Catizen: Inspired by Pinduoduo, Building a Web3 Modular Consumption Platform

Source: TON Foundation, compiled by ZeY

Welcome to TON Innovators, our blog series that celebrates the outstanding talents of innovative and revolutionary projects in the TON ecosystem. Today, we are introducing the Catizen project, which combines virtual pet interactions with blockchain, artificial intelligence, and the metaverse to provide players with a unique GameFi experience.

Catizen is changing the way TON and Telegram users interact with the digital world. The project uses advanced artificial intelligence technology to give virtual cats vivid and lifelike behaviors and personalities. These AI-driven pets learn from their interactions and develop unique characteristics that are influenced by their owners and the surrounding environment. The project has successfully built a vibrant community of cat lovers who can interact in real time in a vast digital universe. They are a model of innovation and excellence in the field of blockchain gaming.

Translator's note: As of June 4, 2024, Catizen has attracted nearly 13 million players, with nearly 1.9 million daily active users, 802,000 on-chain users, and more than 9.55 million on-chain transactions, becoming one of the fastest growing projects in the Web3.0 ecosystem game user base.

TON Innovators:Catizen! Welcome to TON Innovators! First of all, can you explain the core concept behind Catizen and how it integrates PocketFi, gaming bots, short videos, and e-commerce?

Catizen: Catizen uses the TON blockchain to introduce practical mobile payment functions for Telegram users, which is a major innovation in both Web3 and Web2 environments. Previously, most Web3 applications required desktop access, similar to the early stages of Web2. PocketFi may change this by revolutionizing Web3 innovation, just as smart contracts improve user interactions and centralized exchanges simplify transactions. PocketFi on TON and Telegram may change user habits and application scenarios in Web3.

Therefore, based on our extensive experience in game development, our team spent a lot of time analyzing the unique advantages of the TON ecosystem. After studying many market cases, we decided to create Catizen, a project that combines Gaming Launchpool with Pinduoduo (known as TEMU internationally). Pinduoduo has successfully overcome major product challenges and accumulated a large user base by subsidizing users and lowering prices.

Similarly, the airdrop strategy widely used in Web3 is similar to Pinduoduo's method of attracting new users by offering more offers. Before its deep integration with WeChat, Pinduoduo faced similar challenges. WeChat has a large amount of traffic in the Chinese community, but there is no clear strategy to convert this traffic into active users. The cooperation between Pinduoduo and WeChat not only solves the challenges faced by WeChat, but also effectively popularizes the knowledge of online applications to users. In Web3, this approach is considered important by leading institutions. Although many Web3 projects have tried similar strategies, most have not succeeded. However, TON's strategic partnership with Telegram provides us with a unique opportunity.

Catizen aims to become a Web3 modular consumption platform similar to Pinduoduo. Inspired by Pinduoduo's success within the WeChat ecosystem, we plan to integrate games, short video content, and e-commerce. Our strategy is to use the gamified Web3 model to educate and engage Telegram's large user base, turning innovative products into widely used commercial applications. We will use token airdrops and short video promotion strategies to drive exponential growth. We will gradually introduce features such as game platforms, online pools, task centers, short video content, e-commerce, etc., with the ultimate goal of building a trillion-level Web3 social entertainment platform.

Catizen is more than just a game, it is a platform designed to continuously grow with the player community. The integration with launchool will be a key breakthrough, greatly enhancing the interests of the vast Catizen community. In the coming year, we will launch new mini applications using Catizen as a launch platform. As the project progresses, we will integrate Pinduoduo elements more deeply into Launchpool, integrating multiple business flows such as task centers, short dramas, and e-commerce. The ultimate goal of Catizen is to overcome the common problems of many Web3 GameFi projects, such as strong cyclicality and Ponzi schemes.

TON Innovators: Have you encountered any challenges in integrating all these technologies into a GameFi product? What is the development process like?

Catizen: During the development process, especially during the beta testing phase, we faced several operational challenges. Fortunately, the TON Foundation provided a lot of support to help us quickly resolve these issues. This help enabled us to refine Catizen and ensure that it integrates seamlessly with the TON blockchain and Telegram.

TON Innovators: Your new Launchpool has attracted a lot of attention. How does this relate to your project's development plan?

Catizen:Catizen's development plan is divided into five phases, each with different focuses and strategies. We are currently entering the second phase:

Phase I: Catizen is mainly expanding its user base and strengthening user education through airdrops to encourage users to register and activate wallets. The main goal is to teach Telegram users how to use cryptocurrency wallets and participate in transactions, thereby converting them into TON users.

