On Thursday, the Telegram-based tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat conducted its long-awaited airdrop, showering its users in HMSTR tokens. But whether players will continue tapping after that is an open question, with some users vocalizing disappointment online with their reward for months of touchscreen tapping.

Out of the 300 million users who have played Hamster Kombat since late March, Hamster Kombat said that 131 million players qualified for the distribution—with another 2.3 million users cut for apparent cheating. In total, 60 billion HMSTR was earmarked for so-called CEOs who managed their own crypto exchanges in-game.

Under Hamster Kombat’s trading announcement post on Twitter (aka X), several users described their HMSTR reward as “dust.” The term is often invoked to describe trivial amounts of crypto that is typically left over from a transaction or trade. Many of the accounts that critiquing the airdrop complained their HMSTR stash was worth less than $10.

The smart contract responsible for minting HMSTR on The Open Network (TON) also received some pushback on-chain, according to Tonviewer. “Assholes, be cursed with your airdrop!” one message read alongside a Russian translation.

Not long before Telegram founder and CEO Paul Durov was arrested in France on charges stemming from the messaging platform’s lack of moderation over alleged illegal activity, he lauded Hamster Kombat as “the fastest-growing digital service in the world.” Amassing hundreds of millions of users within the span of a few months, the game could serve as a key driver of blockchain adoption, he said.

Yescoin, TapSwap, Catizen, PixelTap, and W-Coin are a few examples of prominent tap-to-earn games echoing Hamster Kombat’s core game design, all following the lead of Notcoin from earlier this year. Depending on players’ reaction Thursday, however, expectations could be reset toward games cropping up day-by-day on Telegram that incentivize engagement by promising rewards.

It appeared that many Hamster Kombat players were cashing in on their work Thursday as HMSTR’s price fell to a price of about $0.007. CoinGecko showed that HMSTR had fallen 41% from an initial price of $0.012, while CoinMarketCap displayed a 25% drop from an initial price of $0.009. The listed starting price can vary between price oracles due to early volatility.

As of this writing, more than 108,000 wallets hold HMSTR, according to Tonviewer. And a wallet labeled as a Binance hot wallet holds nearly 18% of HMSTR’s circulating supply, suggesting a significant portion of Hamster Kombat players redeemed rewards to the top crypto exchange.

On Twitter, Hamster Kombat said that 30 million users had already begun trading HMSTR. And the project warned that “overwhelming demand” could impact users’ ability to trade the coin.

The Open Network, which was initially developed by Pavel and Nikolai Durov before Telegram abandoned the project in 2020 due to regulatory scrutiny, has been stranded under the weight of user activity recently. Last month, the launch of a meme coin called DOGS was linked to two network outages in a single week.

While Hamster Kombat has built a global following, Google search volume for Hamster Kombat has been concentrated in Africa over the past day, in countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Somalia. Out of 51 regions ranked by Google Trends, the United States came in last.

Even though the Balkan country Turkey was ranked 24th in search interest, the nation’s currency played a pronounced role in HMSTR trading. On Binance, $24 million worth of HMSTR had been traded against the Turkish Lira since trading opened, according to CoinGecko data.

Using Binance’s conversion service, users could exchange as little as 1.2 HMSTR for a penny’s worth of the stablecoin Tether, according to Binance’s website. Still, one user flagged that spot trading on Binance required a minimum order size of $5 when exchanging HMSTR for Tether, purportedly making it impossible for some people to exchange the coin.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based crypto exchange HashKey Global launched perpetual futures trading for HMSTR, according to a press release. Allowing traders to speculate on the in-game currency’s price using leverage, the move mirrored listings from lesser-known exchanges, such as WOO X and Bitrue.

Prior to Thursday, Hamster Kombat said it had reserved 15 billion HMSTR for the game’s second season, looking to reward players with more of the in-game currency. However, some virtual CEOs, following Thursday’s airdrop, expressed a desire to tender their resignation.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Gala Games token continued its recovery this week as demand for gaming cryptocurrencies rebounded.

Gala (GALA) jumped to a high of $0.0217, its highest point since Aug. 27, and 61% above its lowest level this year. This rebound has brought its market valuation to over $859 million.

