Since the beginning of 2024, games in the Telegram messenger in the tap-to-earn format, called “clickers” or “taps,” have become a real trend. The simplest mechanics of “mining” in-game currency in the hope of eventually selling it after listing on crypto exchanges quickly attracted a huge audience to such games, including those who had never immersed themselves in the topic of cryptocurrencies before. The authors of such applications call them a new tool for involving users in cryptocurrencies, while skeptics doubt their long-term potential.
The debut of the game's NOT token Notcoin on crypto exchanges gave users of such applications even more motivation. Even not very active players after listing had the opportunity to sell tokens “earned” in the game for an amount ranging from $100-1000. The income of influencers who attracted players using the referral system and received additional coins depending on their results was many times higher.
Pavel Durov has repeatedly spoken about the success of Notcoin, separately emphasizing that Telegram’s social infrastructure will support similar projects. This affected the popularity of the game Hamster Kombat or the application of the developed crypto exchange Blum, in which the audience is attracted through a simple internal game and earning Blum points - the in-game currency. Both applications are marked “editor's choice” in the Telegram Apps Center, a directory of mini-apps for the messenger.
Hamster Kombat is a game in which you can “earn” in-game coins by simply pressing a button with a picture of a hamster, and use additional bonuses that are played out as elements of promoting a virtual crypto market. Bonuses are also awarded for watching game videos on YouTube and for attracting users through the referral system. The developers of Hamster Kombat have already announced plans to list the token on exchanges, but have not yet given specific dates.
Millions of users.
During previous crypto bull cycles, popular native token games such as CryptoKitties or Axie Infinity also emerged, but none gained as many players as those currently launching on Telegram. At its peak, Notcoin had 6 million daily active players with 35 million registered users. Another similar game, Catizen, according to the developers, has more than 2 million daily active players. The Hamster Kombat channel on Telegram has more than 34 million subscribers, the Blum channel has more than 10 million. Both are among the top 5 largest Telegram channels in the world.
“The Blum case is indicative from the point of view of using the capabilities of Telegram and mini-apps. In less than a month, the number of Blum users grew from 2 million to 20 million,” says Gleb Kostarev, head and co-founder of Blum. Notcoin has shown that Telegram mini-apps can be a great channel for acquiring users, he adds.
A huge number of “mini-apps” have appeared that use similar mechanics to attract an audience. But we must understand that sooner or later users will get tired of “just tapping on the screen,” Kostarev notes. Then there will be a demand for more specialized “mini-apps” related to specific cases, for example, trading.
“The TON ecosystem, of course, only benefits from the development of such “mini-apps”. And although such applications can be launched on any blockchain, many prefer to build on TON, considering it native for use in Telegram,” Kostarev discusses the influence of the trend on the expansion of the TON network.
It’s interesting that “clickers” focus on seamless integration of Telegram, says Anton Toroptsev, marketing director for the CIS of the Bitget crypto exchange. This suggests that the Telegram user base is seen by crypto projects as a responsive audience that is ready to accept new products and spends a lot of time inside the messenger.
The success of Notcoin showed the effectiveness of the tap-to-earn model, says Toroptsev. In his opinion, the key point was that users are not trying to pre-sell a subscription or NFT. The “you don’t lose anything, but you can gain something” model is very effective in terms of quickly increasing the user base, Toroptsev noted. But this cannot continue indefinitely, so the success of the “clicker” depends on what task is planned to be solved later with the help of the formed multimillion-dollar community. Notcoin, for example, is now going the way of a promotion platform, where young projects can introduce users to their product, and they can receive a reward for this acquaintance.
The Notcoin case showed that the clicker game itself does not have a long-term future, says Nikita Zuborev, senior analyst at Bestchange.ru. The game developers quickly realized that to develop the project they needed to incorporate new mechanics, which in their case were advertising tasks. And those new projects that today are trying to follow the path of the earlier version of Notcoin are most likely doomed to failure, the expert is sure.
What will happen to the price of tokens.
Launched in 2018, Axie Infinity achieved significant popularity during the 2020-2021 crypto bull cycle. At its peak, it had about 2.8 million daily active players. The excitement around Axie Infinity was especially noticeable in the South Asian countries of the Philippines and Vietnam. In these regions, for many, the game has become a full-fledged source of income - its AXS token is still among the top 100 largest crypto assets by capitalization. However, by 2024, the number of active Axie Infinity players had dropped by more than 1,000 times. Their activity in the game decreased in parallel with the price of AXS - since its peak in February 2022, the token has fallen in price by more than 90%.
The Notcoin token entered the exchanges on May 16 with a price of about $0.01, then for two weeks it only became cheaper, but in the first days of June it began to grow sharply. On June 2, NOT peaked above $0.029. As of June 12, NOT is trading at $0.018 with a capitalization of more than $1.8 billion. From June 14, the KuCoin exchange will add the Hamster Kombat game token to the so-called premarket - a platform where tokens are traded before the official launch and listing on exchanges in the format of over-the-counter transactions ( OTC). At the time of publication, its preliminary price is unknown. Representatives of the game are talking about the launch of the token and its listing on crypto exchanges in July. In the game interface you can already connect a wallet to receive an airdrop.
“The very fact of listing such projects will take place, but the size of the reward for not a single clicker will exceed Notcoin,” Zuborev predicts. “Too many factors played a role in NOT’s success for this to happen again.” At best, the project will interest investors who will sponsor an airdrop for players, but on average the results will be extremely mediocre.”
There are already established traditions in the cryptocurrency market for the primary distribution of tokens, Zuborev clarifies. Project developers attract serious funds from investors, part of which they distribute as rewards to the most active participants. They reward trading volume, deposit sizes, number of transactions, or for providing liquidity within the ecosystem. In the case of clicker games in the TON ecosystem in its current form, investors “will be less willing to pay for armies of clicking bots,” the analyst believes.
“Tokens and cryptocurrencies that have just been added to exchanges will be quite difficult to analyze,” says cryptocurrency market analyst Viktor Pershikov about the possibility of predicting the price of clicker game tokens. — For example, technical analysis requires sufficient price history to be able to analyze the behavior of an asset in the past. However, even one or two weeks is enough to understand how an asset is traded after listing and how trading volumes and traders’ interest remain.”
For many assets, listing on the exchange is the “final point of a long journey,” when the owners of tokens sell them, and those investors who gave real money for the development of the project receive the equivalent of their investments in the form of tokens, which begin to be worth something. For many holders, the moment of listing is the moment they exit the asset, and they never return to it, explains Pershikov.
But many assets “begin to live an active trading life” if the marketing and community activity does not end after they are listed on exchanges. Notcoin found use in other applications after its listing, increasing the demand for the token. The ability to analyze and trade it will greatly depend on demand, as well as on the liquidity and trading volume of a token, the analyst adds. The same Toncoin (TON), which “has been hanging around at $2 for a long time,” was uninteresting for active speculation. But its rise above $7 and a significant increase in capitalization made the asset much more liquid.
“Liquidity and capitalization are important elements of trading, since technical and other methods of analysis work best on capitalized assets, where the number of players is high and internal competition is high,” explains Pershikov. “On assets with low liquidity, where there is only one large market maker driving the price up and down, the effectiveness of analysis and trading will be extremely low.” #ЛюбимыйТокен #AirdropGuide
