Is TON’s Mini App era coming to an end?

Today, Tonkeeper announced that it will shut down the mini app version of its wallet on July 27. The decision is not exactly surprising: according to the team, most users have long since moved to the mobile apps, so it makes more sense to focus resources on the iOS and Android clients. At the same time, the activity counter still shows around 40,000 monthly users in the Tonkeeper Mini App.

The move says a lot about what happened to the Mini App market after last year’s hype cycle. According to Find Mini App, monthly active users for Telegram Mini Apps have fallen from 1.54 billion in April 2024 to around 110 million today. Things look even worse for the former leaders of the tap-to-earn boom: MAU for Hamster Kombat and DOGS is down more than 99%, with both apps now sitting below 1 million monthly users.

Interestingly, traditional text bots seem to be doing noticeably better. Their activity continues to grow, largely thanks to AI agents and GPT bots, where users do not need a separate interface: they just send a message and get a result back.

Telegram itself seems to be moving in the same direction. Recently, some users got access to BotCloud, a new feature for bot developers that will let apps run directly on Telegram’s infrastructure. Developers will no longer need to spin up their own servers: JavaScript code can be inserted directly into BotFather, and Telegram will execute it in the cloud.

Well, let’s see where this goes. Maybe the next step of MTONGA will be tied to the new bot platform after all. We should find out soon.

@thedailyton