Bypassing the App Store: Launching frfr.fun Tokens Directly Inside Telegram

The decentralized web was supposed to be permissionless, yet for the better part of a decade, crypto developers have found themselves at the mercy of centralized gatekeepers: Apple and Google. Launching a native mobile app for a DeFi protocol, a token launchpad, or a Web3 game has historically meant months of compliance review, the threat of delisting, and a 30% in-app purchase tax on anything routed through the platform's own payment rails.

That landscape has shifted — though not as completely as the crypto-Twitter narrative sometimes suggests (more on that below). In the current cycle, the most powerful distribution channel for consumer crypto isn't the iOS App Store or Google Play — it's Telegram.

With more than a billion monthly active users, Telegram has evolved from a messaging app into something closer to a decentralized super-app. At the center of that shift are Telegram Mini-Apps (TMAs): embedded web applications that run directly inside a chat window. As the "Telegram Mini App crypto" narrative has grown, a real architectural debate has emerged around TON vs. Base for token launches. The Open Network (TON) is built into Telegram's DNA, but Coinbase's Base network has the deeper liquidity and the larger DeFi ecosystem. This guide walks through how developers are embedding frfr.fun — a token launchpad on Base — directly into a Telegram bot, and what's actually true (and not yet true) about doing so in 2026.

Telegram's Scale: The Numbers, Updated

Telegram crossed 1 billion monthly active users at some point in early-to-mid 2026, up from roughly 950 million in mid-2024 and 800 million at the start of 2024 — a fast climb by messaging-app standards. Daily active users sit at around 500 million, meaning roughly half of all monthly users open the app on any given day (Backlinko, January 2026; Demandsage, April 2026). Telegram Premium, the paid subscription tier, has grown to around 15 million subscribers as of mid-2025, still a small slice (under 2%) of the overall user base.

These figures move quickly and vary somewhat by source and methodology, so treat any single number as directionally correct rather than exact.

The App Store Bottleneck — and Why It's Only Partly True Anymore

The traditional telling of this story goes: Apple's App Store guidelines are openly hostile to crypto. If an app routes a purchase through a DEX or a smart contract instead of Apple's in-app purchase system, it gets rejected. That was a fair description through early 2025 — but it's no longer the whole picture.

In May 2025, Apple relaxed its U.S. App Store rules following a court order in the long-running Epic Games v. Apple litigation. iOS apps in the U.S. storefront can now link out to external payment methods for crypto and NFT purchases without running everything through Apple's 30% in-app purchase cut (Crowdfund Insider, May 2025; CryptoBriefing, May 2025). That change is U.S.-only — Apple's global guidelines remain more restrictive outside the U.S. — and Apple has simultaneously tightened the other side of the ledger: a November 2025 guideline revision folded cryptocurrency exchanges into the same "highly regulated" review category as banking and investment apps, meaning more compliance documentation is required, not less (H2S Media, November 2025).

So the honest version of this section is: app-store friction for crypto has gone from "near-universal hostility" to "uneven — better on payment routing in the U.S., stricter on what counts as a regulated crypto business, and still restrictive everywhere else." That's a real improvement for some use cases, but it doesn't eliminate the underlying conversion-funnel problem TMAs solve: discover on Twitter → find the app store listing → download → install → create a wallet and back up a seed phrase → fund it → finally buy. Every one of those steps still bleeds users, regardless of what Apple's review guidelines say this month. Telegram Mini-Apps cut that funnel down to two taps because the user never leaves the chat they're already in.

What Is a Telegram Mini-App (TMA)?

A Telegram Mini-App is a web application — built with HTML5, CSS, React, or similar — that runs inside Telegram's own interface. It behaves like a native app but loads instantly from a bot command, an inline button, or the menu attachment, with no app-store install step at all.

