GetBlock x TON Nest Projects AMA Recap

GM, GetBlock fam!

Recently, we had a long and productive talk on X Spaces with our grant recipients and TON Nest participants.

Meet them now:

Outmine is a TON-based dungeon crawler game, accessible via Telegram
FinKeeper is a multichain portfolio tracker, also available via Telegram
Sharkara is a TON mini-game with PvP battles between players

Get ready to dive into TON development insights from our friends—let’s start!

Introducton

Peter, GetBlock: Let’s start with a brief intro for your projects!

Derek, Outmine: GM guys, I’m an Outmine community manager!

I have about 4 years of experience in blockchain game development and am quite familiar with the TON ecosystem. We’ve been building this project for six months now, and our first on-chain launch was in January 2025.

I think that’s the basic intro, so you’re welcome to ask any other questions!

Sergei, FinKeeper: Hi, I'm the founder of FinKeeper, a multichain portfolio tracker for yield farming, powered by AI agents. We’re proud to be in the semi-finals of the TON Hackers League Hackathon, recipients of grants from Ston.Fi and GetBlock. Also, we are participants of the TON Nest Incubator and developed yield farming features for Ston.Fi.

Our goal is to make crypto management and passive income via DeFi accessible to everyone. We help users monitor assets across multiple chains and get smart recommendations about where to allocate their funds.

Sharkara: Hey! We’re also TON Nest participants and got the GetBlock grant.

Our project is a next-generation PvP battle game on Telegram. We created this mini-app intending to bring back old browser games from 2010 but in a Telegram ecosystem. Now, we’re working on our real-time game engine for PvP battles. We’ve chosen TON blockchain as it’s extremely fast.

Our game isn’t ready yet, so we’re still in the development process. That’s it!

Development and challenges

Peter: Nice! So, moving to the next question—basically, the first question—I would love to dig deeper into the origins of your projects and ask about what inspired you to build on TON? Why did you choose TON over other chains? Also, if you’d like to go multichain, such as FinKeeper, that would be interesting to know!

Derek, Outmine: I think the motivation beyond Outmine is to create a difference in the Telegram ecosystem.

Let’s talk about our founders: Anna and Morgan. Morgan is the developer of Outmine, while Anna is more into the product management side. The game was developed in connection with Rogue Studios. So, yes, Outmine is literally like a baby in the Rogue Studios. We came up with the innovation last year, and it's been great so far.

Regarding your second question: why did we decide to build on the TON ecosystem? There are several reasons for this:

The integration with Telegram is seamless, and it’s extremely convenient.
The audience is massive. Over 1 billion people actively use Telegram.
The onboarding process is easy—so, we can spread Outmine to the public.
Everyone can play it, either from a PC or a smartphone.

You know, if it were a mobile application, people would have to wait for the iOS version, PC version, Android version, and stuff like that. When it’s on Telegram, it’s already cross-platform: anyone can already play it on iOS, Android, and PC.

This seamless integration of TON and Telegram and opportunities for growth and development are the reasons why we decided to use the TON blockchain for our game.

Sergei, FinKeeper: Okay, so we started our journey with TON during the Hackers League Hackathon.

It was a global event both online and offline. During the Astana Bootcamp, I presented the first version of FinKeeper and got great and valuable feedback from the community and judges. The biggest reason why we choose TON is Telegram, of course—having direct access to hundreds of millions of users through MiniApp is a unique advantage no other chain has.

That's why we launched Finkieper as a Telegram MiniApp from day one. Also, I think there is a strong developer community from CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). I live in Kazakhstan, and I met a lot of developers and crypto enthusiasts here. Thank you!

Sharkara: It will probably be similar to what was said before. Telegram is a primary reason why we’ve chosen TON.

Here, you have:

a big potential for growth with access to 1 billion users;
a convenient interface for Telegram mini-apps development;
an easy way to operate with crypto payments.

There is no need to wait for the iOS or Android applications. You can build in a classic way, similar to how we are building web applications, and put it in a Telegram mini-app. With that, we also have access to the app data that Telegram provides for us.

Of course, TON is the best idea to implement into the Telegram-based app, as Telegram has a built-in wallet. It is easy to work with crypto payments, which is essential in the case of pay-to-earn games. There are still challenges, but they are manageable, so that’s it!

