Founded by former executives of Binance, the decentralized exchange Blum has gained 10 million users through a Telegram game mining points mode (though the proportion of bots is uncertain). Can it replicate the glory of Notcoin’s achievements?
In recent times, the Notcoin mining game within the TON ecosystem has seen a surge. Apart from NOT, other similar games like Hamster Kombat and tapswap have also surpassed 30 million users.
Within the top 10 Telegram channels globally, 5 are currently cryptocurrency community channels. Blum, a rapidly rising community, has over 76.3 million channel subscribers, with a monthly increase of 6.6 million subscribers, ranking fifth globally on Telegram.
Founded by former Binance executives, Blum, including Gleb Kostarev and Vladimir Smerkis, was established in March this year. Kostarev previously served as the head of Binance in the Eastern Europe, CIS, Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand regions, while Smerkis was the CIS regional manager. Additionally, Degenie, the former design head of Binance and Trust Wallet, is currently the VP at Blum and one of the co-founders.
Blum is a decentralized exchange that offers token trading from both centralized and decentralized platforms, as well as simplified derivative trading. It has introduced a mobile app and a mini-app within Telegram.
Blum will provide futures trading and the ability to purchase tokens from various networks. Furthermore, Blum does not hold user funds; users can create MPC wallets or connect existing wallets such as Ton Wallet, Trust Wallet, Metamask, etc.
In March this year, Blum was selected for the Binance Labs’ seventh season MVB accelerator program. However, it is understood that being selected for this program does not imply investment from Binance Labs. According to Bloomberg, Kostarev revealed in March that they were in negotiations for funding and hoped to complete it within that month. As of now, the official funding status has not been disclosed.
Despite Blum’s trading functionality not being live yet, it has already garnered 10 million users through a point-earning mode via games. Blum’s game mode is divided into several parts.
Similar to traditional airdrop processes, users need to subscribe to official social media accounts or invite friends to earn points.
Blum introduced the Drop game, a mode where users click to catch falling coins to earn points.
In the Farm mode, users do not need to deposit tokens but automatically earn points over time.
According to official TG channel information, Blum is currently in the phase where users collect Blum points, which can be exchanged for tokens. On May 24, Blum officially launched the Witch Report program, where informants can receive a 1% point reward.
Perhaps to limit witches from cheating by recruiting too many referrals, Blum currently restricts each user to inviting only 10 friends to receive rewards. As per their official roadmap, trading and self-custodial wallets are set to open in the second quarter of 2024, followed by a Public Launch.
TON’s ecosystem of small games has recently achieved remarkable results, with Hamster Kombat announcing a user base exceeding 100 million on June 6, with 31 million daily active users, and tapswap revealing player numbers exceeding 30 million.
This has led many projects to see the explosive potential of converting Web2 users to Web3 quickly through Telegram. However, so far, only the Notcoin project within the TON ecosystem has succeeded in the token economy through a small game mode. Most players currently participating are hoping that new rising games can replicate Notcoin’s success.
On the other hand, several popular game projects have yet to launch token airdrop programs due to the large user volume, leading to minimal rewards when points are shared. Additionally, many games did not set up filters to exclude witches in the initial stages of acquiring traffic, resulting in a significant number of bot accounts behind the data.
tapswap announced the delay of pool launch release until July 1, explaining that the primary reason for the delay was the discovery of many bots obtaining unrealistic shares. Hamster Kombat had announced on May 31 that they would issue tokens on TON, but as of now, no specific time has been announced.
Currently, TON blockchain is reaping the benefits of the small game craze. According to data from tokenterminal, TON chain currently has over 4.8 million monthly active users, with a 223% monthly growth.
This data was less than 500,000 in mid-March, but after the small game explosion triggered by Notcoin, this data has nearly increased tenfold in three months. The current popular applications like Hamster Kombat, tapswap, and Blum have yet to launch airdrops. Once the airdrops are officially rolled out, the curse of decreased activity during the pre and post airdrop periods may or may not unfold in the TON ecosystem.