Hamster Kombat’s popularity has skyrocketed, creating a vast gaming community with 300 million users worldwide. This innovative game has captivated millions with its uniqueness and success. Its remarkable rise can be attributed to the clever integration of the Pi Coin and Notcoin concepts, which laid the foundation for this game. Here’s an in-depth look at how Hamster Kombat transformed these ideas into a billion-dollar gaming empire.
With hundreds of millions of users, Telegram’s TON, also known as The Open Network, is gaining momentum with simple, addictive, fun games built on a blockchain.
What Are Pi Coin and Notcoin?
Understanding the success of Hamster Kombat requires a closer look at Pi Coin and Notcoin. Pi Coin was initially designed to reward users through a tap-to-mine system, where players could earn rewards by interacting with the app. This concept promised rewards and potentially profitable engagement for users. Pi Coin attracted a substantial user base within a short period, amassing over 100 million users, most of whom were active. Despite this massive user base, Pi Coin faced several challenges:
- Converting Rewards into Real Money: The ability to turn earned rewards into actual currency was lacking.
- Delayed Token Launch: Users were not given timely opportunities to be part of the network.
- Network Mainnet Launch Delays: Constant delays hampered expansion plans.
- Lack of Engaging Features: The app struggled to retain users without the allure of reward earning.
Notcoin, on the other hand, introduced an innovative gaming feature that captured players’ interest. It provided a dynamic gaming platform. In May, Notcoin distributed over 80 billion NOT tokens through an airdrop, valued at approximately $1 billion at that time, to its active users and community. However, after the airdrop and listing, Notcoin’s hype diminished because it was essentially a bot game with limited features.
Ideation of Hamster Kombat Game
Hamster Kombat recognized an opportunity to combine the best aspects of both Pi Coin and Notcoin. By integrating Notcoin’s gaming features with Pi Coin’s rewarding system, Hamster Kombat created a tap-to-earn game that blended entertainment with income, attracting a vast global user base. The Hamster Kombat Telegram mini app game was launched on March 26, 2024, and gained 300 million users within four months.
As of July 29, 2024, Hamster Kombat’s social media presence is impressive. Its main YouTube channel boasts over 34 million subscribers, with additional millions across 17 regional channels. Remarkably, the channel reached 10 million subscribers in just six days. On Telegram, the game has 53 million subscribers, making it the largest group in the platform’s history. Its X/Twitter account has 12 million followers, with posts garnering millions of views.
The game is played in over 190 countries and maintains a 91% retention rate for players engaged for seven days. With an average of five daily sessions per player, Hamster Kombat is on track to reach its next milestone of 1 billion users in its ecosystem. The game utilizes Notcoin’s engaging gaming mechanics and Pi Coin’s rewarding structure, offering players both fun and financial incentives. Users can earn rewards by completing daily tasks, maintaining high engagement levels with the app.
Leveraging Pi Coin’s Delays
During Pi Coin’s delays and the subsequent decline in its hype, Hamster Kombat seized the moment to capitalize on Pi Coin’s promising concept. By adopting Pi Coin’s rewarding system and combining it with Notcoin’s gaming features, Hamster Kombat attracted users eager for a new and exciting platform.
Building on Telegram – Engaging Users
Hamster Kombat utilized Telegram to engage users and offer earning opportunities. With Telegram already having 950 million active users, and Notcoin paving the way for successful integration of a Telegram gaming bot, Hamster Kombat gained 100 million users instantly. By introducing daily tasks and challenges, Hamster Kombat kept users actively involved with the game. Players spent an average of 30 to 60 minutes daily on the app, participating in tasks that provided chances to earn and monetize their time.
Expanding Horizons – Future Plans and Community Growth
Hamster Kombat didn’t stop at just creating a gaming bot. They have ambitious plans, including a gaming launchpad, squad features, and the biggest airdrops followed by Token Generation Event (TGE) and listing on all major Centralized Exchanges (CEX). These initiatives aim to build a massive empire and foster a thriving community.
By leveraging the existing Pi Coin community and Notcoin’s infrastructure, Hamster Kombat has transformed from a concept into a billion-dollar gaming industry project. With a current community of 300 million, the goal is to reach 1 billion users and capture 50% of the gaming industry market and revenue share.
The Unexpected Popularity of Hamster Kombat
Two months ago, the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, was killed in a helicopter crash. Iran held an election to replace him, but there was a hitch: According to a senior official in Iran’s military, the nation’s citizens were too distracted to properly vet the candidates. Millions of Iranians were too busy clicking on their phones, hooked on a crypto game called “Hamster Kombat.”
This feature is part of CoinDesk’s GameFi Theme Week.
The Sudden Rise of Hamster Kombat
The game seemed to come out of nowhere. In March, it launched on TON, The Open Network, a Web3 ecosystem built on Telegram. Now the game is so popular that Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, Iran’s deputy chief of the military, accused it of being part of the West’s “soft war” on Iran’s government. As the AP reported, Sayyari said that “One of the features of the soft war by the enemy is the ‘Hamster’ game.”
