The tap-to-earn cryptocurrency sector was arguably Gamefi’s moment in 2024. Blockchain games have evolved and the play-to-earn approach has become arguably web3’s most successful model. Variations of play-to-earn include tap-to-earn or clicker games. Hamster Kombat gained over 300 million users in just a few months, and Notcoin market capitalization peaked at over $3 billion. These two have become prime examples of the power of clicker games that make money by tapping on Telegram.
Clicker games have gained millions of users who want to earn money by simply tapping their phones and performing other simple tasks. Some of the most popular clicker games such as Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and Tapswap have built up a combined user base of over 400 million users. However, the field has cooled since the last meaningful clicker game, Hamster Kombat Airdrop, disappointed many players. Now that the market has cooled, it’s time to take a look at the sector’s achievements, strengths, failures, and what the future looks like for the clicker gamefi sector.
According to recent data, there are over 3.2 billion gamers worldwide. Asia leads the way with 1.48 billion gamers, more than Europe, North America, and Latin America combined.
source; politician, Dfcint.
The above indicates that the blockchain game is just getting started and that some of the 3.2 billion users will be using cryptocurrencies.
How to make money by tapping
Tap-to-earn games work by having players tap or click on in-game screens. Clicks accumulate points and can be used for additional actions such as watching videos, joining communities, etc. The goal is to do it repeatedly every day over a period of time. Rewards are usually native tokens that occur as airdrops at the end of the project.
Source of data CoinMarketCap As of November 4, 2024, the total market capitalization of the revenue-generating industry on tap is found to be approximately $1.1 billion.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Now let’s take a look at some of the most successful tap to make money games.
Notcoin
Notcoin launched in January 2024 after a beta launch in Q4 2023. This has made the use of Telegram bots for gaming mainstream. It wasn’t the first tap-to-earn Telegram bot game, but it could be argued that it was a success when it launched. Notcoin has 40 million users as of June 2024. According to Trading View dataNotcoin surged 300% in late May and was in the top five most traded cryptocurrencies globally for a short period of time on June 2, 2024. Currently, Notcoin has a market capitalization of $594 million and a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $80 million.
hamster combat
Hamster Kombat was eager to follow Notcoin’s success and promised to be the biggest project in the cryptocurrency space. At its peak, it boasted over 300 million players in July 2024. Following the airdrop, the current user base has dropped by nearly 85% to only around 40 million. Last August, report It turns out that internal tensions and delayed airdrops threatened Hamster Kombat’s success. The token airdrop took place on September 26th and hit a high of $0.00999, with today being the 6th.Day In November, the token fell 76% to hover around $0.002414.
Hamster Kombat Monthly Users: Source: protea.
The Hamster team makes big promises to revolutionize the Telegram gaming world. But constant airdrop delays, boring gameplay, and a poorly thought-out token mechanic doomed Hamster Kombat. Following the airdrop, the number of subscribers to the Hamster Kombat Telegram announcement channel dropped to 53 million from a peak of 100 million two months ago. The Hamster team knew that the airdrop did not work out as expected. There were plans to release Season 2 ‘soon’, but interest has yet to be rekindled.
Mario on X captures the emotion perfectly.
https://x.com/RoundtableSpace/status/1853650186054066360
Tab Swap
Tapswap is a clicker game similar to Notcoin that includes a tapping-to-earn mechanism. Players collect coins as they complete tasks. Like Hamster Kombat, players must accumulate the maximum number of coins mining them manually or through in-game bots and boosts. By mid-June 2024, the number of game users reached 50 million.
The Tapswap Token Generation Event (TGE) has not occurred yet. present update We would like to inform you that the airdrop, which has been highly anticipated by the Telegram community, will be released soon. To prepare for this, the company has started partnerships with exchanges such as Binance and Bybit. Considering how Hamster TGE received a negative response from the community, Tapswap is exploring a better event that would satisfy the majority of the community.
Advantages/Features of Tap to Earn
- Easy to start and play. Users usually only need the Telegram messaging app to play. There is no need to download any additional apps. This simplifies the onboarding process.
- It mixes gaming and revenue.
- Expand cryptocurrency usage and awareness to the already existing 1 billion Telegram users.
The value proposition of tap-to-earn games can be summarized as follows:
“For gaming, blockchain should not be a leading sales strategy, but an invisible technology that allows players to truly own their in-game assets and move them around as they wish.” – Mario Nawfal, founder and investor
This is the problem that tap-to-earn games were able to solve. Most blockchain applications, including NFTs, trading, and DeFi, involve complex activities that beginners must navigate. Tap-to-earn is so simple to get started that it doesn’t involve any of these tasks.
Sustainability Challenges
But despite the simplicity of clicker games, skepticism remains about their long-term sustainability. We’ve seen most of the hype end up with TGE having nothing to offer other than airdrops.
Tapswap, one of the leading gaming‘Win-Win Profitability’ model. This model ensures that a portion of player revenue is retained on the Tapswap platform, with both players and projects entering into a profit-sharing agreement. This model typically incentivizes long-term player payments and, hopefully, retention, rather than a single payment.
future prospects
Considering the varying fortunes of tap-to-earn Telegram games, the key question on the minds of users and investors is how sustainable they are.
TON Blockchain founderwhere most Telegram games are released, says people should look at games that make money by tapping like this:An effective way to introduce the TON blockchain to users“. He sees the project as a lunch ploy, a go-to-market strategy rather than the entire cryptocurrency sector. If so, many projects could tap and monetize to generate initial buzz and then look at a more long-term strategy for sustainability. However, users are likely to overlook this and other projects may not attract as much attention as the previous one.
Other critics described the tap-to-win game as too simple and not stimulating enough for long-term engagement. While this sentiment is true, the predecessors of tap-to-earn were earn-as-you-play games, with Axie Infinity being a prime example. Even though games like Axie Infinity were more appealing, they failed to gain momentum in the long run and failed to generate significant growth in the gaming segment. Games like Axie Infinity require users to make a real financial investment initially, but the new Telegram game does not. Additionally, Telegram games are mostly casual, low-skill games, making user onboarding easy. So it’s true that Tap-to-Earn has improved Play-to-Earn games in terms of ease of use and user acquisition. The final piece of the puzzle is long-term engagement and sustainability.
Current projects such as Hamster Kombat have resulted in games being relaunched with new mining tiers, and Notcoin is turning into a Launchpad hub for other similar projects.
Here’s the future of tap-to-earn. Use clicker games to attract new users and launch projects that are more sustainable in the long term. Therefore, web3 game developers should learn from the evolution of web3 games from play-to-earn to the current tap-to-earn. Use this lesson to build more powerful gameplay that captivates users in the first moment, while developing game mechanics that provide a more immersive experience for long-term user engagement. Instead of pinning everything on future successful airdrops to retain players, offer a groundbreaking shift in aligning player incentives with long-term sustainability.