多个项目空投日期跳票，“杀疯”了的头部点赚游戏项目TGE成迷？

Author: Zen, PANews

On July 14th, Telegram gaming project Notcoin announced that it will launch a $7 million Airdrop, with $5 million allocated to stakers and level holders, and the remaining $2 million distributed to users participating in the activity over the next three months. After becoming a phenomenon with the Tap-to-Earn mechanism, Notcoin’s current focus is on providing activities, such as continuous user engagement by interacting with other newer Telegram games.

As a “model” of the Ton ecosystem, after the explosion of Notcoin, it quickly caused a frenzy of imitation among game studios. “Notcoin-like” games also occupy a dominant position in the Ton ecosystem games, and imitators continue to emerge. For example, at the end of June, the well-known chain game platform Gala Games launched two Telegram click games “Treasure Tapper” and “Flower Frenzy”; Bondex, a Web3 version of the well-funded LinkedIn, also launched the earning game Bunny Blitz and initiated a $1 million reward campaign.

In the “imitation show” of Notcoin, several games like Hamster Kombat have become star projects with tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of users. When Airdrop has become the most concerned issue for “tens of millions of users,” it is also a “difficult problem” that these project parties need to face.

Hamster Kombat: Traffic Leader, expected to conduct the first Airdrop this month

Telegram CEO PatelDuRove referred to Hamster Kombat as the latest internet phenomenon, with 239 million people registered in just 3 months. The rapid rise of users has also led the team to apply for a Guinness World Record, becoming the first YouTube channel to surpass 10 million subscriptions in a week.

In terms of user scale and popularity, Hamster Kombat is the most likely project to achieve a ‘wave stronger than the last’ among all games using the Tap-to-Earn mechanism. Its popularity has even attracted the attention and criticism of Iranian officials and scholars. In the game, players play the role of a CEO of a new Cryptocurrency exchange, whose main task is to click on the image of a cartoon hamster to earn coins, and then use these coins to purchase upgrades for the exchange. Each upgrade will increase the player’s passive income, allowing them to earn more coins for a long time.

Hamster Kombat plans to issuance its Token on the TON blockchain, and its first Airdrop is expected to take place this month. Hamster Kombat previously stated that the distribution of user Airdrops will depend on hourly profits and certain other parameters of future activities to be released by the team, rather than the quantity of Tokens in balance. When asked by The Block about the survival probability of the game after the first Airdrop, the founder of Hamster Kombat expressed optimism and stated that the game will continue, with a second season and a second Airdrop planned within the next two years.

TapSwap: Has postponed the issuance of coins twice, and may conduct TGE in the third quarter

TapSwap is a Tap-to-Earn game that was once praised by Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram. He mentioned on his personal Telegram channel that the TapSwap team wisely leveraged Telegram for distribution and utilized the TON issuance Token that is about to be launched, which is inspiring for all developers building applications on Telegram and TON. As of early July 2024, the game has over 60 million players and 4 million YouTube subscribers. TapSwap was launched at the end of 2023, initially on the Solana network, and later moved to the TON ecosystem. In TapSwap, players can earn TAPS coins by tapping icons in the Telegram interface. The game also provides bonuses, tasks, referral systems, and more.

In early May, the TapSwap team announced that TapSwap Pools would be released on May 30th. However, on the day before the scheduled release date, TapSwap’s official announcement stated that they had discovered a large number of robots earning Airdrop points. In order to maintain the fairness of token distribution, they took measures to stop and ban these robots, and the release would be postponed to July 1st. However, the platform was still not launched on that day. TapSwap later explained in a lengthy tweet that due to its wide following, further research on tokenomics and the correct release strategy was required. Therefore, the Token issuance date would be postponed again, without providing a specific new date, only mentioning that it would be ensured to be released in the third quarter.

The project’s two-time delay has polarized the community’s evaluation. Some people believe that the project lacks planning and should not set a time without adequate preparation; supporters believe that good things take time, and a quality project requires a lot of time to build, Cryptocurrency should not be a get-rich-quick scheme. TapSwap also assures its users that the delay will ultimately make them “truly benefit”.

