Beyond Click-to-Earn: Where Is Catizen's Sustainable Second Half?

Author: TechFlow

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 pursued a key neurotransmitter in the brain: dopamine.

Dopamine is not merely a simple "happiness molecule," but rather the core force driving human pursuit, learning, and adaptation. Yet dopamine is both a reward and a trap. In the crypto market, its influence is further amplified—whether it's the speculation-filled crypto space or the recently emerged Telegram Mini Games, numerous addictive reward mechanisms skillfully exploit humanity's craving for dopamine, generating unprecedented user stickiness and economic models.

What exists is reasonable. Setting aside immediate criticism of blindly addictive mechanisms, let’s dive into the current booming trend of mini games within the Telegram×TON ecosystem and ask: Is this economic model built on instant gratification truly sustainable? The “click-to-earn” game format undoubtedly constantly triggers users’ brain reward centers—but dopamine arrives quickly and fades just as fast. Can a gaming model based on short-term pleasure evolve into a long-term, stable economic ecosystem?

Following Notcoin's breakout success, the "Tap to Earn" model has once again drawn market attention. Among these projects, Catizen has attracted widespread interest. On the surface, Catizen is another representative "Tap to Earn" game following Notcoin. However, viewing Catizen merely as another short-term project exploiting dopamine mechanics may cause us to overlook its true potential.

With its Token Generation Event (TGE) approaching, this article will deeply explore Catizen’s development and strategy, analyzing its operational data, strategic planning, and tokenomics to understand how this phenomenon-level game can seamlessly transition from its highly successful “first half” to a promising “second half” post-TGE.

Catizen’s First Half: Traffic Driven by Phenomenon-Level Growth

Leveraging carefully designed game mechanics and strong market anticipation, Catizen has taken the lead in the "Tap to Earn" craze. While user acquisition remains a major challenge for many projects, it’s no issue for Catizen—a master of dopamine economics.

The Dopamine-Powered Growth Myth

Openly embracing the massive traffic红利 (traffic dividend) brought by "Tap to Earn," Catizen has already achieved impressive metrics: As of September 16, Catizen has attracted over 3 million on-chain active users and 2.2 million Telegram Premium users, with a recent weekly user growth of 4.7 million, bringing total players beyond 39 million, and generating over $31 million in revenue.

A strong monetization foundation has also attracted a significant number of high-quality paying users. With high traffic, high retention, and strong spending, Catizen’s performance stands out even among Telegram Mini Games.

Such outstanding results are backed by an experienced and capable team. Catizen is launched by Pluto Studio Limited, a technology-focused game studio with over 30 developers. Pluto Studio Limited also provides technical support for multiple mini games under the Catizen Miniapp Center.

The talented Pluto Studio Limited has also gained recognition from major institutions, securing investments from Binance Labs, HashKey Capital, Folius Ventures, and The Open Platform.

However, Catizen is not simply passively harvesting traffic or stagnating at a basic “tap-to-earn” model. Instead, it actively leverages this hard-earned user attention and guides it toward deeper ecosystem engagement. Millions of active users aren’t just chasing short-term tap rewards—they’re gradually being integrated into a carefully crafted ecosystem network.

Traffic Builds the Stage, Ecosystem Takes the Spotlight

From massive user growth and strong monetization to attracting top-tier investors, Catizen’s first half has undeniably been a success.

Yet the team knows this is only the beginning. The real challenge isn’t acquiring traffic—it’s converting that traffic into long-term value within the fiercely competitive Tap-to-Earn landscape. From day one, Catizen hasn't aimed to compete by fighting over existing users ("rolling in存量"), but instead focuses on creating new value ("growing增量"). It views its early advantages as a springboard toward a larger vision: leveraging traffic to build a comprehensive, valuable, and genuinely sustainable business ecosystem.

The Second Half: An App Hub and the Core of the Ecosystem

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

Miniapp Center

The Miniapp Center serves as Catizen’s ecosystem application hub, offering diverse app options tailored to different user profiles. Integrated directly within the Catizen app, the Miniapp Center seamlessly inherits Catizen’s traffic.

Currently, including Catizen itself, ten apps are live on the Miniapp Center. Beyond the flagship game Catizen, other notable launches include Bombie, a mini-game targeting GameFi and Meme enthusiasts, and Vanilla Trading Bot, a Telegram trading bot designed for crypto investors—all showing strong performance since launch.

Bombie: A Playable Meme Game

When discussing mini-games, one cannot ignore the world’s most popular platform: WeChat Mini Programs. Over the past two years, ads for various WeChat mini-games have flooded social media apps. Their simple yet instantly addictive gameplay and monetization designs that trigger compulsive spending have made WeChat Mini Programs the highest-grossing gaming platform globally.

Bombie successfully replicates this “can’t-put-it-down” game mechanic on Telegram, while adding Web3 innovations: It introduces a token airdrop mechanism similar to Dogs, combining “open-box, level-up, infinite monster-battling” gameplay with Memecoin drops. This allows players not only to “spend money willingly” for blind box rewards but also to “earn money actively” through random Memecoin drops in the game.

In less than three weeks, Bombie has become self-sustaining: Total users exceed 1.7 million, daily active users surpass 700,000, over 40,000 users pay daily, and the game has generated over $200,000 in revenue within two weeks.

Vanilla Trading Bot: Making BTC Trading Accessible

Vanilla Trading Bot is an innovative trading tool that enables users to participate in BTC trading with extremely low cost and risk. Users can trade with exposure equivalent to one full BTC with less than $10.