Controversy and Popularity
Is the United States really weaponizing Web3 hamsters against Iran? It’s a fascinating (if wild) question, but in some ways, the answer is irrelevant. The question’s very existence is what matters. “This has become so fucking big, even politicians started talking about it,” says Inal Kardan, Gaming Lead at the TON Foundation.
Hamster Kombat’s founder remains anonymous; the project declined requests for an interview. However, they claim to have over 200 million users, with 11 million followers on Twitter/X and their YouTube account boasting 31 million subscribers.
Growth of GameFi on TON
Hamster Kombat is just one of several “GameFi” projects on TON with eye-popping growth. Web3 games are flourishing. The cute and cartoony “Catizen” (the sponsor of CoinDesk’s GameFi theme week) has over 23 million users. TON’s first big success story, “Notcoin,” has over 40 million users.
In total, there are now 500 million users on the TON network, according to the foundation. With a current market cap of $19.4 billion, Toncoin has surged to become the eighth largest project in all of crypto, leapfrogging mainstays like Polkadot, Cardano, and NEAR.
Unique Appeal of TON Games
But the Iranian military isn’t grumbling about Polkadot or Cardano. TON games feel different. They’re simple, fun, and have broken out of the crypto echo chamber, finding a mainstream audience, much like NFTs in 2021. “This is not just about the degens,” says Kardan. “This is about normies doing something with blockchain for the very first time.”
Global Reach and Adoption
One reason for the explosive growth of TON is the global reach of Telegram itself, especially in Europe and Asia. Telegram has over 900 million users. But as recently as December of 2023, according to Kardan, only 1% of them used Telegram to play games. Entrepreneurs sniffed an opportunity.
“We looked at Telegram and TON, and we thought, this is virgin land,” says Tim Wong, Chairman of Catizen Foundation. Games like Catizen, Notcoin, Yescoin, and Tapswap quickly filled the void, partly because they can be easily (even mindlessly) played while waiting for an elevator.
The Simplicity of TON Games
“All of them are hyper-casual, really simple games,” says Kardan. “That’s what people like.” The Telegram games are easy to install, easy to play, and easy to connect to crypto. (At least internationally—Telegram’s native crypto wallet is not available in the US due to regulatory concerns.) For 15 years, the Web3 space has been dogged by clunky interfaces and confusing protocols. TON seemed to have solved that overnight.
User Experience and Adoption
The buttery smooth UX is why DeFi analyst David Zimmerman wrote a research paper concluding that TON is “well-positioned to become crypto’s killer app,” as it has “done more to progress in these areas [UX and real-world use cases] than any other crypto market participant.” TON games are simple. In a phone interview, Zimmerman says that in all his years covering crypto, whenever he introduced his “normie friends” to Web3 projects, it would typically take a 40-minute tutorial filled with confused questions. With TON? He’s already onboarded 10 friends.
Clever and Engaging Gameplay
The games themselves are clever, appealing, and fun. You can start playing Catizen in seconds, clicking on little kittens and watching coins magically appear (more on this later). You earn rewards for referring friends and sharing on social media—a clever driver of growth. In some games, you click; in others, you swipe; and in some, you make cheeky choices.
The Intricacies of Hamster Kombat
Take Hamster Kombat, a deeply self-aware game with b-side references to Web3 culture. You act as the CEO of a crypto exchange that needs to make decisions on marketing, PR, and even legal considerations. Unlocking the perk of “SEC Transparency,” for example, can boost your profit-per-hour, as can implementing KYC or obtaining a license to operate in the UAE. (In a sense, this is an extremely weird game to onboard normies. It’s hard to visualize Iranian taxi drivers obsessing about SEC transparency.)
Development and Predictions
While it seems that TON games dropped from the sky just weeks ago, many have been in development for years. (This echoes 2021’s Summer of NFTs, where insiders had been following the trend since 2017’s CryptoPunks.) Wong says that Catizen began eyeing Telegram in 2021.
Consider this bold prediction from January 2023: “TON will become the biggest blockchain in terms of the number of users, thanks to 1) its technology and 2) Telegram. It’s only a matter of time,” wrote Sasha, the founder of Notcoin, in a prescient Twitter thread. “Telegram has 700M MAU and is the main messenger for the crypto people. Telegram’s founders invented TON and have integrated blockchain to sell Telegram usernames and anonymous numbers (NFT). They announced non-custodial wallets and DEXs a month ago.”
Real-World Value and User Engagement
This is precisely what happened. That said, a sprawling network and a slick interface can only explain so much. TON games also offer something else: the allure of making money.
The millions of Notcoin users, after tapping and tapping and earning coins, were delighted to receive an Airdrop that showered 80 billion Not tokens to the community, transforming their mindless clicking into something with real value (at least for now). “Notcoin, a Mini App on Telegram, reached 35 million active users in just a few months,” Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, wrote in his Telegram channel. “All of a sudden, Notcoin users who just played this game for fun could convert their in-game currency into real money.” (Telegram has officially distanced itself from TON after regulatory skirmishes with the SEC.)
