Telegram Fuels Crypto Gaming Boom with New ‘Mini App Bar’ for Seamless Gameplay and Multitasking

By Ben Knight July 03, 2024 In Cryptocurrency, Play to Earn, Telegram

Source:AdobeStock

Messaging platform Telegram is experiencing a revolution thanks to the popularity of idle, play-to-earn clicker games.
These games allow players to gain minuscule amounts of crypto every time they interact with the game’s interface.
Now, Telegram has leant into the gaming side of its platform by introducing a mini app bar.
This development allows multitasking on Telegram apps, making it easy to switch between two (or more) concurrent games.

Telegram started its life out as a private community-based messaging app – but the past 12 months have seen the platform transform significantly. Telegram is the catalyst of a huge idle gaming boom, where millions of users are engaging in “mini games” that utilise minimal resources and attention.

And given blockchain gaming’s focus on in-app currency, paired with some current technical limitations, Telegram and GameFi go together hand-in-hand.

Mini App Bar to Enable Telegram Multitasking

Telegram is pushing its position as a gaming hub to its next step with the introduction of its “mini app bar”. Currently, avid mini-game users must close an application before loading up another if they want to switch between the two.

This is quite an inconvenience, as the inactive, play-to-earn nature of many of these games means most users are playing multiple concurrently.

The mini app bar allows multitasking – just like you would on a smartphone. Instead of closing and restoring an application, users can now simply minimise a game and instantaneously switch to another. If they want to switch back, they just repeat the process.

The company’s CEO and co-founder emphasised the growth of mini-games and how the new multitasking tech will aid adoption.

The recent Telegram update revolutionizes how people interact with mini apps…Now people can collapse apps and switch between them. In the future, this new bottom bar will also store web pages and other content for later reading.

Pavel Durov, CEO and co-founder of Telegram

Hamster Kombat, Notcoin, Leading Gaming Revolution

The explosion of Telegram-based gaming was largely spurred by Notcoin, a clicker game that lets users earn Notcoin by clicking a button. In well under a year of playtime, the game has amassed a whopping 40 million users and spawned a GameFi revolution.

Now, Telegram is practically brimming with P2E mini-games. Hamster Kombat, built upon the Toncoin infrastructure, is supposedly even more successful with a massive playerbase of over 200 million (according to the devs).

Again, you don’t really have to do anything to “play” Hamster Kombat. But that’s part of its appeal – you can earn coins while working, playing another “real” game, or watching Netflix.

Author

Ben Knight

Ben Knight is a writer and editor from Melbourne with a passion for all things music and finance. He enjoys turning complex topics – especially the technical details of cryptocurrency – into digestible bites that anybody can understand. He acquired his Master’s in Writing, Editing and Publishing from RMIT in 2019 and has run his own creative writing business ever since.