Preface

In the dull crypto market on the eve of the interest rate cut, TON is one of the few public chains that has allowed people to continue Fomo for several months. It has been labeled as a social platform with 900 million users, GameFi with tens of millions of users, Notcoin with a dozens-fold increase, a huge number of users to be developed, and the most friendly migration platform for mini-programs. However, the views of all parties on TON seem to be parallel.

● Some VCs only watch but do not invest, while some VCs work with studios to jointly operate projects.

● Some CEXs adopt a light operation strategy on Tg, and some CEXs develop mini-programs to attract traffic.

● Web2 mini-program and mini-game developers continue to pour in, while Web3 developers, especially leading public chain developers, may be waiting and watching.

In fact, the main reason that triggered people's Fomo is the emergence of the GameFi project with the influence of expanding the circle in the TON ecosystem. Tens of millions of users are very attractive to the project party, so this issue will observe the popular GameFi track of the TON ecosystem.

An inventory of the gameplay and economic models of the top GameFi

NotCoin

The main gameplay of Notcoin is to earn coins by clicking on the mobile phone screen. It adopts the mechanism of Tap to Earn, which has attracted a large number of users to enter Web3. Since its launch on January 1, 2024, Notcoin has become one of the most popular and most user-intensive channels on Telegram. The community is extremely popular, with more than 30 million participants, more than 6 million Telegram groups, and an average daily active user peak of more than 5 million.

Gameplay

Players can access the Notcoin game through the Telegram app. The basic operation of the game is to click on the gold coins on the screen to accumulate Notcoin, as follows:

● Earn coins: You will earn coins every time you tap on a coin that appears on the screen. Occasionally, a rocket icon will appear to speed up the upgrade process, providing a temporary speed-up effect.

● Energy Mechanic: Clicking is limited by an energy bar, and each click consumes energy. Energy is gradually restored when the player pauses, which adds strategy as the player needs to manage energy usage to optimize click efficiency.

● Buffs and Upgrades: Players can obtain or purchase buffs through in-game actions that temporarily increase click efficiency or speed up energy recovery. This includes full energy recovery, acceleration, and multi-click, etc.

● Social and promotion mechanism: Notcoin encourages players to share the game with friends through invitation links, which can increase the amount of Notcoin earned by players. In addition, additional rewards can be obtained by achieving certain achievements or joining specific groups.

● Leagues: There are five levels of leagues in the game: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. When a certain score threshold is reached, players will automatically be promoted to a higher league and receive rewards. League points are different from the total gold balance and only count the number of clicks.

● Earn tasks: For each task completed, players will earn Notcoin. Users need to subscribe to crypto channels, test websites, games, etc. Some tasks may only take time, others require at least 7 TON in the Telegram wallet.

Token economic model:

Maximum Token Supply: 102, 719, 221, 714 NOT, Initial Circulating Supply: 102, 719, 221, 714 NOT (Full Circulation)

Notcoin distributes the vast majority of tokens to the community through Tap to Earn mining, with the total amount exceeding 78%. Project development accounts for only 5%, and there is no investor share.

Image credit: Alfred

Notcoin is a GameFi model template created by multiple stakeholders, with strong MEME attributes and strong capital operations. The early white paper was a blank page, which was also a unique MEME element that the team intentionally created.

Pixelverse

Pixelverse is a game ecosystem and entertainment company with a cyberpunk background. The project received $5.5 million in financing on June 12, 2022. Major investors include well-known investment institutions such as Delphi Ventures, Merit Circle, Mechanism Capital and Foresight Ventures. Currently, Pixelverse has more than 15 million registered users and more than 5 million daily active users.

How to play (TG version):

● Basic gameplay: After entering the Telegram mini-game PixelTap, click Launch to enter the game page. The number of gold coins held is displayed in the upper left corner of the main page, and the number of tokens that can be collected daily is displayed on the right. Gold coins can be collected once every 8 hours, and up to three times a day.

● Invitation system: Invite friends with Telegram premium membership to receive 10,000 gold coins and 3 times the welcome bonus. Permanently receive 5% of the invitee's bonus, and an additional 3% bonus earned by the second-level downline within 3 days. The weekly invitation ranking list is ranked according to the number of referrals invited in a week. The higher the ranking, the more rewards you will receive.

● Battle system: You can see robot pets on the battle page. Pets have three attributes: battery (energy value), lightning (energy charging speed) and strength (attack power). Upgrading pets can improve attributes and combat power. Each upgrade increases the value by 5 points at random, and the gold coins required for upgrading gradually increase. In PVP battles, quickly click on the circle to deduct the opponent's health. When the guessing session appears, choose the attack or defense part. After winning, you will get gold coins as a reward.

● Reward system: Answer daily questions and place pets according to the answers to get rewards. The more consecutive sign-in days, the more rewards you get. Complete challenge tasks (such as inviting friends) and social tasks (such as retweeting and liking tweets) to get gold coin rewards.

Currently, the mainstream GameFi projects on TON all use the Telegram premium membership system to determine the quality of invited users, because invitations are an important part of fission and account for most of the distribution of rewards such as tokens. With the help of the Tg membership system, users with paying potential can be rewarded more accurately. However, if the proportion of non-premium members is too high, it will also reduce the fairness and incentive effect of the game. After all, the cost of registering a Telegram account is extremely low.

Token economic model: Total token supply: 5 billion

● Used for in-game trading, crafting, and combat.

● With deflation mechanism

● PIXFI will become the main token traded on Pixelchain, acting as a gas token.

