Catizen: The most popular cat-raising mini-game in the TON ecosystem

Recently, a well-known investment institution announced its investment in Pluto, the parent company behind the Telegram mini-game Catizen. As one of the hottest mini-games in the Telegram ecosystem, Catizen will also launch its token soon. This article will comprehensively introduce the development status of Catizen and explore the implications for the future development of the Telegram and TON ecosystems.

Catizen Basic Information Introduction

What is Catizen?

Catizen is a super casual cat-raising game in the Telegram ecosystem, with the slogan "Play for Airdrop". The game officially launched in March 2024, attracting over 1 million players in its first week of open beta. As of July 29, according to official data, the total number of players has exceeded 26.95 million, with 1.47 million daily active users, 1.61 million on-chain users, 20.74 million on-chain transactions, 2.01 million social media followers, and 5.25 million channel subscribers.

Catizen has completed three rounds of financing, with the latest round involving a well-known investment institution.

2. Game Rules

Catizen is an ultra-casual mini-game with relatively simple gameplay. Players take on the role of a cat café owner and can manage up to 12 cats of different levels at the same time. Every 2 cats of the same level can be merged to create a higher-level cat, and the cats can produce tokens, with increasing output as their level rises. Tokens can be directly used to purchase higher-level cats to accelerate game progress. In addition to the basic gameplay, Catizen also incorporates many social fission elements, such as inviting new users to receive rewards.

Overall, the gameplay of Catizen is very similar to a popular WeChat mini-game from 2018. The player's goal is to continuously synthesize cats to obtain higher-level cats, thereby gaining a sense of achievement, nurturing enjoyment, and potential airdrop opportunities. However, in comparison, other content in Catizen, apart from the core gameplay, is still relatively simplistic.

3. Economic Model

The Catizen ecosystem currently involves four non-tradable in-game tokens: vKITTY, Fish, xZEN, and $wCATI. The overall token economy has not yet been fully disclosed.

It is known that CATI will be launched on the exchange, which is a tradable token. vKITTY and Fish are functional tokens within the game. The output speed of vKITTY is an indicator of game progress, and users with high output may have priority in receiving airdrops. Fish is a utility token in the game that can indirectly increase the output speed of vKITTY by consuming Fish, and the main way to obtain Fish is through recharge.

The token economic system of Catizen determines that users who want to obtain a higher airdrop ratio must pay, rather than simply opening multiple accounts. For free players, the production capacity of vKITTY is limited, and they may ultimately be unable to receive airdrops or only receive a very small amount.

4. Data Performance

As of July 29, official data shows that the total number of players exceeds 26.95 million, with 1.47 million daily active users, 1.61 million on-chain users, and 20.74 million on-chain transactions.

Catizen will launch in March 2024, and within 10 weeks, the total registered users will exceed 10 million, with daily active users surpassing 2 million, 400,000 paying users, and cumulative on-chain revenue exceeding 11 million USD, with nearly 80% of the revenue coming from TON.

As a hyper-casual game, Catizen has achieved a nearly 4% conversion rate, generating $25 in revenue per paying user, with an average revenue per user of $1.1. These figures stand out in the traditional overseas hyper-casual gaming sector.

Five, Future Roadmap

1. Q1 2024 Launch (Completed): Game Launch, using Play-to-earn Airdrop model
2. 2024 Q2 Token Issuance (Delayed): Listing on mainstream exchanges, airdrop for early users
3. 2024 Q3 Platformization: Introduce a gaming platform economy that incorporates token staking and lock-up, allowing users to obtain new game NFTs and airdrops through staking; introduce a revenue-sharing mechanism for game income.
4. 2024 Q4 Innovation: Introduction of AI and AR versions to attract traditional gamers.
5. Q1 2025 Game and Platform Optimization: Expand User Base, Optimize Platform Mechanism
6. 2025 Q2 Innovation Feature Optimization: Introduce new features for AI and AR versions
7. 2026 Q3 Cat Universe: Start developing Cat Universe

Catizen has currently completed its cold start phase, gaining a large number of users, and is transitioning to a token-based LaunchPool.

