Telemetree, the Telegram Mini App Analytics Service

GM, GM everybody! Welcome to what is going to be another great DevNTell. If you don't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held by Developer DAO allowing builders to showcase something they're passionate about or have been building in Web3. Today I'm ecstatic to have Chris Cherniakov, founder of Telemetree, on the show. Telemetree helps businesses acquire more users from Telegram with product analytics, user profiling, and robust ad targeting. Before we get into it, let's hear from our sponsors.

GM, GM Chris! How's it going? Thank you so much for coming on the show, really appreciate you taking the time. If people aren't familiar with yourself, did you want to give a brief intro?

Alright, so my name is Chris. I'm from New York. I work with TON a lot, with Telegram a lot. I'm the founder of Telemetree. We are helping businesses get more users from Telegram and retain those users. My team launched and sold two of our Telegram apps. We are probably one of the biggest Telegram experts in the world right now outside of Telegram's team.

I personally believe that Telegram is the move for Web3 builders. It might be helpful to think of Telegram as a sort of master system. Telegram has like a billion monthly active users and recently added Wallet to all of its users outside of the States. That allows businesses and Web3 builders to essentially start onboarding Web2 audiences without seeing any significant UI challenges.

We both know onboarding people is one of the biggest challenges Web3 projects might face. The magic of Telegram is that it allows you to bypass it all. It allows Web2 users, like your mom, your grandma, your aunt, to start using your decentralized application, start doing something, and then profiting from it.

Telegram essentially switches the order of things. Instead of introducing users to Web3 first, they introduce them to key features like a game or a material, and only then introduce Web3 when the user is already hooked in and interested. It just doesn't scale that well any other way.

A good example is Friend.tech. They required users to have a wallet and buy keys, but it was just a massive headache. We like Telegram because it solves for that. I'm going to share a bit of slides and we'll go into talking.

During this session, we'll talk about Open League Summer. It's a massive hackathon that TON organizes, and I think it might be the opportunity for the builders to actually make it big. Open League hackathon is essentially a two-month long hackathon with four different tracks with a massive prize pool.

Essentially, what they ask you to do is choose one of the verticals, build a simple project, and if you show traction and promise, they'll put all the resources they have into you. They'll provide Telegram Ads credits, funds to scale, guidance, and marketing support.

If you believe me that Telegram is the move, I think that the Open League hackathon is the opportunity for you. With hackathons, you don't need to know people; you just need to build an awesome product. That's the magic. So if you have free time and a team, I encourage you to go into the hackathon.

Again, my name is Chris. I worked at Facebook, Drift Protocol, Wargaming, and VIPKids. VIPKids was my first ever exit through acquisition. We built a mini program in WeChat, so that's how I know how this entire ecosystem should work and feel like.

We're going to split this into three parts: Telegram, Case Studies, and the Hackathon. Telegram is a messaging platform, but it's also home for apps and games. You have this weird mix of WhatsApp-kind of messaging with apps. We have bots, we have games, and we have mini apps. I want to focus on the mini apps niche because this is essentially your gateway to Web3.

A mini app is an essentially built-in browser within Telegram that opens a certain web page. For you as developers, you just need to develop regular backend and frontend web development. Telegram will handle the rest. Why is it awesome? You have a unique opportunity to personalize everything for the user—taking their name, profile photo, etc.

These levels of personalization show significantly higher retention rates and lower churn. So more users and more money for you. That's a big thing. Another thing to keep in mind when developing is that sessions are way shorter within Telegram, so you want to develop an app that is simple, like a landing protocol or a clicker game.

A lot of people ask: why do I care about mini apps? Why wouldn't I just develop a mobile app? Well, mobile app development is way more expensive. A mini app allows you to start onboarding users this very second. You don't need them to sign up; they're already on Telegram. You already have their username. You already have a bot as a way to send push notifications.

I saw teams with five team members scale to 3 million users online on average. The team is making like half a mill per month. Five people, Telegram—it's crazy, right? Please pay attention to that. This market is going to transform Web3 forever. Let's go through a couple of examples. EVAA Protocol is a landing protocol; they don't even require users to connect a wallet initially. They go through a simple onboarding process.