Vanilla’s mechanism is creative: It holds actual BTC in the backend, allowing users to profit from price fluctuations via the bot without needing to own or hold Bitcoin themselves. This drastically lowers entry barriers and eliminates liquidation risk—users don’t face catastrophic losses during extreme market swings because they don’t actually “hold” the assets they trade.

Since launching on September 4, Vanilla Trading Bot has acquired 1.8 million registered users and 500,000 active traders, processing over one million trades per day—all without any marketing or promotion.

Catizen Task: A Concrete Example of Traffic Bridging

As mentioned earlier, the Miniapp Center uses an embedded entrance within the Catizen app. Similarly, Catizen employs “in-app referrals” within its ecosystem—using in-game tasks and airdrop rewards to directly drive traffic from Catizen to other apps. Additionally, the Miniapp Center’s top-position placement inherently serves as a traffic conduit.

Behind Repeated Successes

The rapid launch and success of Bombie and Vanilla Trading Bot demonstrate the team’s exceptional ability in fast development, deployment, and product optimization.

Underlying this systematic success is over six months of rigorous testing and refinement of the SDK and test engine before the project even launched. Although the ecosystem exploded quickly and turned profitable in a short time, Catizen is far from a hastily assembled project. Replicating such achievements requires substantial time and experience.

Overall, the Miniapp Center is positioned as both an app incubator and traffic hub within the Catizen ecosystem, accelerating the launch and growth of new applications through co-promotion and integration. The successes of Bombie and Vanilla Trading Bot validate, from a data perspective, the effectiveness of the Catizen Miniapp Center and its sustainable business model. This mature framework can be continuously applied to future niche segments within the ecosystem.

And in Catizen’s second-half roadmap, beyond the breakthrough innovation of the Miniapp Center, the token $CATI remains central to the entire ecosystem, serving as the vital link connecting users, games, and the broader economic structure.

$CATI Token: Diverse Value Capture, Rejecting the “One-and-Done” Model

While much of Catizen’s initial market appeal stems from the anticipated token launch, the project’s overall ecosystem design shows that $CATI is not a one-off release. Instead, the token is engineered for long-term, multi-layered value capture.

TGE Imminent: Airdrop Allocation Details

Catizen will distribute $CATI airdrops to players at Silver tier and above. All TGE allocations belong to the community. The distribution breakdown is as follows:

• Airdrop and Ecosystem: 43%

  • Airdrop: 34%

    - 15% fully released at TGE for Season 1 player rewards

    - 19% 0% released at TGE, reserved for future quarterly airdrops

  • Launchpool: 9%, 100% released at TGE

• Total TGE Release: 30.5% (of total supply)

  • Player Airdrop: 15% (50% of TGE release)

  • Launchpool: 9%

  • Liquidity: 5%

  • Treasury: 1.5%

Diverse Use Cases: Real Benefits for Holders

Aligned with Catizen’s long-term vision, $CATI is clearly not designed for a “one-and-done” exit. Catizen has built multiple use cases for $CATI:

1. Universal Currency Across the Ecosystem

$CATI will serve as the universal currency across the Catizen ecosystem, Miniapp Center, Launchpool, and Open Task. Users can seamlessly interact throughout the ecosystem—from in-game purchases to participating in new project launches—creating constant demand for $CATI.

2. Discounted Purchases in Games

Holders of $CATI can purchase in-game items and services at discounted prices across various games in the Miniapp Center. Combined with psychologically optimized game mechanics, this effectively reduces both spending (“pay-to-win”) and earning (“play-to-earn”) costs.

3. Launchpool Staking Rewards

Within Catizen’s ecosystem, Launchpool is a cornerstone feature. As early as May, Catizen conducted a trial mining campaign within the game. Despite high participation barriers, over 170,000 users successfully joined, yielding excellent results.

The airdrop lookup page is now live. Catizen users can already check their airdrop eligibility and stake their $CATI airdrop shares across exchanges to earn exchange-specific token rewards, achieving up to 600% APY. According to latest data, nearly 1 million $CATI holders have participated in staking, with over 14.4 million $CATI staked—exceeding 10% of the TGE circulating supply.

4. Long-Term Holder Benefits

As the ecosystem’s primary token, future applications on the Miniapp Center will share project revenues with $CATI holders in various forms. Given Catizen’s growth trajectory, earning passive income as a $CATI holder will soon become commonplace.

5. Governance Voting Rights

In the future, hundreds of mini-games are planned for the Miniapp Center. To ensure diverse user experiences, the platform may also onboard well-known Web2 games. At that point, holders will be able to vote on which applications get listed.

Through these diversified, long-term use cases, $CATI tightly integrates itself with every aspect of the Catizen ecosystem. The self-reinforcing design principle—“the more you hold, the more you own”—not only protects holders but also reaffirms the ecosystem’s future direction: sustainability is not just a slogan.

Conclusion

Through its consistently growing positive cash flow, Catizen has not only validated the feasibility and sustainability of its business model but also demonstrated its competitiveness within the TON ecosystem and the broader crypto industry. At a time when the market is saturated with “Mass Adoption” narratives, Catizen’s alternative path points toward a more practical and sustainable business ecosystem.

Unlike many projects that solely focus on external user acquisition and “breaking out of the bubble,” Catizen’s constructed ecosystem feels like a genuine, user-centric pathway designed for Web3 participants.

This inside-out approach to Mass Adoption might just be the right way to achieve true mainstream breakthrough.