Telegram's Bot API 8.0 update, released in November 2024, shipped ten new Mini App capabilities in a single release. The relevant ones for this guide:

Full-screen mode — Mini Apps can request full-screen via requestFullscreen()/exitFullscreen(), in both portrait and landscape, which is what makes an immersive trading dashboard or minting UI possible (Telegram Bot API changelog; Telegram's official "Mini Apps 2.0" announcement, November 2024).
Home-screen shortcuts — the addToHomeScreen() method lets users pin a Mini App to their device's home screen like a native app icon.
Persistent local storage — via the DeviceStorage object (a localStorage-style cache, up to 5 MB per user per bot) and CloudStorage (up to 1,024 key-value items per user, synced across the user's devices).

One correction worth flagging: a later update, Bot API 9.0 (mid-2025), is sometimes lumped in with these Mini-App features, but 9.0's actual scope was mostly Telegram Business 2.0 — branding customization for business accounts, managing paid gifts, and Star-based subscriptions — rather than the full-screen/home-screen/storage feature set, which is squarely an 8.0-era release. If you're citing version numbers in developer docs, attribute full-screen and home-screen shortcuts to 8.0 specifically.

Telegram also exposes a separate SecureStorage object, backed by the iOS Keychain or Android Keystore, intended for sensitive items like auth tokens — Telegram's own documentation caps it at 10 items per user and doesn't describe it as a "protocol." For something like "remember that this user already connected a wallet," most implementations reach for DeviceStorage or CloudStorage rather than SecureStorage, which is more narrowly scoped to secrets.

The Infrastructure Clash: TON vs. Base

Where TON Genuinely Struggles for Token Launches

TON's native execution layer — the TON Virtual Machine (TVM) — is not EVM-compatible. Contracts are written in FunC, the newer Tact language, or the more recent Tolk, not Solidity, so the large pool of Ethereum-trained developers can't port code over directly (Wikipedia; multiple TON developer guides, 2024–2026). This is the core reason DeFi liquidity and tooling on TON have grown more slowly than on EVM-based L2s, despite TON's enormous distribution advantage through Telegram.

One nuance the original framing missed: a separate project called TAC (TON Application Chain) has launched its own EVM-compatible Layer-2 mainnet that bridges into the TON ecosystem, letting Solidity contracts deploy with minimal changes and interact with TON/Telegram users (TAC's own documentation; CoinsPaid Media, 2025–2026). TAC is operated independently of the TON Foundation — the Foundation has explicitly said it doesn't build or endorse third-party chains — and it functions as an add-on bridge rather than a native TON capability. It's a real development, but it doesn't change the underlying fact that TON's own L1 stack remains non-EVM.

Base's Liquidity Position — With Current Numbers

Base, the Ethereum Layer-2 incubated by Coinbase, remains one of the deepest liquidity venues among EVM L2s, but the headline TVL figure is genuinely volatile and worth tracking rather than memorizing. As of June 20, 2026, Base holds roughly $4.18 billion in DeFi TVL according to DefiLlama's live tracker. That number has swung meaningfully this year: a reported ~$5.3 billion in January 2026 fell to roughly $3.9 billion by mid-February amid public debate over Coinbase's product strategy for the chain (BeInCrypto, February 18, 2026), then rallied past $5.5 billion in mid-May (BSCN, May 15, 2026) before settling back into the low-$4 billion range by late May and June (The Block; DefiLlama). Treat any single TVL figure as a snapshot, not a constant.

Two other things worth updating from the original framing:

Base is moving toward its own independent stack. On May 28, 2026, Base activated the "Azul" upgrade, its first major release decoupled from Optimism's Superchain governance — introducing a TEE-plus-ZK "multiproof" system that lets either proof type independently finalize withdrawals, cutting the standard 7-day optimistic-rollup challenge window down to roughly one day when both proofs agree (The Block, CryptoTimes, KuCoin Research — May 2026). Base is still technically an optimistic rollup with Ethereum settlement, but calling it simply "an optimistic rollup built on the OP Stack" undersells how much of its client and upgrade path is now Base-specific rather than shared Superchain infrastructure.
Coinbase Wallet doesn't go by that name anymore. In July 2025, Coinbase rebranded Coinbase Wallet as "Base App," folding in social feed features (via Farcaster), USDC tap-to-pay, and trading into one app (CoinDesk, The Block — July 17, 2025). Existing Coinbase Wallet installs migrated automatically. Developer-facing references to "Coinbase Wallet" as a connection option should really say Base App now, even though plenty of users will still search for the old name.