PIXELVERSE: Raised $7.5 Million in Financing, Plans to Build a Cyberpunk Gaming Ecosystem

Pixelverse is a cyberpunk game ecosystem, which aims to ultimately become a long-blockchain game that spans multiple platforms, currently led by the Telegram game PixelTap. The PixelTap game itself draws inspiration from the concepts of Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, promising that in the future, wealth can be obtained simply by tapping the screen, and currently has over 50 million players. In the game, players can frantically tap various parts of the screen to attack opponents’ robots, unleash special attacks, and attempt self-defense. In addition, players can also engage in PVP and PVE mode battles with upgradeable pets.

As the player community continues to rise, the launch of the native token for PIXELVERSE, known as PIXFI, is getting closer. The total supply of PIXFI is 5 billion, which will be used for transactions, creation, and battles in PIXELVERSE. According to official documents, PIXFI was originally planned to be issued on the TON chain, but the recent update on tokenomics shows that PIXFI is an ERC20 token. The timing for the token’s TGE and Airdrop has not been determined yet. PIXELVERSE has raised a total of $7.5 million in funding over the past two months, with investors including Delphi Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Crit Ventures, and others.

It is worth mentioning that, Pixelverse founder Kirill Volgin once founded the popular Move-to-Earn platform Step.App. Step App has pioneered gamified metaverse in the fitness economy, built on Avalanche, where users can socialize, play, and earn money by walking, jogging, and running. The famous sprinter Bolt has also served as its brand ambassador.

MemeFi: Built on Linea, or use 90% of the Token for community Airdrop

MemeFi Club is a tap-to-earn game developed by the MemeFi project, which distinguishes it from other similar games, MemeFi’s game concept is to let players beat their opponents by tapping and earn rewards from them. While other click-to-win games usually display a coin on the home screen, in Memefi, players face boss monster enemies inspired by memes like Doge and Pepe. Players will drop an enemy’s health with each click and receive the equivalent token, as well as a specific reward for each enemy defeated. MemeFi also has a variety of ways to increase player rewards, including completing daily tasks, inviting friends to participate, and using boosters such as “Turbos” to increase damage or “recharge” to recharge to make the game more efficient.

MemeFi has 8.6 million subscribers on Telegram, 2.3 million fans on X, and the official claim to have over 20 million game users. Most click-to-earn games are often associated with the TON blockchain, but MemeFi chooses to build on the Layer 2 solution Linea on the ETH network. Its $MEMEFI is a Linea Token based on the Layer Zero OFT format, with functions including governance, rewards, income sharing, yield farming, and can be used as an in-game currency. The total supply is 10 billion, with 100% unlocked immediately at TGE, of which 90% is planned for the community. The TGE time for this token is yet to be determined.

dotcoin: latency half-month online, DTC mining is still not stable

Dotcoin has 5.5 million subscribers on Telegram and 1.4 million fans on X. The official claims to have over 17 million game users. The game interface of Dotcoin is relatively simple, with a yellow dot in the center. As players click quickly, the dot will expand, and the reward for each click will increase accordingly, up to four times. The number of attempts per day is limited. In the ‘Boosts’ section, players can spend their accumulated Dotcoins to increase the number of attempts available to them each day, or purchase ‘Multitap’ to increase the amount of Dotcoins obtained per click. Players can also watch ads to increase the number of clicks available to them each day.

DTC is the main Token of the Dotcoin ecosystem, and according to the project’s design, it will be obtainable directly through DTCTokenMining in “Boosts”. In simple terms, players use collected Dotcoin to purchase DTC Mining Rigs, and their investment portfolio wallets will receive a certain amount of DTCToken every day, depending on the level of the DTC Mining Rig. For example, a level 1 rig will receive 2 DTCTokens per day. After listing, players will be able to buy and sell this Token.

