2024’s Rollercoaster Ride: The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Telegram’s Tap-to-Earn Gaming Phenomenon

At the beginning of 2024, the inaugural Telegram tap-to-earn game was a novelty—an enigma. By year’s end, Notcoin’s achievement had created a small industry that attracted significant interest. Yet, just as fast as Telegram gaming emerged, it seemed to fade, leaving an impression that its moment had receded.

When Notcoin debuted in January, we hardly understood what to think. Why were individuals obsessively tapping a coin within a messaging application on their smartphones? Would a genuine on-chain token emerge, or was this merely a kind of meta-commentary on the crypto landscape?

There would indeed be a genuine token minted on The Open Network (TON), and Notcoin decided to maintain clarity: Tap and you will earn. That straightforwardness, combined with an appealing anti-establishment sentiment and increasing momentum around TON, ultimately attracted 35 million gamers to the platform in merely three months.

By the time the Notcoin airdrop distributed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of tokens to players, whose value skyrocketed to billions within weeks, tap-to-earn was primed for a breakthrough. This is where Hamster Kombat took over.

While still fundamentally based on a tapping mechanism, Hamster Kombat transitioned, adopting the characteristics of a highly streamlined management simulator as you initiated and scaled your own cryptocurrency exchange—as an adorable hamster, of course.

As ridiculous as that concept appears, Hamster Kombat made a significant impact. Within a few months, the creators declared they had hundreds of millions of players, as the game’s social media presence soared.

Then, peculiar events began to unfold.

Massage guns reportedly became unavailable in Russia as players utilized their rhythmic, consistent vibrations to influence Hamster Kombat’s tapping gameplay. In June, an Iranian military figure condemned the game’s increasing grip on players in the nation, warning it might affect the upcoming presidential elections.

“One of the features of the soft war by the enemy is the ‘Hamster’ game,” stated Iran’s deputy military chief Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, as reported by the state-run IRNA news outlet.

Telegram gaming was influencing real-world events, and when Hamster Kombat announced it had attracted 300 million total players in July, other games like Catizen and Yescoin were also experiencing surges with their own interpretations of the concept.

Much pressure was placed on Hamster Kombat’s airdrop. A tremendous achievement would validate the viability of the tap-to-earn model and its potential for replication—that Notcoin wasn’t merely an anomaly, and that a game reaching mainstream audiences could still generate that level of value at scale.

Instead, many players would express on social media that they received “dust.”

Hamster Kombat’s HMSTR airdrop in September distributed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of complimentary tokens to players, essentially generating value from thin air and providing players with genuine cryptocurrency. However, with around 130 million players qualified for the airdrop, it was hardly shocking to see individuals ending up with perhaps a few dollars’ worth of coins. Their frustration was palpable.

Each significant Telegram gaming airdrop following Notcoin has been tainted with comparable dissatisfaction. In part, this dissatisfaction arises because airdrops have become increasingly chaotic, characterized by complications as developers moved away from Notcoin’s simplicity and attempted to monetize their player base, all while directing them towards other games to maintain the hype cycle.

For instance, the cat-themed Telegram puzzle game Catizen upset a considerable number of players by altering the airdrop eligibility criteria just prior to the token launch, significantly favoring those who had spent real currency to gain advantages.

Tomarket claimed it conducted its token generation event in October, but the “tokens” given to players would not be tradable until TOMA was listed by exchanges. Eventually, the team conceded it was an “in-game” token launch and that nothing had been minted to TON—and then a week before the airdrop, Tomarket declared that TOMA would be minted on Aptos instead.

As the year draws to a close, the developers of games like Tomarket and MemeFi are attempting to clarify to their players why their respective tokens hold minimal value. Meanwhile, early Notcoin

followers like Yescoin and Tapswap have yet to release their own tokens.

Hamster Kombat, on the other hand, finds itself in a state of uncertainty following the airdrop. The team hinted at a “Season 2” revamp featuring new gameplay, but as of this moment, it fell short of its launch deadline by almost two months, facing reduced player engagement and fewer updates in the official Telegram group. Currently, the team announces it’s releasing three games under the banner of a “HamsterVerse.”

Beyond the monotonous gameplay, the increasingly chaotic token releases, and players disillusioned by misleading claims, interest within the crypto sector has shifted elsewhere in a more optimistic market—back to Bitcoin and rising meme coins.

Opinions among experts regarding the prospects of tap-to-earn games vary. Some argue that the games need greater engagement and depth; others propose that such basic tapping systems should merely serve as a means to onboard and engage users for new platforms and initiatives.

Tap-to-earn gaming repackaged the play-to-earn phenomenon of 2021, enhancing and simplifying the idea, making it more accessible to a wider audience. It was effective, albeit briefly, but many of the same foundational problems eventually surfaced again.

Could the next Notcoin be just around the corner in 2025? Possibly. Nevertheless, both players and developers have absorbed some difficult lessons from the initial surge, and any misconceptions about tapping your way to cryptocurrency fortunes have quickly disappeared.