Peter: Awesome, so let’s move to the next question! I guess everybody knows that building a startup is never an easy task. Fortunately, with the help and mentorship from TON Nest, TON Society, and the TON community, it feels much better. Still, I would love to hear: what was the biggest challenge you've faced while building or promoting your project within the TON ecosystem?

Derek, Outmine: I think the biggest challenge was the building process.

You know, we don't really like a simple interface in Telegram mini-apps. So when we were building at first, users were having issues with loading the game. It took time before we upgraded the user interface, a crucial part of the game.

It wasn’t a simple mini-app interface: it was built in Unity, which is a large gaming engine, and users complained about the large game load times. That was a single large issue, but it was really large, and all our team worked with it actively.

Of course, I think that issue has been already rectified. It takes about 20–30 seconds, depending on your device and network speed, to load into Outmine. And yes, you use only two fingers to play! So, regarding our biggest challenges—that’s all.

Sergei, FinKeeper: I think there were two biggest challenges during our TON Nest building.

Shortly, these are:

Attracting new users
Costs of development

When your feature set is too small, it's hard to attract people. But as we added more chains and tools, the task became easier. Another big challenge, that correlates with the previous, is the development costs. External support matters a lot here, as it helps us manage these challenges.

That's why the support from GetBlock is so valuable, especially for FinKeeper, where users constantly query on-chain data to check their portfolios in different chains. So, thanks again!

Sharkara: For us, one of the biggest challenges is the TON architecture itself.

As you know, TON is an asynchronous blockchain, so under the hood, it relies on TVM. And instead of, for example, Ethereum, where everything is synchronous, TVM is asynchronous.

This was a challenge for us because we usually work with Ethereum, where there is one address and all the tokens would say hold it on this address.

In TON, it works differently.

For example, you have TON as a native token. Also, you have, let's say, GRAM as another token. They have different addresses, and the difficult part is connecting them using one wallet because of that.

So, you have to:

send messages to a different smart contract;
catch these messages somehow;
send other messages between these contracts, and so on.

But when you understand how it works then it becomes easier, and it works better.

And of course, yes, thanks to GetBlock for the grant, as we have to pull the blockchain for the data to understand what's going on there. It’s much easier now. Thank you, guys!

Derek, Outmine: I think one of the first things that worked, and is still working, is the ambassador program. We currently have one of our ambassadors present in this X Space.

Regarding our marketing plan, we didn't spend much on key opinion leaders (KOLs). Instead, we communicated in various TON spaces with the TON guys, engaging in discussions. We had a collab manager who was bringing in first-time partnerships, and I think that helped a lot in the beginning.

Also, what helped us a lot was the product itself. People were really happy to play a game that wasn't just tapping on Telegram. They were interested in the game themselves.

I think the summary of how we marketed ourselves is:

ambassadors;
partnerships;
Telegram communities.

So when I go around spaces and reach out, people often want to just play the game without even having to shoot hard or tell them too much about the game.

Sergei, FinKeeper: To grow our user base, we focus on content and collaborations.

For example, I won the DropSpot video contest, and the prize was a task placement in their mini-app. It has over one million users, and such marketing brought us more than 30,000 new users in just one day. So, I think, one of the best practices for a new project is to reach out to a project that is bigger than you.

We also participate in hackathons. They bring in tech-savvy audiences, advanced users, and other projects start following us on Twitter and Telegram after seeing our work and participating in our sessions.

Basically, that’s it!

Sharkara: Okay, so, from a marketing perspective, maybe a lifehack, is to participate in some kind of hackathons.

When you participate in them, firstly, you can find collaborators and really good traffic. All the users are still with us, even from the first hackathon we participated one year ago, or even more. They are playing and giving us feedback.

The second one is buying Telegram ads via platforms like Adsgram. In that case, your application will be visible in relevant channels or mini-apps. The traffic won’t be the best quality here, but it may be very large, up to 10–30 thousand users per day. Most of them won’t stay in your application, so you should find ways to retain them.

But still, it works well, too.

The future of TON

Peter: Thank you for your answer! Everyone mentioned the TON community and ecosystem events. That’s what I love, too. Let’s move to the next question, about the mass adoption of the TON blockchain. What do you think is still missing in the TON ecosystem that could help to bring mass adoption? And maybe some kind of specific tools for developers or use cases or devs or anything like that?

Derek, Outmine: Okay, so yeah, I pretty much think over time it's just something that would grow as long as, you know, even besides Telegram.

