has also launched its own wallet app, Ton Space, which has a unique advantage in the payment field.

The launch of Ton Space means that Telegram users can pay and interact with cryptocurrencies in a familiar environment, which greatly lowers the barrier to entry into the crypto industry. Compared with traditional wallet applications (such as TP and Trustwallet), Ton Space is more like a WeChat wallet, providing richer and more diverse application scenarios, not limited to financial products.

Telegram is building a platform that allows third-party developers to create a variety of mini-programs, from games to food and beverage services, that can interact with users within Telegram. This strategy is quite similar to WeChat’s super app model, but Telegram’s ecosystem will be decentralized in some ways, thanks to the support of TON Foundation and Tencent.

Previously, TON Foundation announced a partnership with Tencent Cloud, which will further support TON’s high compute intensity and network bandwidth requirements. The addition of Tencent Cloud not only provides technical support for TON, but also could bring huge potential benefits to Telegram’s Mini Program market, similar to Tencent’s success in China.

WeChat pioneered the Mini Program model in China and now supports millions of Mini Programs, covering everything from payment and food delivery to e-commerce to a variety of services. Telegram’s Mini Program ecosystem, with the help of a decentralized payment network, has the potential to reach a wider user base around the world.

Learning from WeChat’s success, Telegram and TON may take a cue from Tencent Cloud’s partnership, especially on how to use messaging apps for a variety of day-to-day transactions. WeChat attracts users to daily transactions with a built-in payment system, while Telegram integrates 20 payment solutions that do not charge any commissions through its Bot Payments API. In addition to established payment solutions such as Google Pay or Apple Pay, Telegram has recently introduced a self-hosted wallet developed by the TON blockchain.

It will be interesting to see what Telegram and TON have learned from WeChat’s model and how to develop a decentralized mini-program platform. This is not only likely to change the user experience on Telegram, but it is also likely to drive the adoption and development of decentralized applications on a global scale.

In order to revitalize Telegram’s user resources, TON Play, which is specially designed to increase fans in the chain game industry, came into being

In order to make a name for themselves in the blockchain gaming community, TON launched Ton Play provides a unique platform for game developers to provide unprecedented opportunities by integrating Telegram’s large user base with the efficient performance of the TON blockchain. Not only does this platform simplify the game launch and user acquisition process, but it also greatly expands the possibilities of game development by supporting multiple game engines and providing multiple ways to monetize. The emergence of Ton Play is likely to be a key force in driving the development of the TON gaming ecosystem.

Background image of Ton Play’s official website

Key highlights of Ton Play include:

1. 800 million users directly connected to Telegram: The game can be launched within a few clicks through Telegram Web Apps, without users downloading apps from the App Store or Google Play, and without processing .apk or .exe files;

2. Compatible with a variety of game engines: Telegram Web Apps supports HTML5 or WebGL, and is compatible with Unity, Phaser, PixiJS, BabylonJS, Cocos2d and other game engines;

3. User Acquisition & Retention: TON and Telegram offer both traditional and innovative user acquisition and retention tools, such as TON Games Bot (a bot that indexes all TON games), Telegram Ads (ads on channels with over 1 million subscribers), and push notifications sent directly in Messenger;

4. Fast and inexpensive blockchain: TON blockchain focuses on providing fast and seamless scalability, cost-effectiveness, and ensuring a smooth user experience. It excels in scalability, decentralization, transaction speed, and cost efficiency;

5. Easy registration and authorization: Wallets are a key component of blockchain infrastructure. In the TON ecosystem, the main wallet is the wallet within Telegram, which provides all the necessary features including account creation, purchasing, on-chain and asset management;

6. Community building tools: Telegram channels and groups are powerful tools for building communities, which can directly send public messages to a large number of users;

7. Traffic and asset monetization: Telegram and TON provide developers with the tools to create and launch high-quality games, attract and retain users, and monetize. Common revenue streams within the TON ecosystem include NFT sales, in-game tokens (Jettons), and in-app advertising.

Strong alliances between giants have a future, and the chain game industry urgently needs stronger infrastructure

In the current public chain market, the combination of TON and Telegram has brought new changes to the Web3 world. Animoca Brands’ strategic partnership with TON, and in particular the launch of TON Play, heralds new developments in the blockchain gaming space.

This collaboration combines Animoca’s gaming resources and TON’s technological strengths to drive innovation and adoption of blockchain games. TON Play, in particular, provides game developers with access to Telegram’s huge user base, while supporting multiple game engines and multiple monetization channels.

In addition, Telegram and TON have learned from WeChat’s model to develop a decentralized mini program platform, which may change the user experience of Telegram and drive the global adoption of decentralized applications. Overall, this collaboration heralds a new wave in the blockchain gaming space and is expected to significantly boost the growth of the TON ecosystem in the coming years.