Original author: Jie Xuan Chua, Binance Research
Original compilation: Deep Tide TechFlow
Various Bots tokens on Telegram have recently attracted attention with astonishing price increases. Although the current price has retraced, the narrative in the early volatility is still worth paying attention to.
Binance Research has released a research report on Telegram Bots, pointing out that the cumulative trading volume of Telegram robots has exceeded $190 million, with a daily maximum trading volume of $10 million.
What is the trading mode of robots and how will the entire track develop in the future? What are the possible risks?
Deep Tide has organized and interpreted the report, and the following are the key points.
Key points:
Telegram Bots allow users to participate in crypto activities through mobile devices in a more user-friendly way, offering features such as trading and airdrop brushing.
The cumulative trading volume of Telegram Bots has exceeded $190 million, with a daily maximum trading volume of $10 million.
Telegram Bots profit by charging trading fees and token transaction taxes. Total revenue has exceeded $28.7 million.
It is difficult to determine the actual demand at this stage, and the current popularity is largely driven by the rise in token prices. However, this field will continue to develop in the short term.
General Process of Telegram Bot Trading
Users input commands in the channel of the Telegram Bot, and the Bot generates a main menu.
Users can set up a new wallet or connect an existing wallet in the menu and deposit funds to the wallet using the provided address.
Then, they can perform different types of transactions, such as buying and selling tokens, airdrop brushing, and copy trading.
Evaluation:
Compared to existing DeFi front ends, Telegram Bots provide a more user-friendly and convenient user experience (especially for beginners).
Telegram has 800 million monthly active users, and those who are "immersing" in Telegram but have not joined the community are actually a good choice.
Common Functions and Comparisons of Telegram Bots
Trading: Buy and sell tokens directly through Telegram.
Sniping: Automatically buy tokens when they are listed.
Copy trading: Simulate the trades of other traders.
Airdrop farming: Automatically perform a series of actions to increase the chance of obtaining airdrops.
Other functions: such as analysis or wallet tracking.
The typical functions provided by bots are compared, and basically involve making trade-offs among the above functions.
Evaluation:
Do you have a pile of apps, where you used to go to A for e-commerce, B for financial management, and C for offline life, but now you can do all of that in WeChat?
With a large flow of users and integrated functions, although bot functions are still in the early stage, doing "one-stop" articles in the flow pool is a method that is clearly different from most DeFi applications.
Panoramic Analysis of the Track
Total potential: It is reported that Telegram has more than 800 million monthly active users, and now it can perform crypto activities in a different way through mobile devices
Market value and project situation:
At the time of writing this article, the market value of tokens related to bots exceeds $150 million, and many tokens have grown several times in a short period of time.
The key contributor is the UNIBOT token, which holds over 77% market share. With Unibot as the agent, interest on Google search continues to increase.
Evaluation:
According to the process of general users' psychology and attention shift, the price usually rises before they search on search engines. Therefore, as the price increases, more people may search, but in reality, the ratio of users who actually use robot trading is not very high.
A more accurate churn rate analysis was not provided in Binance's report, but we can understand it as a normal narrative development process, from a small number of people paying attention - price surge - the majority of people searching - price starts to retrace.
User Adoption:
The user metrics reached a new high in July, with daily active users exceeding 6000.
Maestro remains in the lead, with daily active users around 2000-3000. Unibot is catching up, and the gap has significantly narrowed in the past few weeks; the number of daily active users increased from around 400 to 1700 at its peak in July.
The daily trading volume on the robot has reached an all-time high, exceeding $10 million. The total trading volume throughout its lifecycle has also surpassed $190 million. Note that the actual amount may be higher as not all data is immediately available.
Token Impact:
The trading activity of the token has the ability to influence community participation, especially for new narratives.
Rising token prices and trading volumes attract attention and discussions, and vice versa.
Although still at a high level, we have noticed that the trading volume of these robot native tokens has slowed down in the past few days, coinciding with the overall decline in robot users and robot numbers.
Evaluation: Speculation is the primary productive force. But whether this narrative has ended, whether there will be another round of speculation, there is no definite answer.
Robot Project Revenue Model
The trading volume and taxes jointly determine the revenue of the robot project:
Users engage in trading behavior through robots;
The protocol earns transaction fees;
Users buy/sell robot-related tokens;
The protocol charges taxes for behavior 3
For example, Unibot has collected a total of 4.3 K ETH (about 8 million USD), of which approximately 86% comes from taxes on purchases or sales, rather than transaction revenue
Telegram robots have accumulated income of more than 15,000 ETH (approximately 28.7 million USD) from this year to July
Maestro is currently leading in cumulative income, Unibot is in second place, but the difference in income between the two is more than double
In addition, the relatively high number of daily active users, about 2,000-3,000 people, allows Maestro to achieve stable transaction revenue.
Transaction revenue comes from a 1% transaction fee charged by Maestro for each successful buy or sell order through the application.
Race Outlook and Risks
Ongoing and potential directions:
Expansion to other platforms: Many robots have already expanded from Telegram to platforms such as Discord. This allows them to reach more users and provide another place for executing transactions.
Increasing product portfolio: While some robots may choose to focus on a single area (e.g., flash sales), we speculate that more robots will attempt to develop new features to cover a wider range of areas and position themselves as one-stop shops. Users will only need to access one robot to execute various different transactions.
Cross-chain expansion: We have observed robots expanding across chains, not just the Ethereum blockchain. This enables them to facilitate transactions for users across different blockchains.
Price wars: The costs of most Telegram robots are currently not cheap. As the industry matures and there is almost no product differentiation among many established players, lower costs can be used to attract users.
Possible risks
Asset security: Robots have different settings, but usually allow users to create dedicated wallets or connect existing wallets. In both cases, the robots will have access to private keys, which may pose risks.
Smart contract risks: Given the operation of robots, interaction with smart contracts is inevitable. Although audits may not be comprehensive, projects with strict audits will enable developers to identify and address critical issues.
User recommendations:
Trade on a small scale;
Maintain minimal wallet funds;
Create a new wallet instead of using the main wallet when interacting with robots
Conclusion
It should be noted that a significant proportion of robot revenue may come from sales or purchase taxes on transactions, rather than robot trading revenue.
At this stage, it is premature to determine whether Telegram robots can sustainably attract user interest.