Play-to-Airdrop Concept
Notcoin set the precedent, so now millions of users click on other games in anticipation of future rewards. Play-to-Airdrop is the new Play-to-Earn. This is not subtle; Catizen’s official tagline is even “Play to Airdrop.”
It’s hard to find any growth in the Web3 space that’s not somehow pegged to price appreciation, and GameFi is no exception. “I would attribute most of its success in recent months, including price, to the good old-fashioned speculation we’re used to,” says Zimmerman. He’s also skeptical of the reported number of users, as human beings can have multiple wallets. But even if you discount the numbers, Zimmerman acknowledges there are “real fundamentals here.”
Attracting Other Developers
These fundamentals are catching the eyes of other game developers. “I’m pretty bullish on TON games,” says Des Dickerson, CEO of THNDR, which is building bitcoin-powered games on the Lightning network. (Dickerson has leaned into mobile crypto gaming since before it was cool; here’s my deep-dive into her project from 2021.) “This trend is proof that users want gaming weaved into their social interactions,” she says, “and they want these games to have real-world value baked into the gameplay.”
Sustainability and Challenges
But there is one possible catch to all of this. (In crypto, there’s always a catch.) Rightly or wrongly, two words will act as a splash of cold water for any “earn free money!” crypto game that seems too good to be true: Axie Infinity. Axie was the darling of the last crypto gaming hype cycle; it’s now widely seen as a cautionary tale. So how are TON games different?
For starters, Wong says that Axie had a “high entry barrier to play the game, and the entry ticket becomes more and more expensive.” He has a point. The cheapest Axies were over $300 at their peak, and the price would go up as long as there are more new users coming in than users dipping out. That’s not sustainable. Wong says, “It’s not very far from a Ponzi scheme.” Catizen and the other TON games, in contrast,
require no upfront investment.
Differentiation from Axie Infinity
Kardan gets the “How is this not Axie?” question all the time. “The answer is quite simple,” he says. “All of these games are about traffic,” explaining that the Airdrops are essentially marketing campaigns to get users and traffic, and that traffic can be monetized. “This is all about selling traffic,” he says, so there’s an “inflow of money from advertisers.”
Skepticism and Future Outlook
Zimmerman isn’t so sure. “If we’re being honest, we all know that stuff [games like Hamster Kombat] is not going to be sustainable,” he says. “If you want your network to be truly successful, you need to have some apps that are profitable.” He thinks it’s quite possible that TON is near one of the “big tops,” as in the top of the market cycle (foreshadowing a crash), and suspects the real test will be what happens after a “cataclysmic wipeout.” He also thinks TON could survive and even thrive. “With the real advantage they have in UX and distribution,” says Zimmerman, “We’ve never seen that in crypto before.”
Key Success Factors
- Easy User Interface: Hamster Kombat’s user-friendly design ensures a seamless experience for players.
- Existing Technology: Building on established technologies from Pi Coin and Notcoin gave Hamster Kombat a strong foundation.
- Telegram Integration: Engaging users on a popular platform like Telegram helped maintain high activity levels.
- Earning Feature: The tap-to-earn mechanism motivated players to spend more time on the app.
- Gaming Competition Leaderboard: Competitive features kept players motivated and engaged.
Conclusion
The success of Hamster Kombat is a testament to the value of combining creative thinking with well-thought-out implementation. By merging the strengths of Pi Coin and Notcoin and utilizing platforms like Telegram, Hamster Kombat has not only secured a significant market share but also set a new standard for the gaming industry. The game’s expansion plans and future intentions suggest a promising future that could redefine our perception of gaming and rewards.
Maybe this growth is sustainable, maybe it’s not. But the growth itself is undeniable and it matters—just ask the Iranian military.
However, unlike Pi Coin, Hamster Kombat must avoid delays in incentivizing its users and executing future plans to maintain its hype and future roadmap. Similarly, unlike Notcoin, Hamster Kombat should not rely solely on single events like airdrops and listings but instead create a mechanism that benefits and engages users regularly.
FAQ’s
- Hamster Kombat Story: A fun, competitive game where hamsters battle it out for supremacy.
- Increase Hamster Kombat Profits: Focus on breeding strong hamsters, strategic gameplay, and participating in tournaments.
- Hamster Kombat Real Money: While the game offers in-app purchases, it doesn’t directly pay out real money.
- Hamster Kombat Benefits: Entertaining gameplay, potential to earn in-game rewards, and a chance to compete with other players.
- Hamster Kombat Success Story: The game has gained popularity for its unique concept and engaging gameplay.
- Hamster Kombat Coin Price: The game uses in-game currency, not a cryptocurrency.
- Hamster Kombat Release Date: The exact release date might vary depending on your region and platform.
- Hamster Kombat Withdrawal: In-game rewards can often be exchanged for real-world items or digital goods.
- Hamster Kombat App: Available on app stores for download.
- Hamster Kombat Daily Combo: A gameplay mechanic that rewards players for consecutive daily logins.
- Hamster Kombat Link: You can find the game link on app stores or the game’s official website.
- Hamster Kombat APK: While APK files can be found online, downloading from official sources is recommended to avoid malware.
