Mini-app

A Mini-app (Telegram Mini App, TMA) is a regular web application — HTML, CSS, JavaScript — that opens inside Telegram. The user taps a button in a bot, a chat, or the app menu, and Telegram presents the URL in a built-in WebView with a thin SDK that exposes Telegram identity, theme, haptic feedback, and a native back button.

For TON, Mini Apps are the main user surface: virtually every consumer-facing TON product in 2025–2026 ships as one.

What’s special about them

A Mini App differs from a normal mobile web page in three ways:

1. Identity. Telegram passes a signed initData payload — user ID, name, language, the chat the app was opened from. The backend can verify it cryptographically and trust the user’s Telegram identity without a separate signup.
2. Native UI hooks. The Telegram WebApp SDK exposes a main button, a back button, theme parameters, haptics, and a “close confirmation” dialog. Apps feel close to native.
3. Payments. Telegram Stars and TON Connect both work seamlessly inside the WebView, so users can pay without leaving the chat.

TON integration

There are two payment paths inside a Mini App:

• Telegram Stars — Telegram’s in-app currency. Users buy Stars with cards/Apple Pay/Google Pay, spend them on goods or content, and the developer can later convert Stars to TON via Fragment.
• TON Connect — a Mini App connects to the user’s TON wallet (Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet, in-chat Wallet) and asks for a signed transaction. Useful when payments need to be in TON or jettons (USDT, project tokens, NFTs).

Most Mini Apps use both: low-value content via Stars (no wallet needed), higher-value or crypto-native flows via TON Connect.

Famous examples

• Notcoin — the tap-to-earn game that put TON on the map in 2024 with tens of millions of players. Token NOT later listed on major CEXes.
• Hamster Kombat — peak DAU of around 300M before its airdrop; token HMSTR.
• Catizen, Yescoin, Blum — second-wave tap-to-earn or trade-style apps.
• TON-based wallets — Tonkeeper and MyTonWallet ship Mini App versions; the in-Telegram Wallet is itself a Mini App.

Anatomy of a Mini App

• Frontend served from any HTTPS host (Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, S3 + CloudFront, custom origin).
• Telegram bot that exposes a “Web App” button or a deep link t.me/<bot>?startapp=<param>.
• Backend that verifies initData signatures and serves the API.
• Optional smart contracts on TON, called via TON Connect from the front-end.

The Telegram SDK is small (around 30 KB minified) and dependency-free; most apps add a UI framework (React, Svelte) on top.

SEO and discoverability

Mini Apps live inside Telegram, so they aren’t crawled by Google. Discovery happens through:

• Bot directory and Telegram channels.
• The TON ecosystem app catalogue (ton.app, ton.org/ecosystem).
• Paid promotion via Telegram Ads.

A “regular” web version of the same app, served at a public URL, can still rank — many projects keep both.

Practical caveats

• WebView sandbox restricts some browser features (file system access, certain WebRTC modes). Test on iOS, Android, and the Telegram Desktop separately.
• Theme variability. Telegram’s light/dark/custom themes pass colour parameters; an app that hard-codes its palette looks broken in some skins.
• TON Connect fallbacks. If the user has no TON wallet, the SDK should offer a clean “install Wallet” path; Stars is the safer default for small payments.