What is a mini app? Crypto mini apps explained
A mini app is a web app that runs inside a host app with your identity attached. How crypto mini apps work on Telegram, Farcaster, and Cherry.
What is a mini app? It is a web app that runs inside another app and uses that host app’s identity and context, so you never sign up for it separately. A crypto mini app is the same idea inside a crypto client: it opens with your wallet attached, so it can ask you to sign a transaction with no connect step. Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto, on the web, on iOS and Android, and on the Solana dApp Store for Seeker; its mini apps open inside a chat room.
How a mini app works
The host runs the app in a container it controls, a web view on mobile or an iframe on the web, and hands it a few facts about the session first.
- You tap the app inside the host: a button in a chat, a card in a feed, a shared link.
- The host passes signed information about who you are and where you opened the app from, so no login screen appears.
- The app runs its own code, then calls back to the host for anything the host controls: a signature, a payment, a screen change.
- You approve the sensitive parts, in a crypto client through the wallet prompt.
A mini app SDK is the library that carries those messages both ways between the app and its host. Every host publishes its own.
Telegram, Farcaster, and Cherry mini apps
In crypto the term comes from Telegram Mini Apps, and it now covers formats that differ in where the app launches and what it knows about you.
| Telegram Mini Apps | Farcaster Mini Apps | Cherry mini apps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opens from | a bot: keyboard and inline buttons, the menu button, a direct link | a Farcaster client: a share in the feed, or app search | a chat room, or a card inside a message |
| Identity handed to the app | your Telegram account, vouched for by the bot | your Farcaster account | your wallet address, display name, avatar, and the room |
| Wallet in the runtime | none built in | Ethereum and Solana wallets in its SDK | the wallet you signed in with |
Telegram describes mini apps as interfaces “launched right inside Telegram”, and hands an app account data: user id, names, language, whether the account has Premium. Payments run through the bot’s backend, including Telegram Stars. Farcaster calls its version “web apps built with HTML, CSS, and Javascript that can be discovered and used within Farcaster clients”, and its library covers identity, Ethereum and Solana wallets, and notifications. Cherry’s version is room-first: its mini apps sit in a public room with its own handle, so the app is one tap from the conversation about it.
Example on Cherry
SOL Reclaim is a mini app inside Cherry that finds the empty token accounts a trading wallet accumulates, closes them, and returns the locked SOL as rent.
You open it from the room and it already knows your wallet, so the only prompt is the transaction approval. Games, token swaps, prediction markets via the Polymarket mini app, and perps and tokenized stocks via the Trading Terminal mini app run the same way inside Cherry. The live list with dated member counts is on the mini apps page; builders start from how to build a Solana mini app .
Sign in at chat.cherry.fun and open one from its room.
Related terms
- Mini apps in chat : what an app can see and ask for.
- Embeddable chat widget : the opposite direction, a Cherry room inside another site.
- Token-gated chat : restricting a mini app’s room to holders.
- Cherry vs Farcaster : room-first mini apps against feed-first ones.
FAQ
What is a crypto mini app?
A crypto mini app is a web app that opens inside a crypto messenger or wallet with your wallet already attached, so it can ask you to sign a transaction without a separate connect step.
What is a mini app SDK?
A mini app SDK is the library a web app uses to talk to the host app it runs inside. It carries the user’s identity and context into the app, and carries requests such as a signature or a screen change back to the host.
Do mini apps have their own login?
Not inside the host: it passes signed session information to the app before it renders, so no login screen appears. A mini app that also runs as a standalone website keeps its own login for visitors who arrive that way.
Sources
Try Cherry
Sign in with a wallet, DM any address, and join token-gated and paid communities. No phone number, email, or KYC.