Telegram Mini Apps Monetization: A Channel Outside Stores

Telegram Mini Apps monetization doesn't work like anything a mobile UA team is used to building for. There's no App Store or Play Store review, no IAP receipt validation through Apple or Google, no SKAdNetwork postback waiting at the end of the funnel. Instead there is Stars, Telegram's own in-app currency; there's an affiliate referral system baked into the platform; and in several of the platform's biggest hits, a TON cryptocurrency token sits underneath the whole economy. GameWorld Observer's rundown of the format's top titles this week is a useful prompt for production teams asking a narrower question than "should we build for Telegram". What does a build for this surface actually need that a standard playable or app does not?

How Stars actually work, and why the exchange rate matters

Stars are Telegram's official currency, bought through mobile payment systems or bots, and Telegram takes no platform commission on the transaction itself. That sounds like a better deal than a 15 to 30% app store cut. Look closer at the exchange mechanics and it isn't. An in-game purchase priced at 100 Stars might cost the player around $2.40, but the developer can typically withdraw only about $1.30 of that from the same transaction once currency conversion and payout mechanics have taken their share. The effective take isn't zero commission; it's a different, less transparent one, and a production team building an IAP economy for the platform needs to model against the withdrawal figure rather than the sticker price a player sees.

Distribution runs on referral loops, not paid UA as usual

Telegram's Affiliate Programs let users and channels earn Stars by referring paying users into a mini app, taking a percentage of what those referred players spend. That's closer to an influencer revenue-share model than a CPI-based media buy, and it explains why the format's breakout hits looked nothing like a typical UA campaign. Notcoin reached roughly 35 million players as a simple tap-to-earn clicker built around a currency that later listed as a token. Hamster Kombat reached a reported 239 million players by adding upgrade mechanics and bonuses on top of a viral loop that required subscribing to channels to keep earning currency, which effectively made distribution and monetisation the same mechanic. Major, which reportedly had around 70 million users at the point its token listed, leaned harder into real-money activities and a guild structure that penalised inactive players. Same spine in all three cases: a crypto-linked reward loop doing the acquisition work that paid media does everywhere else.

What a build for this surface needs that a network playable does not

A studio treating Telegram as just another distribution channel for an existing playable ad concept will misjudge the build. Design around these differences from day one:

• A Stars-based purchase flow needs its own economy model, priced against the withdrawal rate rather than the display price, or the unit economics will look better on paper than they perform in practice.
• The referral and affiliate mechanic needs to be a first-class feature of the mini app itself, not an afterthought, since it is functioning as the primary acquisition channel rather than a bonus feature layered onto paid UA.
• Session design has to account for Telegram's chat-first context, where a mini app opens inside a messaging surface rather than a dedicated app icon, which changes onboarding expectations and return-visit patterns compared with a standalone install.
• Any token or crypto-adjacent mechanic invites regulatory and platform-policy scrutiny that a standard IAP economy does not, and that risk assessment needs to happen before anyone designs a Stars-plus-token loop, not after launch.

Where a mini app build fits in a wider production pipeline

For a playable production team already running a pipeline built around network-standard ad units (MRAID-compliant playables, standard aspect ratios, a set of interstitial and rewarded formats), a Telegram mini app isn't a variant of that pipeline. It's closer to a lightweight standalone product with its own economy, its own onboarding constraints and its own platform-specific APIs for handling Stars transactions and referral tracking. Treating it as a quick reskin of an existing playable concept is the most common way teams underinvest in the format and then conclude, incorrectly, that Telegram doesn't work for games. The studios behind Notcoin and Hamster Kombat built for the platform's specific mechanics from the outset, as did Major's, rather than porting an existing concept sideways. That's the more transferable lesson than any individual player count.

Why this matters even for teams not building on Telegram

The interesting part of this format isn't the token economics, which are unlikely to generalise cleanly to most game categories. It's the proof that a referral-driven, in-platform economy can outperform paid acquisition entirely for the right kind of loop, and at a scale (tens of millions of players) that would normally require a substantial media budget to reach. That's a useful data point for any creative team thinking about built-in virality mechanics outside Telegram's specific surface too. It's the same instinct behind the acquisition-outside-the-store thinking we covered in Web Shop Attribution Basics as Link-Outs Go Live in the EU, applied to an entirely different platform with its own currency and its own rules.

Where the caution belongs

Treat the player and revenue figures from these hits as directional. The numbers for Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, like Major's, are widely reported rather than independently audited totals, and the crypto-token component of each economy means a meaningful share of reported engagement was probably speculative rather than durable. A production team evaluating whether to build for this channel should separate the mechanic worth studying, referral-driven distribution baked into the core loop, from the token economics, which deserve treating as a single unusual case rather than a template to copy wholesale.

Related archive reading

These articles provide related context and remain subject to their stated review status.

• Apple Mini App Monetization: A New App Store Layer
• The Epic-Google settlement on Play fees: what buyers get