Analysis: This year, the rise of Telegram ecosystem games has driven the number of accounts on the TON network to increase from about 4 million to 128 million

Blockchain gaming did not enter the mainstream on a large scale in 2024, but it made significant progress in terms of gameplay and user acquisition.

Joonmo Kwon, a senior game executive and CEO of Delabs Games, said: "Since the rise and subsequent decline of 'Axie Infinity', the Web3 gaming world has made significant progress. Although Axie's early success demonstrated the potential of blockchain-based economies, its decline also revealed difficulties in sustainable token economics and user retention."

The biggest advancement in Web3 games is the emergence of Telegram ecosystem games used by nearly one billion people. Games based on Telegram use TON blockchain. According to TonStat data, within a year, the number of accounts on the TON network increased from about 4 million to 128 million.

According to Kwon, by mid-year, GameFi market valuation had reached approximately $17 billion USD mainly due to the rise of Telegram's gaming ecosystem.

However, despite an increase in adoption rate for Web3 games in 2024 as shown by The Block's GMCI Gaming Index which includes major game tokens such as BEAM,GALA,and IMX (but does not include TON), there was about a 7% drop this year up until December 18th. Notably though,Ton rose over100% this year.