Phase II: We are launching Catizen Launchpool, where users can stake in-game assets to mine for points. These points can be exchanged for our governance token $CATI. This phase also introduces a social cooperation model to improve mining efficiency. In this phase, Catizen will evolve from a single game to a modular gaming platform with Launchpool functions to help users understand the principles of DeFi.

Catizen has achieved significant success in the first phase and expanded its user base. 10% of Gaming Bot users became TON wallet users, and more than 50% of users became Web3 users (PocketFi users). Catizen is now entering its second phase, LaunchPool, where players can stake in-game assets to earn points called $wCATI. On April 27 at 13:00 UTC, Catizen updated the Launchpool feature, allowing users to mine $wCATI by staking Fish Coins or Cat Coins. In this allocation, 60% of the airdropped wCATI was allocated to players who staked Cat Coins, and 40% was allocated to players who staked Fish Coins, for a total of $840 million in wCATI available during this period.

To ensure fairness and prevent players from abusing multiple accounts, we have set participation thresholds for Launchpool mining:

Fish Coin Pool (40%): Players must stake at least 1,000 Fish Coins to participate, and players can earn Fish Coins by completing beginner tasks or inviting friends, etc.

Cat Pool (60%): Participation requires cats to reach at least level 110, and higher levels will receive more rewards.

TON Innovators: How has the TON blockchain benefited Catizen specifically? Why did you decide to build on TON?

Catizen: First, the TON ecosystem has strong potential, and as mentioned before, PocketFi has the potential to bring groundbreaking innovations to Web3. The integration of Telegram's built-in wallet and bot program, coupled with the thriving TON ecosystem, increases the possibility of such innovation. Secondly, when our team joined the TON blockchain, the foundation was very proactive, providing expert guidance and financial support for technical integration and market promotion. In addition, many leading projects within the ecosystem warmly welcomed our cooperation proposal, which is very beneficial for newcomers.

Finally, the vast early community of the TON ecosystem is also confident about the future, just like us. Unlike other ecosystems, we found that most of the early community of TON is actively promoting us. They are eager to discuss and support the development of our project, provide suggestions, and help spread the word, which is quite rare in other blockchain ecosystems.

TON Innovators: Please tell us about your community! What role have they played in the development and evolution of Catizen?

Catizen:Catizen’s Telegram announcement channel has attracted more than 900,000 subscribers at the time of launch. Initially, our project received widespread attention from the TON native early community and successfully attracted a group of users interested in airdrops through in-game guidance. In the past month, we have worked with many projects within the TON ecosystem and realized that this is an important way to build a high-quality community.

In addition, Catizen has been highlighted as a success story in TON’s official presentations many times, both at TOKEN2049 and at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival TON DAY event in early April. This multi-level exposure is critical to attracting new users. Our team strives to meet the needs of the community, constantly refining and improving our products to ensure a seamless transition from promotion to exposure, user acquisition, retention, and community growth.

In the future, the community will play a core role in the development of Catizen. The airdrop will enable them to become holders of $CATI tokens and share the benefits brought by the platform. This ownership will serve as proof of their stake in Catizen’s future returns. Benefits shared with the community will include features such as Launchpool, e-commerce, and more.

TON Innovators: Can you discuss what new features or expansions Catizen players can expect in the near future?

Catizen: We have discussed the initial and current focus of the development phase: growing the user base and promoting Launchpool functionality. The next phase, phase 3, aims to transform Catizen into a Telegram gaming platform. We have already signed agreements with 18 popular WeChat mini-games and plan to integrate them with Web3 features on the Catizen gaming platform. In addition, Catizen’s governance token holders will be able to mine tokens for subsequent games through the Catizen mining pool.

TON Innovators: Do you think Catizen will have an impact on the broader blockchain and GameFi space beyond TON in the future?

Catizen: Catizen has achieved multi-chain deployment and has established a partnership with Mantle Network. Our goal is for Catizen to be a bridge not only between Telegram and the TON blockchain, but also between the Ethereum ecosystem and TON. We intend to attract Ethereum users to Catizen and help them realize the unique advantages of TON compared to other blockchains. We deeply understand the unique advantages of the TON ecosystem, which is the core of our future development. In the future, we will carry out large-scale marketing activities on TON Catizen, and plan to merge the Mantle Network ranking with the Catizen ranking of the TON ecosystem to retain the advantages of early TON players as much as possible.

TON Innovators: Finally, what advice do you have for other developers who want to create game projects on the TON blockchain?

Catizen: We think it is very beneficial to actively communicate with TON Foundation members and participate in their activities. Through these activities, we have obtained very valuable resources such as TON Hackerhouse, TON Gateway, etc.