Base's EVM compatibility itself is unchanged and accurate: contracts that work on Ethereum work on Base without modification, which remains the strongest argument for building there over a non-EVM chain like TON.

Enter frfr.fun: The Launchpad

frfr.fun is a token-launch platform operating on Base, built around a bonding-curve model that lets creators launch tokens without writing custom contracts or seeding their own liquidity pool manually. The platform describes its liquidity as algorithmically seeded and locked specifically to deter rug pulls.

A transparency note on that last claim: the "algorithmically seeded and locked" liquidity mechanism, and the anti-rug-pull framing generally, is frfr.fun's own description of its platform — it isn't something we were able to independently verify against a public audit or third-party security review at the time of writing. Treat it as a self-reported feature of the launchpad rather than an externally confirmed one, and don't substitute "locked liquidity" for actual due diligence before buying into any specific launch.

Developer Guide: Embedding a frfr.fun Minting Interface in a Telegram Bot

Step 1: Create the Telegram Bot Interface

Open Telegram and message @BotFather.
Send /newbot and follow the prompts to name your bot (e.g., FrfrBaseSniperBot).
Save the generated API token somewhere secure — never expose it client-side.
Send /newapp to BotFather and supply the Web App URL where your frontend will be hosted.

Step 2: Build the Frontend Web Application

A mobile-optimized Next.js + Tailwind CSS stack is the common choice for TMA frontends. Import the Telegram Web Apps SDK to talk to the Telegram client:

<script src="https://telegram.org/js/telegram-web-app.js"></script>

Then initialize and expand to full screen:

window.Telegram.WebApp.ready();
window.Telegram.WebApp.expand(); // Requests full-screen presentation (Bot API 8.0+)

Step 3: Connect a Base-Compatible Wallet

Since you're bypassing TON's native wallet, you need EVM wallet support — MetaMask, Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet), or any WalletConnect-compatible wallet.

One correction here: Web3Modal was deprecated in February 2025. WalletConnect Inc. rebranded as Reown, and Web3Modal's functionality now lives in Reown AppKit. If you're starting a new project in 2026, build against @reown/appkit rather than the old web3modal package, which no longer receives updates (Reown developer docs; GitHub deprecation notices, 2025).

Wagmi's chain configuration for Base is unchanged and still accurate:

import { base } from 'wagmi/chains';
import { createConfig, http } from 'wagmi';

const config = createConfig({
  chains: [base],
  transports: {
    [base.id]: http('https://mainnet.base.org'),
  },
});

Step 4: Connect the frfr.fun Contracts

Your frontend talks to the frfr.fun router contract on Base via a standard Web3 library (ethers.js or viem — both still current and actively maintained as of 2026). At minimum, the UI needs:

A token search bar or featured-token list.
A "Buy" flow where the user specifies how much ETH (on Base) to spend.
A "Snipe" action that triggers the smart-contract call and hands off to the connected wallet for signing.

An Illustrative Walkthrough (Hypothetical — Not an Actual User)

To make the UX difference concrete, here's a hypothetical, illustrative scenario — "Alex" is not a real person or a documented case study, just a composite example of how the flow is designed to work.

Without a TMA: Alex sees a launch alert in a Telegram group, taps the link, and it opens in Telegram's in-app browser. He copies the URL into a real mobile browser, connects a wallet via WalletConnect, approves the connection, switches back, enters a buy amount, approves the transaction in his wallet app, and waits for confirmation — eight-plus manual steps before he's even submitted a transaction.

With a TMA: Alex taps an inline "Launch Sniper App" button in the same group. The frfr.fun interface opens full-screen inside Telegram. Because his wallet connection state was previously cached (via DeviceStorage or CloudStorage, not technically a "SecureStorage protocol"), he's already connected. He sees the live chart, taps "Buy," enters 0.1 ETH, confirms via a wallet deep-link, and returns to the chat — in well under ten seconds of active interaction.

