Hamster Kombat and Catizen are warned: What’s happening?

The upcoming airdrop of popular Telegram games Hamster Kombat and Catizen could cause outages on the TON network.

Telegram’s tap-to-win games have taken the crypto world by storm and brought hundreds of millions of new users to The Open Network (TON). However, Hamster Kombat and Catizen, which are airdropping later this month, could spell trouble for the TON network. $TON developers have warned of the possibility.

“We will face further technical pressure and possibly some unforeseen issues,” the TON Core team wrote in an official Telegram channel on Tuesday. The warning comes as Telegram grapples with service outages caused by activity in tap-to-win games.

According to the developers, TON’s daily active user addresses have reached 1.1 million several times in the last two weeks, and single-day transactions have reached 14.4 million ahead of upcoming airdrops for popular tap-to-win games like Hamster Kombat and Catizen. Catizen, which has attracted around 35 million players to its Telegram app, will launch its CATI token on September 20. The team also said that all players will be eligible for the #HMSTR token airdrop when it reaches TON on September 26.

“This level of user engagement on Web3 was previously unimaginable,” #TON Core developers wrote in a post on their Telegram channel. The surge in user activity, fueled by TON’s Telegram gaming craze, has caused outages across the network. In the past month, network activity has been down twice, albeit for a few hours.

The DOGS airdrop is the crux of the problem, according to TON developers. TON’s service outages could intensify again ahead of this and other upcoming game-related airdrops on the platform. Both airdrops will likely lead to a surge in activity on TON as recipients attempt to claim their rewards.