Telegram keeps on growing— and the TON blockchain grows with it. If you checked the analytics, I think by January 2025, I think there was actually a significant change of about 55%.

As long as Telegram keeps on growing, there will be growth.

But then if it comes to an area of improvement, I think it's just encouraging more builders to work on the TON blockchain because it's an interesting experience.

So, there aren't many disadvantages, but what I think TON could do is encourage more builders—with more grants, with more awareness creation, and stuff like that.

I think that would help in increasing the numbers. Thank you very much for asking!

Sergei, FinKeeper: For our multichain portfolio tracker, right now, the biggest limitation is the inability to use other blockchains inside Telegram Mini-Apps. This prevents many users from fully onboarding and limits cross-chain functionality in Telegram Mini-Apps.

Also, another problem is transaction fees, which can be a blocker for many users. Smart contract calls often cost 10 times more than other chains, which is especially painful for users making small transactions or just testing things because, as I mentioned before, in other chains, you can make a transaction for one or two cents. But in TON, it costs more—sometimes more than $1.

Sharkara: I think that there are no problems or issues within TON.

But maybe the issue is, in general, that people do not trust blockchains, they do not trust crypto. And here is the pain point, let's say, we have to solve, first of all.

Basically, I think that's it. Let's remember that in 2016, no one heard about crypto, but now everyone knows about Bitcoin and other stuff. There are regulations in the world on how crypto is regulated. There are IML services, and et cetera.

So I think we have to wait. And maybe in a year, maybe in 10 years, who knows, we will see how crypto just replaces all the traditional money services or whatever.

Peter: Yeah, I 100% agree with you! I believe that more interesting use cases in crypto could bring more trust to crypto and blockchain technologies in general. Let’s move to our last question here! What's your long-term vision for TON? How do you see TON evolving over the next year or two, and how do you plan to evolve and bring innovations to TON yourselves? And how do you see your project evolving as well alongside?

Derek, Outmine: Let’s think about the next few years—or, better, just one year for Outmine. Most important for us, we are not just a random Telegram project to just give out an airdrop and switch out. We want to remain on for as long as possible on the Telegram ecosystem. In the next couple of years, we might probably even advance to a mobile version, depending on what the community wants. In addition, NFTs are integrated into Outmine, and they’re a great part of our roadmap.

We see ourselves as an app with medium monthly active users (MAU) and a lot of genuine players who love the game, not just waiting for rewards and stuff like that. I think that’s a key point, because I spoke about it at a lot of TON Society events, and the TON blockchain individuals seem to appreciate this idea. They want projects, or let's say, a walkthrough game on TON that is willing to build and remain in the ecosystem.

Regarding the prices, I believe they can do better. And the TON blockchain adoption would certainly increase over time because we have seen lots of huge moves coming out.

I think that's what I basically expect from TON in the next couple of years: massive onboarding and a little price improvement. I mean, we could get a few more traders, and that would be cool.

So yeah, I think that's what we expect from our project and TON in the next couple of years. Thank you for asking once again!

Sergei, FinKeeper: Well, we believe that Telegram mini-apps will unlock Web3 for the masses.

They work on any device, and you don't need to build separate apps for Android, iOS, or desktop. Also, we see AI agents as a huge part of the future, helping users manage assets, interact with protocols and stay safe.

Regarding AI agents, I think they combine with the Telegram UI and you can build the agent directly in the Telegram board. And we think that this collaboration of AI and crypto gives users the power to manage their crypto assets with simple smart tools right from Telegram.

So, Telegram mini-apps provide an excellent UI for different Web3 apps. Thank you.

Sharkara: So, we do believe that second-layer networks will be launched on top of TON, let's say. Maybe they're going to be even cheaper, even faster, and so on.

Generally, I think that all the blockchains just repeat themselves. For example, let's say the second generation was faster, smarter, and so on. That's why we still have Ethereum. I don't know what the generation of TON is, but we’ll see it soon.

But I think that TON will just repeat everything that we have seen before. More devices, more instruments, more protocols—and second-layer networks, of course!

Thanks for reading, and hope you find useful tips here! The TON ecosystem nowadays is much more than just overhyped tapping games, and it continues to develop—slowly, but steadily. GetBlock is committed to helping young and promising projects to rise and make a difference in the Web3 world. Just sign up and check yourself. And don’t forget about our accessible and highly efficient TON nodes for projects of different sizes!