6. Development Team

The Pluto team behind Catizen has rich experience in game development and operations, and has a substantial reserve of mini-game resources. Its official website shows there are 38 mini-games waiting to be Web3-ified.

Thoughts on Catizen and the TON Ecosystem

token

According to the latest white paper, the economic model of Catizen's governance token $CATI is as follows: the portion held by the team, seed round investors, and advisors will start linear unlocking 12 months after the TGE, with an expected full release within 4 years (accounting for 30% of the total supply). $CATI is currently tradable in the presale market of a certain trading platform, with the latest transaction price as of August 1 being 0.7U, corresponding to a market value of 7 billion USD; while the current market value of the fully circulating $NOT is 13.5 billion USD.

It is worth mentioning that Catizen is not the first game launched by the Pluto team on TON. In 2023, the team migrated its Tap Fantasy game, which operates in the BSC ecosystem, to TON and issued tokens. Currently, the market capitalization of Tap Fantasy's token Magic Crystal ($MC) is approximately 16.48 million USD.

opportunity in the TON ecosystem

1. There is a large growth potential, with a strong foundation for large-scale adoption and strong user payment capability.

The number of active addresses on the TON ecosystem chain continues to grow, currently averaging about 450,000 daily active users, surpassing Ethereum (around 400,000), and comparable to highly active L2s like Arbitrum and Base. Referring to the development of the WeChat mini-game ecosystem, Telegram is expected to launch mini-game products with monthly active users reaching 70 million. There is still several times growth potential for monthly active users on the TON ecosystem chain, which has the potential to become the next public chain after Solana to break one million active addresses.

2. Provide "channel" support to achieve a high conversion rate.

Telegram, as the first channel with sufficient traffic and the motivation to promote decentralized payments, has solved the channel and conversion rate issues that Web3 projects have long faced. The TON ecosystem simultaneously receives official channel traffic support and a complete user conversion infrastructure.

3. Users have the ability to pay

Through an independent recharge bot, users can purchase game items directly at a 10% discount using TON/USDT, bypassing platform fees. In the first two months, Catizen generated over $11 million in revenue, with 80% paid in TON, showcasing the potential of a Web3 channel with almost no intermediary fees.

4. The ecosystem is in its early stage.

TON ecological games are mostly simple ports, with significant room for innovation in gameplay. The monetization model still primarily relies on in-app purchases and has not fully utilized advertising and other methods. In the future, this may give rise to an advertising platform targeting Telegram ecosystem and TON blockchain users.

risks of the TON ecosystem

1. Limitation of user groups

There are essential differences between mini-game users and cryptocurrency speculators, which may make it difficult to achieve high retention rates for exchange user conversion. It is necessary to actively explore DeFi products in the TON ecosystem and fully leverage channel and conversion rate advantages.

2. The geographical distribution of Telegram users is not ideal.

Telegram's main user base is concentrated in countries like India, Russia, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil, most of which are not crypto-friendly regions. In contrast, regions like Japan and South Korea, which have a high enthusiasm for crypto and strong gaming payment capabilities, have not even entered the top ten.

3. TON tokens are highly centralized

Over 90% of TON tokens are concentrated in 100 addresses, and the high concentration of tokens poses potential risks to ecosystem participants and builders.

4. The token issuance model is easily manipulated.

Due to the game supporting both on-chain and off-chain dual payments, and the logic not being fully on-chain, using in-game "points" or "values" as the airdrop standard presents uncertainties, making it difficult to accurately predict the real token distribution before the release.

Summary

The success of Catizen reflects the potential and challenges of the TON ecosystem. Although the game model of Catizen may struggle to retain high-paying players in the long term, its future development depends on the design of the token economic model and operational capabilities. Regardless of Catizen's subsequent performance, the TON ecosystem is worth long-term attention.