CaseyThe Interface of Zingo’s First Game, ZombieRush
On December 23rd, Zingo, a mini app on the social platform Telegram, surpassed 500,000 ecosystem users, and as of the time of writing, the number has increased by an additional 200,000. This achievement was made just over a month after the app’s launch. Although Zingo currently centers around games, its self-definition is “Social Payment Finance (S-PayFi) ” with games acting as just its introduction.
Zingo’s remarkable success further demonstrates Telegram’s “traffic powerhouse” attribute, with its 1 billion users. However, not all mini apps can tap into this traffic “gold mine”. Zingo appears to have found some key strategies in the intersection of “social” and “gaming.” Recently, Zingo officially revealed that version 2.0 will introduce a Web3.0 wallet function, which further exposes its intentions to capitalize on Telegram’s traffic.
Much like how influencers often leverage their popularity to sell products, Web3.0 applications will inevitably move towards integrating cryptocurrency and digital assets. However, Zingo has not publicly mentioned launching a token or seeking funding. Unlike other Web3.0 games, this platform-based app seems to have found a sweet spot that combines the advantages of both Web2 and Web3—merging scene-based experiences with tightly bound digital assets to explore new traffic channels.
The success stories of Web2 giants teach us that once a new social traffic “species” is born, the possibilities for “addition” are endless. And Zingo, bridging Web2 and Web3, has a huge imagination to play with.
How Zingo Made Its First “Gold Rush” of Telegram’s Traffic with Games
Zingo enables users to access and use a variety of features directly within Telegram, without needing additional downloads or installations. In September 2023, Telegram officially launched this new feature of “Mini Apps” (referred to as “TMA”), which Chinese users may recognize as “mini-programs” similar to WeChat’s feature.
Compared to WeChat, the open-source, global Telegram quickly attracted a massive number of developers and users with its mini app functionality. With over 1 billion users, more than 500 million interact with TMA each month. As a result, Telegram has become the third-largest traffic hub after Google and Facebook, claiming a significant slice of the global traffic pie.
In the second half of 2024, Zingo targeted this traffic entry point. Powered by the modular innovation blockchain Nal, Zingo initially positioned itself as a Web3 “earn-as-you-play” entertainment platform, quickly capturing traffic with a variety of mini-games like “Tap To Earn.” According to official data, within a month of launch, Zingo’s ecosystem registered over 500,000 users, and its first zombie-themed game, Zombierush, reached over 1 million monthly active users.
Zingo’s games are simple but not without traditional casual gaming influences. The difference lies in the deep integration of gameplay with “tasks + incentives + viral growth,” creating an account system linked to blockchain addresses, thus providing commercial monetization opportunities for content providers while giving users the chance to monetize crypto assets.
Following this, Zingo added popular Telegram games such as The Last Visitor, Meworld, PEPE Battle, and OUTA. These games, with “earn gold” and “airdrop” mechanics, quickly attracted Web3-savvy users. In the crypto asset market, some early-stage Web3.0 projects distribute tokens to users upon completing tasks, and these tokens can be converted into valuable crypto assets like DAI, USDT, ETH, etc., within DeFi applications.
The “earn-as-you-play” and “gold farming” concepts gained popularity in 2021, with the blockchain game Axie Infinity bringing substantial earnings to 150,000 people in the Philippines. Many players during the pandemic relied on these games to supplement their income. However, later blockchain games became “pay-to-win black holes”—requiring expensive in-game purchases, cross-chain transactions, and complex processes that often led to losses for players.
But Zingo, leveraging Telegram, primarily attracts Web2 social users, which is evident in its Telegram community, where users mainly discuss gameplay, bugs, and modification suggestions—rarely mentioning Web3 terms like token or airdrop. This suggests that if massive Web2 users can seamlessly transition into Web3, it will open a new way to acquire users for the Web3 world.
Zingo has indeed lowered the entry barriers for these “gold farming” games, making them “simple and straightforward.” For example, The Last Visitor has in-game item purchases as low as a few dollars, with support for fiat payments, making it easy for Web2 users to enter. Players earn tokens by either purchasing items or completing tasks, which later convert to rewards in token form.
Another game, Meworld, takes it even further, offering airdrops of popular meme coins in the crypto market, with the proof of participation being the gold coins users collect in the game.
The Interface of MemeWorld, Zingo’s Meme-Themed Game
Zingo also has its own ecosystem point, ZIN. Players can accumulate ZIN through gaming and completing tasks, and ZIN serves as an important exchange certificate within the ecosystem.
Embedding a Financial Future with Zingo’s Wallet
Maintaining user retention and activity has been a major challenge for Web3.0 projects on Telegram.
Take Catizen as an example. Its website traffic peaked after announcing two rounds of funding, but after starting an airdrop event on September 14th, its daily traffic plummeted by 86%, from 260,000 to just 36,000 daily visitors.
So, how can Zingo avoid being abandoned by its traffic?
Apart from continuously iterating content, adding incentives, and expanding usage scenarios, Zingo’s recent move reveals its long-term strategy and ambitions. According to official announcements, Zingo will introduce a wallet function in version 2.0, with PayFi as the core driver of new social demand and traffic growth.
Zingo 2.0 Upgrade Preview
Zingo’s iteration toward Web3 tools can address a major pain point in Web2 gaming scenes: it’s difficult to integrate with financial systems and lacks diverse monetization options. Most internet games are limited to financial ads or basic in-game purchases for monetization. Web3, with its blockchain capabilities, inherently supports financial tools, turning crypto assets into a bridge between gaming, traffic, and finance.
The Zingo wallet will serve as a collection tool for games within its ecosystem, allowing users to recharge, withdraw, and track transactions. Zingo’s blockchain is based on the modular, Ethereum-compatible Nal blockchain, and its wallet will support multi-asset transfers with Ethereum, TON, and other assets like USDT, facilitating cross-platform transfers.
This means users will have easy ways to trade their game assets, and idle assets will enter a yield-generating environment. As a B2B platform, any developer integrating the Zingo wallet will seamlessly connect to the Telegram, Ethereum, and Nal ecosystems, gaining access to Zingo’s traffic support and Web3 monetization pathways.
While Zingo could simply be viewed as a gaming platform, it’s clear that Zingo doesn’t intend to limit itself to this. It plans to open its wallet functionality to all Telegram Mini Apps (TMAs), fundamentally changing its platform’s nature.
Public information shows that Zingo 2.0 will position itself as a Social Payment Finance (S-PayFi) platform, expanding the “PayFi domain” through building “social spaces” to form high-density traffic. These spaces, with real scenes, real traffic, and real demand, will form a PayFi ecosystem.
Currently, the games on Zingo are just one element of the “social space”. Plans include adding AI experiences, audio and video entertainment content, and even e-commerce. These elements will further enrich social and consumer experiences, and the digital or data assets accumulated through these scenarios will become part of the value chain. These assets can then be used for various financial applications such as on-chain financial management, timely trading, etc.
By delivering this ecosystem-building capability through the Zingo wallet to all Telegram Mini Apps, Zingo will enable a dual fusion of scenarios and traffic, and finance and social functions between Telegram and Zingo.
In summar, Zingo will create a closed-loop system of SCENES-TRAFFIC-ASSETS, and if successful, this innovative model could revolutionize Web2 & Web3 projects, including simplifying the commercialization path for Web2 apps and helping Web3.0 apps break free from the “token speculation death spiral.”
The crypto market’s tendency to hype concepts and form bubbles is inevitable, but after each rise and fall, true value-driven species such as smart contracts, DeFi, and decentralized identity (ID) emerge. Zingo aims to be one of those truly valuable products.
