What is Catizen? More Than Just a Cute Cat-Themed Game on TON

Introduction

In the crypto world, there is arguably no messaging application as dominant as Telegram, a messaging application centered around security and speed. With a user base of almost a billion users worldwide, it is no surprise that Telegram’s very own L1 blockchain, The Open Network (TON), has grown rapidly to become a strong contender in the L1 space.

In this year alone, the total value locked on the TON blockchain has expanded exponentially from a mere $13.5M in January to a whopping $755M today, with many comparing it alongside other popular chains like Solana and Base.

A significant portion of this sudden growth has been attributed to the integration of the TON wallet into Telegram as well as the development of Telegram’s Mini Apps which have built a robust and fast growing ecosystem of applications and games in the Telegram ecosystem. These Mini Apps include games such as Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, which have garnered millions of users.

Catizen has emerged as one of the hottest games on Telegram as well. Co-founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, even commended the game, saying it “introduced millions of people to blockchain, because it uses TON-based smart contracts for its in-game rewards.” However, under the hood, Catizen is striving to be much more than just another game on Telegram.

But what exactly is Catizen?

What Is Catizen?

The endgame for Catizen is a super app, similar to that of WeChat or Facebook.

The Catizen Game

Catizen’s first launch is their own play-to-earn game, which lives as a Mini App within Telegram. It is a game in which players own virtual cats, and earn the in-game virtual currency, vKITTY, when visitors play with their cats.

As the game goes on, new cats will be dropped to the players, allowing them to “combine” two cats of the same level to increase their level, thereby increasing their earning potential as well. The in-game currency, vKITTY, can be used to speed up the rate of acquiring new cats, although this is not mandatory. It is expected that vKITTY will eventually translate to an airdrop of Catizen’s native token, CATI.

Source: Reddit (link)

In just four months since its initial launch, Catizen has already amassed more than 26M players and generated more than $16M in revenue from in-game purchases thus far. Catizen has also donated $100K from their revenue to PETA via The Giving Block to support charities involved in rescuing homeless cats.

The Catizen Platform

The Catizen game is just the first step in Catizen’s roadmap.

The next step for Catizen will be to launch its own game publishing platform, the Catizen Game Center. Catizen seeks to take the position of a game distribution platform in the Web3 gaming space, similar to how Steam dominates ~75-80% of the Web2 game distribution market. In doing so, Catizen seeks to elevate the Web3 Telegram gaming experience beyond simple idle games, casual clicker games and basic casinos while simplifying distribution for new games.

Source: Catizen White Paper (link)

This is achieved through the Catizen SDK and Game Engine, which enables game developers to seamlessly publish their HTML5-based game to the Catizen Game Center in a single click.

The Catizen Game Engine optimizes these games, enabling high speed downloads, data analytics for developers and high performance for these games. Moreover, games published on the Catizen Game Center also gain access to the platform’s existing users, allowing lesser known titles and developers to go to market quickly and easily.

For Catizen, the release of new titles unlocks various new revenue streams for the platform, including the publisher take-rate for titles released on the platform as well as potential ad revenue derived from third party games on the Catizen Game Center.

Currently, there are already 13 games on the Catizen Game Center, with more than 200 others expected to launch in the upcoming months.

Source: Catizen White Paper (link)

Some of these games are likely to launch and airdrop their own tokens to their users as well, which would attract more players to the Catizen Game Center, in expectation of future airdrops from new releases on the platform.

Roadmap

But the plans for Catizen doesn’t stop there.

Beyond just games, Catizen also intends to expand its offerings to TV series as well, targeting a second vertical to increase their reach.

Moreover, with the launch of the CATI token, Catizen expects to utilize CATI to incentivize user behavior within their ecosystem. This can include rewarding users for completing specific tasks, such as quests launched by new projects.

Source: Catizen White Paper (link)

Additionally, the team also intends to incorporate an e-commerce element into Catizen, which will be designed to accept the CATI token as a currency for transactions. With the expansion of the platform, the demand for CATI will also increase, pushing its acceptance as an accepted digital currency.

Conclusion