TON (The Open Network) is a L1 blockchain integrated into Telegram. I was the sole designer at Telegram Apps Center — essentially an App Store for Telegram Mini Apps built on TON.
Problem
The catalog had around 1,500 apps, but the ecosystem was missing a daily habit. Users would open it, get overwhelmed by choice, and leave. Meanwhile, builders were contributing to TON but struggling to get sustained traffic. We needed a retention engine to connect the two sides and drive regular transactions. A gamified daily streak gave users one clear, rewarding reason to return every day.
My role
The Head of Product brought the initial vision: daily activity, leagues, streaks. From there, we worked iteratively. I designed the core mechanics and interface, while we co-created the points and lives system. I’d propose solutions, and we’d refine them together. A classic product-design tandem where I owned everything on the design side, from UX logic to visual language.
Core loop
Every day we served the user one app. Open it — your streak continues. The longer the streak, the higher your league. The higher the league, the better your chances of winning TON in a raffle.
Visual language
Each league needed its own artifact. I started with raw materials: stone, bronze, silver, gold, but that felt flat. With an illustrator, we landed on these heads: same material progression, but with personality and meme energy. Something users would want on their profile.
We later adapted the motifs as SBT collectibles.
Quests
Alongside streaks we built in quests — builders could offer activities inside their apps. The core loop was: open, browse, close. Quests pulled users deeper into the app. For builders, that was a completely different level of value.
Being Rewarded
Completing quests earned users points they could spend on lives (to save a streak after a missed day) or NFT tickets for the main raffle. More tickets — better odds of landing in the prize pool.
Result
After launch, MAU grew from 1M to 8M in a month. It was a spike — two months later it settled back to 1.5M. But behind those numbers is something else: 100,000 people reached the final league — that's 180 consecutive days. Another 300,000 hit platinum (90 days straight). Builders were lining up to get their app featured as "app of the day," and some saw a real increase in transactions.
After the TON raffle, there was no major drop-off — people kept their streaks going and expected the program to continue. We permanently raised our baseline MAU by 500k. My main takeaway: spikes fade, but if the mechanic builds a habit, the core stays.