Now, clickers—this is very interesting because no one talks about that for some reason outside of Telegram, but people need to talk. Clickers transformed Telegram meta forever. Notcoin comes around in January—a simple clicker game as dumb as you can imagine. You just click, you get coins. You get into communities, you click together. Imagine this: the guys did 25 million users in 29 days.

They had one of the biggest coin drops last week that was in the top 10 in crypto coins in total value locked. That was wild. Developers are smart; they saw the success of Notcoin and did the same. Notcoin had a total of 35 million people. But Hamster Kombat, I checked yesterday, they crossed 40 million users. They onboarded that number in like a month and a half. 40 million!

They are targeting Web2 users who just want to click and bond into communities. Telegram has broadcast channels like Twitter, but there are also group chats. Think about the Discord experience when you chat with your boys and play a game. Or local communities, like a Binance community chat. Introduce a game, make the people bond, and you have immediate scale because they share and they're retained.

And what's even more magical is that you literally don't spend any cash on it. This is literally free for you to explore. I talked to the founder of The Pixels, one of the biggest games on Telegram right now. He shared that they would just drop a link into a Chinese group chat community and get 10,000 users just overnight like this. That is the magic of Telegram referral systems. You can start onboarding regular Joes into crypto.

Why it works: Obviously we have paid promos and Telegram Ads. We have robust referral systems, so it's very easy for users to start inviting friends and family. You have several layers of anchors: anchors through the channel with news, anchors through stories, and anchors through bot notifications. Essentially, you get all the capabilities of Web3 DeFi and gaming plus Web2 audience access and advertising.

Now to TON—TON recognizes one of the biggest challenges of Telegram right now is that most developers don't know about it. Telegram just isn't in the media like WhatsApp; they don't spend resources on marketing. TON is looking to change this with the Open League hackathon. It's a big KPI-based competition among DeFi projects on TON. The more value and users you get, the higher the ranking and prizes.

How do I get into it? You take part in the hackathon. Registration lasts until the end of June. There are four tracks: Onboarding Systems (games/mini apps), Social Web3 (communities), DeFi (landing/staking), and e-commerce. To be honest, the competition there right now is not that fierce. If you have a good reliable team of developers, you can build an awesome product and get support.

For each track, the prize pool is $300,000. Winning teams also get $120k in Telegram Ads credits. That's a lot of money! Then they are granted access to the TON Accelerator, where investments can be up to $500k. Total price pool for the Hackathon winners is $2,000,000. If you want to build something big, please scan the QR code and apply.

We have 10 minutes left for questions and me talking about Telemetree. I'm very passionate about this project. Telemetree is like Google Analytics for Telegram. Telegram has multiple entities—chats, channels, bots, mini apps—and you need to be able to trace the user from point A to point B. We develop a novel way to understand user interests and behavior within Telegram and your mini app.

We have SDKs you can install in four lines of code to get analytics and Web3 events. If a user connects a wallet at least once in our ecosystem, we remember and associate your Telegram account (Web2 identity) with your Web3 stuff. We can say, on average, members of this group have this amount of Toncoin, this volume of transactions, and these assets. We take the transparency of on-chain and bring it to Web2 spaces.

I'm quite blown away, I had no idea Telegram was so powerful. It's very hard to articulate how powerful it is. I'm so surprised that people are more hyped up about Farcaster frames when Telegram Mini Apps are literally the same thing but with a billion users.

Billyjitsu says 'literally the communications organization tool'. It's true! But it can be so much more. For example, the president of Brazil has around 2 million followers on Telegram. Same thing in Ethiopia. We can tap into those communities in developing countries where clickers are very popular and connect those economies.

What are some good getting started guides? TON resources have some really good resources on mini app development. During the hackathon, they had a series of 11 or 12 workshops. We did 6 workshops around development. TON team did around 4 or 5 around scaling, funding, and marketing. I'll send you the links for the people.

You need to know very few things about Telegram to start developing because you just need to know how to build a website. Any decent developer with 2 to 5 years of experience can figure it out in a week tops. Telegram will become the super app for Web3. Catch you all on DevNTell this Friday. Scan this QR code to claim your NFT for today's session!