The project originally announced that the DTCMining function would be launched in the first week of July, but the function seems to still be unstable. Dotcoin first claimed on July 8th that it was conducting final preparation and testing work for the DTCMining function, and then on July 13th said that it was making final edits to the update, causing some latency due to the security system being set up. On July 15th, Dotcoin launched the DTC Mining test, but many users were unable to use it normally. The project team said that the system was overloaded due to 8 million user requests. Later, Dotcoin announced on the TG channel that it is still trying to activate the DTCMining function, and the Mining button will be available soon.

More Than Just Web3: Point-Earning Game “Banana” Goes Crazy on Steam

Amidst the crazy rise of many small games in the TON ecosystem, a game called ‘Banana’ suddenly became popular on the Steam platform, which clearly excludes Web3 games. According to SteamDB data, since mid-June, the daily concurrent players of ‘Banana’ have been at least 300,000, with a peak of nearly 920,000, second only to the evergreen tree ‘CS2’. This small game is only 60.8MB in size and has extremely simple gameplay, but its popularity surpasses many AAA games, mainly because it is a ‘money-making’ free game. In essence, ‘Banana’ is a ‘Tap to earn’ game that does not require integration with Web3.

“Banana”'s first sentence in the introduction on the Steam store, “Banana is a clicker Game”, is the entire gameplay of the game. In the game, all players can do is continuously click on the banana in the center of the screen, and the white number above the banana will increase accordingly. In addition, every 3 hours, the game will drop a common rare banana into the player’s Steam account, and every 18 hours, a higher rareness banana can also be produced.

These bananas support player transactions, and trading of “cyber bananas” of different rarities is the true core gameplay of this game. As more and more long players pour in, the prices of high-rarity bananas also rise, with the highest selling price even reaching thousands of dollars. Money earned through buying and selling bananas is credited in the form of Steam balance, which cannot be withdrawn directly, but players can complete settlements in Fiat Currency through buying and selling other game skins and accessories, such as CS2, on third-party platforms.

In the development of the project, robots are both a driving force and a hindrance

There have been doubts from the outside world about the explosion of data announced by various projects in the Ton ecosystem to demonstrate their prosperity. Especially with the landing of Notcoin Airdrop and the subsequent pump in Token price, many Telegram groups have seen a significant increase in the number of bots. On the one hand, these bots provide a large number of ‘users’ for the project party, creating a phenomenon of prosperous development of the project, thereby attracting more attention and funding, and driving the rapid rise of various data; on the other hand, the presence of bot accounts dilutes the Airdrop share of real users. When conducting Airdrops, project parties must handle the issue of bots to ensure the rights of real users.

Several Web3 projects mentioned earlier have shown caution and procrastination in issuing coins and conducting airdrops, which is closely related to the need to deal with tricky robot issues. Sasha, the anonymous founder of Notcoin, stated that one of the biggest challenges they faced during airdrops was dealing with bots using the platform. ‘Notcoin prioritizes human behavior in airdrops and rewards individuals with normal on-chain activities in their wallets.’

The dilemma of simple game mechanics, easy to acquire customers but difficult to retain

Notcoin’s anonymous founder Sasha admitted in an interview with The Block: “I don’t think Notcoin will exist forever, I don’t think it will have any sustainability. From my perspective, only games with sustainable models can survive.” Therefore, regarding Notcoin itself, Sasha expressed his hope to break free from the Tap-to-Earn narrative and plans to make the project independent of the team by building sustainable and efficient subsystems in the next four years.

The simple game mechanism of Tap-to-Earn is usually easy for new users to understand and accept. Based on the expected earnings, it can quickly attract a large number of users to participate, which is beneficial for the initial promotion and customer acquisition of the project. However, due to the limited content and gameplay, developers need to continuously introduce new content and gameplay to maintain the interest of users, but this is a huge challenge for the development team. Recently, compared to the early stage, the Tap-to-Earn game has also shown relatively weak performance, and users’ attention seems to have shifted to new projects such as TON’s MEME project DOGS.

In addition, this model relies heavily on the continuous rise of users and external financial support, but the rise cannot be sustained indefinitely. For such small games that have little gameplay, the only attraction for users is making money. Once the rise of users stagnates or external funding decreases, when players find no profit or even incur losses, the death knell of these games will ring.