Gala’s recovery occurred as other gaming tokens like Immutable X (IMX), Beam (BEAM), and Ronin (RON) rallied. All these coins have risen by over 20% in the last seven days. As a result, the total market capitalization of all gaming tokens tracked by CoinGecko has jumped to over $17.16 billion.

Gala’s rally is also linked to a recent post on X, in which the developers teased a major announcement expected this week.

It is still too early to predict the nature of the announcement, but based on past statements, there are indications that it could involve the launch of TREZ, an upcoming token for Gala’s tap-to-earn ecosystem.

In a statement earlier this year, the developers noted that its tap-to-earn ecosystem had accumulated over 3 million users across games like GALACoin, Music Coin, and Treasure Tapper.

Telegram tap-to-earn games have become highly popular among users, and Gala hopes to become a significant player in this space. Most of the existing games like Hamster Kombat, Notcoin, Catizen, and Avecoin have chosen to operate on the TON Blockchain, which was developed by Telegram.

Tap-to-earn networks allow users to accumulate tokens by tapping a button on a mini app or completing simple tasks, such as following an X account or watching YouTube videos.

Users accumulate tokens and can cash out when an airdrop occurs. Networks like Catizen and Notcoin have already launched their airdrops, with their tokens valued at over $300 million and $786 million, respectively.

Gala token hits a key resistance

The Gala token bottomed out at $0.0134 in August and has since bounced back by over 60% to $0.021. It recently crossed the 50-day moving average and retested the key resistance point at $0.021, its highest swing since Aug. 25, and the neckline of the double-bottom pattern.

The Relative Strength Index and the moving average convergence/divergence indicators have continued rising, meaning that it has momentum. 

Therefore, Gala will likely continue rising as bulls target the next key resistance point at $0.027, its highest point on July 21.

The crypto gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Flappy Bird on Telegram: Iconic mobile game Flappy Bird has officially returned as a crypto-tinged Telegram game after disappearing 10 years ago. The Flappy Bird Foundation acquired the trademark for the game after it was considered abandoned and passed through the hands of a couple of other companies.

In collaboration with Notcoin, the tap-to-earn Telegram game that kickstarted the craze, the strategic partnership aims to introduce the game to The Open Network (TON) ecosystem—the blockchain that most Telegram tap-to-earn games use. While a token hasn’t been announced, there are a number of details that point to a future FLAP token being launched.

Despite buzz around Flappy Bird’s return, however, there’s also been quite a lot of controversy and pushback regarding how it returned to life without the involvement of original creator Dong Nguyen.

Dookey Dash returns: Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs and partner studio Faraway have released the sewer-based game Dookey Dash: Unclogged as free-to-play game on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC in selected regions. This comes more than a year after Yuga Labs rolled out the original NFT-gated version of the game during a limited play period.

Dookey Dash: Unclogged will have three monthlong seasons as players battle for a “Golden Plunger.” These will act as a ticket to the end-of-season tournament where $1 million worth of prizes will be up for grabs. The iOS version has already shot to near the top of the free game charts, so it appears that there’s real interest in the Ape competition.

Hamster Kombat’s interlude: We’re just four days away from the Hamster Kombat token launch and airdrop, and the largest Telegram game by far ended its first season on Friday ahead of sharing airdrop allocations over the weekend.

What’s there to do in the meantime before the next proper season launches? Hamster Kombat has introduced an “interlude season,” offering a simplified version of the familiar crypto exchange simulator but with a more startup-centric vibe. In this new version, you can earn diamonds that will apparently give players some sort of advantage in the next full-fledged game season.

Parallel first-person shooter: The creators of the popular NFT trading card game Parallel announced a 3D first-person shooter codenamed “Project Tau Ceti.” Set on a sci-fi planet, the shooter will use Parallel’s library of 3D assets and will let Parallel NFT owners use their own avatars from the card game.

Tau Ceti will use Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base on the recently launched B3 layer-3 network. Project Tau Ceti, the team said, represents an effort to expand the world of Parallel with an entirely different kind of game. It is expected to launch into early alpha testing on PC in 2025 with possible future mobile and console versions in the future.

ICYMI

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

Edited by Andrew Hayward