● Integrate with Pixelverse SDK to facilitate game development and expansion.

40% of the total amount of PIXFI tokens will be used for user market and user expansion, which is a reasonable allocation for projects with infrastructure planning (Pixelchain). However, at the time of writing this article, the PIXFI token fell 24% in 24 hours, and the rationality of the token economic model should also be paid attention to.

Catizen

Catizen is a casual cat-raising game based on the TON ecosystem, developed by the Pluto Studio team and the first game on its GameFi platform. This game combines casual entertainment with innovative gameplay, and through the "PLAY-TO-AIRDROP" mode, players can enjoy the game while searching for tokens in the cat universe.

Gameplay:

● In the game, players fill the grids in the game by purchasing low-level cats (by clicking "Generate" to spend the corresponding gold coins) or waiting for airdrops (one every few dozen seconds).

● Two cats of the same level can be combined into a cat of a higher level. This method can upgrade the cat’s level and increase the amount of Vkitty coins it produces.

● Players can participate in staking mining of high-level cats to further increase their income and participation.

In-game assets:

● Cat: Starting from the lowest level, players can upgrade the cat’s level through synthesis, up to level 450.

● Vkitty coin: currency produced by cats. The output rate is proportional to the level and number of cats. It can also be obtained through fishing.

● Fish coin: can be used in the feed to buy cats, go fishing, get the maximum airdrop amount of dogs, ducks and frogs, participate in staking, etc. Fish coins can be purchased with US dollars in the store or obtained through in-game activities (such as fishing).

Token economic model:

Catizen announced on July 15 that it will provide 1% of the tokens in the strategic allocation to gamer users, which means that its airdrop share will be increased to 43% to give back to the community's support during the Catizen Vibe - Heal the World event.

Catizen is similar to Pixelverse, covering the "junk time" of casual players and attracting users who like to accumulate gameplay. After its token is listed, the incentive sustainability of the economic system can be observed. Because most of its users are Web2 users, the time cost is relatively low and the economic value return requirements are also low, user retention is not expected to fluctuate significantly.

Hamster Kombat

Hamster Kombat is a management simulation game from Tap2Earn that is simple to operate. Daily tasks include clicking on hamsters to earn coins and collecting cards for mining. In Russia, the game became popular due to videos made by KOLs on TikTok, attracting a large number of Web2 users. According to reports, it has now reached more than 100 million users. In addition, Hamster Kombat's YouTube channel reached 10 million followers in just 7 days. The number of followers on Twitter is close to 10 million, and the number of followers on the official Telegram channel exceeds 40 million. It is reported that Hamster Kombat will release a token in July, and the token name is HMSTR.

Get game points

● Each tap earns one basic point, and the basic energy value is 1500. After the energy is exhausted, you need to wait for automatic recovery. There are 6 opportunities for instant "recovery" every day, and each use must be separated by 60 minutes.

Enhanced features:

● Multitap feature: earn more points with each tap.

● Energy Limit function: increase energy capacity.

● Passive income mechanism: Increase passive income every hour by purchasing or upgrading cards. Passive income is only valid within three hours after the player exits the game. After the timeout, the player needs to re-enter the game to continue mining.

● Players can obtain a large number of points rewards by synthesizing cards. The synthesis rules are updated every day to encourage community interaction and cooperation.

● For each friend you invite, Telegram regular users can earn 2,000 points, Telegram Premium users can earn 25,000 points, and the invitee will also earn the same number of points. When the invitee reaches a certain level, the inviter can unlock additional rewards.

The token economic model for Hamster Kombat has not yet been announced.

summary

The chain game on TON is easy to play, the economic system is direct and effective, and the communication efficiency is high. The success of Notcoin itself is not replicable, but the result of the joint efforts of multiple parties. Tg, TON, and CEX only let developers see that they can succeed in this way, but developers must also realize whether they have the necessary resources and evaluate their own strength. If they lack the necessary resources, blindly imitating the head projects will only waste time, energy and development resources. As a large number of project parties pour into the TON game track, if there is no reasonable expectation and healthy development, the end of the battle will also happen in the near future.

At present, the game token economic system of the TON ecosystem mainly follows the operating logic of the MEME token for the following reasons:

● It is impossible to accurately evaluate the economic value of user interaction behavior. Tap 2 Earn does not have the quantifiability and fairness of Stake 2 Earn and other methods.

● The user’s time cost is relatively low, and the interactive economic value contribution can be limited. The sustainability of the economic system remains to be seen.

● The closed loop of the economic model is not easy to achieve, that is, tokens are not easy to be fairly distributed according to the user's initial economic contribution and the play-to-earn system

Of course, the above is also the characteristic of the GameFi project, entertainment comes first.

The GameFi project in the TON ecosystem generally reserves token shares for KOLs. If there is targeted cooperation and investment, it can more proactively connect with user groups with high consumption potential, but more complex and proactive game logic should also be incorporated into subsequent game upgrades.

The current common method to stimulate in-game consumption is to increase the points multiplier, but this raises the performance expectations of tokens and places high demands on the capital operation capabilities of the project parties. Since TON ecological game projects have stronger MEME attributes, at least a mild or even bullish crypto market atmosphere is needed to facilitate TGE in order to further market making, which is also the reason why most GameFi tokens have been postponed in the near future.

Finally, for traffic demanders, the number of game users has yet to be verified. As GameFi connects more Web2 users, the economic attributes of users are also decreasing, and traffic costs should be priced with a new logic. From an investor's perspective, it is not easy to regard GameFi tokens as market blue chips, but rather as a MEME token.