The directional point — TMAs remove most of the manual friction — is accurate and is the actual reason this distribution pattern has caught on. The specific "under 5 seconds" framing in faster versions of this story is a marketing claim about best-case UX, not a measured average; real-world timing depends on wallet app responsiveness, network congestion, and whether the user already has a cached session.

Marketing Your TMA Token Launch

Because the Mini App lives inside Telegram, you can use the SDK to trigger native share actions — generating referral links a user can post directly into other chats. This is a real and well-documented mechanic on Telegram (used heavily by bot-based games and trading tools), and it's one of the genuine structural advantages of building distribution inside a messaging app rather than on the open web: the share target is a chat the recipient already trusts, not a cold link.

You can also layer in gamification — rewarding referrals or completed actions with token airdrops — using Telegram's existing Stars and gift infrastructure as rails, though anything resembling "earn currency for completing tasks or recruiting other users" sits close to territory that both Apple's and Google's general platform policies restrict for native apps; a TMA sidesteps app-store review entirely, but it doesn't automatically sidestep securities, gambling, or sweepstakes law in the jurisdictions your users are in.

The Risks Worth Naming

A guide like this reads as pure upside if it stops at "frictionless." A few things worth being direct about before publishing this as launch-ready advice:

Speed cuts both ways. The same low-latency flow that lets a retail user buy in seconds also means automated sniping bots — which can react to a launch in milliseconds — are still very likely to front-run manual users, TMA or not. A faster UI narrows the gap; it doesn't close it.
Embedded webviews still ask for contract approvals. Confirming a transaction through a deep-linked wallet inside Telegram is not meaningfully different, from a security standpoint, than confirming it in a mobile browser. Users should still check what they're approving (unlimited token approvals are a common drain vector) rather than tapping through quickly because the UI feels native and trusted.
"Locked liquidity" reduces but doesn't eliminate rug risk. Bonding-curve and liquidity-lock mechanisms can prevent the classic "developer pulls the pool" rug, but they don't prevent low-liquidity tokens from being extremely volatile, nor do they prevent contract-level exploits, malicious token logic, or simple abandonment by the creator.
Regulatory scrutiny on crypto distribution apps is increasing, not decreasing, even as some payment-routing rules loosen. Apple's November 2025 reclassification of crypto exchanges into its "highly regulated" review tier is one example; jurisdictions outside the U.S. continue to apply their own securities and gambling frameworks to token launch mechanics, referral rewards, and prediction-market-style features.
New, thinly-traded tokens carry the same risk profile regardless of how they're distributed. Frictionless buying makes it easier to get into a position quickly — it does nothing to change the odds that a brand-new memecoin retains its value.

None of this means the underlying distribution strategy is bad — it's a genuinely better UX than the alternative. It does mean "two taps and you're in" is a UX claim, not a safety claim, and the two shouldn't be conflated in front of an audience that might be evaluating real launches.

Conclusion

The core argument here still holds up: Telegram Mini-Apps meaningfully reduce the friction between "sees a token mentioned" and "holds the token," and Base remains the stronger liquidity and tooling environment for EVM-based launches compared to TON's native (non-EVM) layer. What's changed since the first draft of this piece is mostly in the details — Apple's app-store posture is more mixed than uniformly hostile, TON's ecosystem now has an EVM-compatible bridge chain in TAC, Base's TVL and technical stack have both moved meaningfully in 2026, and several of the named tools (Web3Modal, Coinbase Wallet) have been renamed or deprecated outright.

For developers building this pattern, the practical takeaway is unchanged: build the frontend once, target Base for execution, distribute through Telegram, and keep the version numbers and tool names current — this space moves fast enough that a guide written in late 2024 is already partially out of date by mid-2026.

Corrections & Transparency Log

This article was substantially revised from an earlier draft. Below is a summary of factual corrections, additions, and framing changes made during editing, with sources and approximate dates.

