ZOO is a free idle game that runs inside Telegram. You build a virtual zoo and earn Zoo tokens from visitors. The mining phase that fed the airdrop ended on January 31, 2025, and the token now has almost no market value. CoinGecko data for October 24, 2026 shows a close of $0.000000077369 and a market cap of about $20,400. That is roughly 99.8% below the token's all-time high of $0.00004517. You can still play the game for fun. As a way to earn money, it pays close to nothing.
What ZOO is
Zoo launched on Telegram on December 10, 2024, as an idle game: players buy animal enclosures on a map, the animals attract visitors, and the visitors generate Zoo tokens. It runs as a Telegram mini app through the bot @zoo_story_bot, so there is nothing to install.
Growth was fast, according to CoinMarketCap Academy:
- 1 million users within 48 hours of launch
- 3 million by December 14, 2024
- more than 5 million by the end of December 2024
- 10 million by January 1, 2025
The project's own description on CoinGecko now claims "over 18.8 million users globally", a figure the project reports about itself. The same description names X Empire and Paws as supporters.
The token runs on The Open Network (TON).
How the game works
Decrypt's guide (January 12, 2025) and CoinMarketCap Academy describe the same basic loop:
- Buy an enclosure. Tap an empty plot and pay for it with Animal Feed, the in-game resource. You earn no tokens until you have at least one animal.
- Keep animals fed. Animals get hungry every two hours and stop producing income until you feed them.
- Collect free feed. Animal Feed comes from the daily riddle, the daily rebus, a daily login reward and item drops.
- Catch item drops. Up to three drops appear in your zoo each day. They last only a few minutes and mostly give feed.
- Join an alliance. Players pool into alliances. An alliance's level depends on how many people join, and higher levels give a bigger token-generation multiplier. Joining costs Animal Feed. Decrypt suggests joining once your zoo is established, and picking the alliance closest to its next level.
Practical tips
- Buy animals only when you can still afford to feed them. A hungry animal earns nothing, so a small zoo that stays fed beats a large hungry one.
- Do the riddle and rebus every day. They are the easiest free feed in the game.
- Join an alliance only once your zoo can absorb the feed cost.
These tips only change how many in-game tokens you collect. They do not change what those tokens are worth.
The airdrop: what happened
- Mining phase ended: January 31, 2025.
- Free off-chain claims: inside the mini app until February 25, 2025, 9:00 UTC (Decrypt, February 19, 2025).
- On-chain claims and trading: opened February 25, 2025, 12:00 UTC. On-chain claims cost 0.1 TON, about $0.35 at the time.
- Conversion: the developers first announced 1:1, then dropped the last three digits of in-game balances. 1,000,000,000 in-game tokens became 1,000,000 ZOO.
- Allocation: 66% of supply went to mining-phase players. The other 34% went to "further development, marketing, listings, liquidity, community incentives, market makers, team rewards, and more" (Decrypt). An earlier CoinMarketCap Academy guide, written before launch, gave a different split: 97% to player incentives and 3% to alliance owners. The 66% figure is the later one.
What is your ZOO balance worth?
Enter how many ZOO tokens you hold and a price per token to see what the balance is worth in dollars.
| ZOO tokens you hold (after in-game balances lost their last three digits) | Price per ZOO token | Value of your ZOO balance |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000,000 ZOO | 0.000000077369 $ | 0.77 $ |
| 1,000,000 ZOO | 0.000000077369 $ | 0.08 $ |
| 10,000,000 ZOO | 0.00004517 $ | 451.7 $ |
- The holding is your own input; the article's examples are 10 million ZOO and 1,000,000 ZOO.
- The default price is the CoinGecko close for October 24, 2026; the all-time high of $0.00004517 is shown only for comparison, not as a target.
This multiplies your inputs only. It leaves out the 0.1 TON on-chain claim fee and tax, and it cannot show whether you could sell at that price when daily volume is about $3.48.
Tokenomics and price, October 2026
| Metric | Value | Source, date |
|---|---|---|
| Total supply | 264,084,737,391 ZOO | Decrypt; CoinMarketCap Academy |
| Circulating supply | ~264.085 billion (shown as fully circulating) | CoinGecko, Oct 25, 2026 |
| Price (close) | $0.000000077369 | CoinGecko, Oct 24, 2026 |
| Market cap | ~$20,400 | CoinGecko, Oct 24–25, 2026 |
| 24h trading volume | ~$3.48 | CoinGecko, Oct 25, 2026 |
| All-time high | $0.00004517 | CoinGecko |
What these numbers mean in practice:
- A typical holding is worth very little. At the October 24 close, 10 million ZOO is worth about $0.77.
- Big price targets don't add up. With about 264 billion tokens, $0.001 per token would mean a market cap of about $264 million, roughly 13,000 times today's. $1 per token would mean about $264 billion.
- Liquidity is almost gone. With daily volume of a few dollars, selling even a small position could move the price.
Is ZOO worth playing in 2026?
Arguments for playing
- It is free. You need only a Telegram account. The one possible cost is the 0.1 TON fee for an on-chain claim.
- It is a low-stakes way to learn how a TON wallet, a token claim and an on-chain transaction work.
Arguments against
- The token's market value is close to zero, so the time you put in earns almost nothing.
- The project says it will grow into "a full economic strategy game, featuring in-game resources and advanced player interaction mechanics" (CoinGecko description), but gives no dates or delivered features.
- Hamster Kombat and Notcoin also drew huge player numbers before their airdrops. Zoo's token has followed the same rise-then-collapse pattern.
Safety
Use only the bot @zoo_story_bot. Never give a seed phrase to anyone offering "unclaimed ZOO".
FAQ
Is the ZOO Telegram game free?
Yes. You need only a Telegram account. On-chain claims after February 25, 2025 cost 0.1 TON.
Can I still earn from the airdrop?
No. The airdrop counted balances earned until January 31, 2025. Tokens you collect in the game now have no announced conversion.
What blockchain is ZOO on?
The Open Network (TON).
Is ZOO a scam?
The game launched, the airdrop was distributed, and the token trades. Its value, though, has fallen about 99.8% from its high. Calling it legitimate says nothing about whether it is a good holding.
How is ZOO different from Hamster Kombat or Notcoin?
Zoo is an idle game: you build and feed instead of tapping all the time. The token's path after the airdrop looks much the same.
Gameplay details come from guides written in early 2025, so the game may have changed since. This is not investment advice.