Telegram user count updated. Original draft cited "nearly a billion" / "900 million" users. Telegram surpassed 1 billion monthly active users in 2026 (Backlinko, January 2026; Demandsage, April 2026; Resourcera, February 2026). Daily active users (500 million) and Premium subscriber counts (15 million) added for context.
Apple App Store policy section rewritten. The original framing ("instant rejection" for any app routing crypto purchases outside Apple's payment system) was accurate before 2025 but is now incomplete. Apple relaxed U.S. App Store rules on external crypto payment links in May 2025 following the Epic Games v. Apple ruling (Crowdfund Insider, CryptoBriefing — May 2025), while simultaneously reclassifying crypto exchanges as a "highly regulated" review category in November 2025 (H2S Media, November 2025). Both points were added; the original blanket-hostility framing was corrected.
Bot API version attribution corrected. Full-screen mode, home-screen shortcuts, and persistent storage are Bot API 8.0 features (November 2024), not jointly "8.0 and 9.0." Bot API 9.0 (mid-2025) primarily covered Telegram Business 2.0 features (Telegram Bot API changelog; Telegram's "Mini Apps 2.0" announcement).
Storage terminology corrected. "SecureStorage protocol" was replaced with accurate references to Telegram's DeviceStorage and CloudStorage objects, which are the typical mechanisms for caching non-sensitive session state; SecureStorage exists but is documented by Telegram as a narrower, Keychain/Keystore-backed store for sensitive items, capped at 10 items per user.
TON vs. EVM compatibility nuanced. The claim that TON is not EVM-compatible is accurate for TON's native TVM/FunC/Tact/Tolk stack. Added context on TAC (TON Application Chain), an independently-operated EVM-compatible L2 bridged into the TON ecosystem, since omitting it overstated TON's EVM isolation.
Base TVL figure updated and contextualized. Original draft cited a static "$4.18 billion" figure without a date. Replaced with a dated, sourced figure (DefiLlama, live as of June 20, 2026: ~$4.18B) plus historical volatility context spanning a reported $5.3B (January 2026), a drop to ~$3.9B (BeInCrypto, February 2026), a rally past $5.5B (BSCN, May 2026), and a settle-back to the low-$4B range (The Block; DefiLlama).
Base technical/governance status updated. Added the May 28, 2026 "Azul" upgrade, which introduced a TEE+ZK multiproof system and decoupled Base from Optimism Superchain governance (The Block; CryptoTimes; KuCoin Research). The original "optimistic rollup built on the OP Stack" description is now qualified to reflect Base's move toward its own independent client/upgrade stack.
Coinbase Wallet rename added. Coinbase Wallet was rebranded to "Base App" in July 2025 (CoinDesk, The Block — July 17, 2025). References updated accordingly.
WalletConnect/Web3Modal correction. Web3Modal was deprecated in February 2025; WalletConnect Inc. rebranded as Reown, and current development should target Reown AppKit. Code samples and tooling references updated.
frfr.fun-specific claims flagged, not altered. Statements about frfr.fun's liquidity-locking mechanism and anti-rug-pull design are the platform's own self-description. These were not independently verifiable via public audit documentation at the time of writing and are flagged as such in the body text rather than removed or rewritten as confirmed fact.
Hypothetical user scenario labeled. The "Alex" walkthrough was not a documented case study in the original draft but was written in a way that could read as one. It is now explicitly labeled as an illustrative, hypothetical composite, and the "under 5 seconds" claim is flagged as a best-case marketing framing rather than a measured average.
Added: a dedicated risk section. The original draft contained no discussion of sniping-bot competition, contract-approval risk in embedded webviews, the limits of "locked liquidity" as a rug-pull deterrent, or regulatory uncertainty. This section was added to balance the promotional framing with honest risk disclosure.

Research conducted via live web search on June 20, 2026. Figures tied to live trackers (e.g., DefiLlama TVL) will drift over time; treat dated figures as snapshots rather than constants.