By mid-2024 tap-to-earn in Telegram looked like an industry of its own: hundreds of projects, hundreds of millions of registrations, billion-dollar market caps after airdrop. By May 2026 it is no longer an industry but a historical category with a handful of survivors and a long list of casualties.
This article is a post-mortem of the genre. What actually happened to the peak 2024 projects, what stayed alive, what lessons founders extracted, and what 2026 says to anyone considering tap-to-earn as a way to earn. Tone is critical, figures are approximate estimates from publicly available metrics and indirect indicators.
Timeline of failure: mid-2024 to late 2024
The genre’s resolution fit into roughly a six-month window.
May 2024. Notcoin completes a successful airdrop. Peak — 35M+ active users, the average payout per holder matches expectations. The community sees that tap-to-earn works.
June-August 2024. Dozens of clones launch in parallel. Hamster Kombat crosses 300M registered. TapSwap, Pixelverse, Yescoin and other copies pull in tens of millions each. Telegram channels overflow with referral links.
September 2024. Hamster Kombat airdrop. Distribution turns out significantly below expectations: with 300M registrations the median payout is single-to-double-digit dollars depending on sybil filtering. Active farmer audience publicly protests.
October-December 2024. Cascade of disappointment. DOGS does an airdrop on facts of Telegram usage, which lands as “random raffle.” TapSwap delays the airdrop, loses 80 percent+ of the audience. Many small projects either quietly die or launch tokens with small distributions.
January-April 2025. The genre enters a “no one waits for new tap projects” phase. Teams continuing in TON gaming openly state a shift toward meta-games and retention-first design.
May 2025 — May 2026. Stable phase. Survivors find their niche. New tap-only launches are rare and gather significantly less than peak numbers.
Who survived: project by project
From 2024 projects, in active state by 2026:
Notcoin
Alive as a flagship hub. NOT token trades on CEX. Partner integrations and the Notgames Foundation — a curatorial body supporting new games. DAU is much lower than peak, but the project keeps its role as a symbol of TON gaming.
Why it survived: first viral, laid the cultural code, and after airdrop the team shifted to a curator role instead of trying to repeat virality.
Hamster Kombat
Exists but in long-tail mode. Active audience is a small share of peak. The team continues to support and ship updates, but the focus shifted to stabilisation, not growth. HMSTR token trades.
Why it partly survived: the initial audience scale is so large that even 1-5 percent retention yields millions of users. Less than peak but still a meaningful base.
Catizen
The only unconditional mass-scale success story. Product-market fit proven. The team did not try to repeat tap-to-earn virality — Catizen was always a multi-mechanic casual game, not a pure clicker. CATI token trades, the mini-game updates, there is the Catizen Studio platform for sub-apps.
Why it survived: it was never tap-only, retention mechanics were built in from day one at the Hay Day level. After airdrop the audience stayed for the game itself.
DOGS
Not a game in the strict sense, but a token with meme market cap. No meaningful active mini-game. DOGS lives on speculative exchange cycles.
Why it partly survived: meme tokens live long if a cultural carrier exists (dog recognition). For “play” — no project; for “speculate” — there is an asset.
Blum
Pivot into a DEX app. The gaming layer was auxiliary for distribution, the core product is trading. After airdrop it remains as a niche DEX in TWA.
Why it partly survived: the base product (DEX) is useful, gaming was a distribution channel, not the value proposition.
TapSwap
Fading. Long airdrop delays disappointed the audience. The token launched on Solana, not TON, distancing it from the TON community.
Why it did not survive: a clone with no original value. Audiences promised a Notcoin repeat left after expectations failed.
Hundreds of small clones
Most (>90 percent) either quietly closed or turned into “tails no one notices.” Pixelverse, Yescoin, Memefi, X Empire and dozens of others — statistically their combined activity is near zero.
What 2026 showed founders
The genre post-mortem produced several stable lessons that reflect in the design of new TON games.
Lesson 1: registrations do not equal value
300M Hamster Kombat registrations against airdrop value in single-digit dollars per user is poor economics. Referral acquisition cost, server infrastructure for 300M users, team time — all are expenses not compensated by audience quality.
In 2026 new projects set goals not “reach 100M users” but “retain 1M active on day 30.” That is a shift in the target function itself.
Lesson 2: a token must be a product, not a lottery ticket
When the token is the only reason to play, after distribution the reason vanishes. Modern projects build the token as a tool inside the game (governance, premium features, in-game economy), not as a finish line. This extends the token lifecycle well beyond TGE.
Lesson 3: sybil filtering must be in the design, not post-fact
Hamster Kombat applied a sybil filter after collecting a large audience, which felt like “fooling us, the real users.” The modern approach — anti-sybil is in the mechanic itself: requires deeper interaction (Stars payments, on-chain activity, social proof) that is more expensive for farmers.
Lesson 4: anonymous teams are not acceptable
Anonymity was the norm in 2024. In 2026 an anonymous team is a red flag for most serious audiences. Trust requires reputation, reputation requires identity. Especially important when regulators start watching.
!Sybil farming is not a “dirty minority” but a structural issue. At Hamster Kombat peak, independent researchers estimated the sybil-account share at 30-50 percent of stated audience. If the team does not bake sybil into the design from day zero, they end up with either a diluted airdrop or an angry real audience after harsh post-filtering.
Lesson 5: regulatory risk is not theoretical
In 2025-2026 several jurisdictions started discussing tap-to-earn under gambling law. Argument: variable reward plus expectation of financial outcome equals a game of chance. Not universal, but the risk is real, and teams account for it in geographic targeting.
What 2026 says to players
If you are considering taking part in tap-to-earn in 2026, the realistic view:
| Scenario | Realistic outcome |
|---|---|
| Joined a new project in pre-airdrop phase | 70% — project fails; 25% — airdrop $0-50; 5% — airdrop $50-500 |
| Active farming with heavy time | Same odds, slightly higher math expectation |
| Use of sybil networks | Disqualified by most 2026 projects |
| Buying token after airdrop | High chance of price decline, low of gain |
Math expectation of active farming of a new tap-to-earn project, by our estimates, is single-digit dollars per hour of time spent. That matches Mechanical Turk micro-task levels, without guarantee of payment.
If you want to play — play proven retention games (Catizen) or experimental ones with interesting gameplay (Boinker, Lucid Dreams) for the process, without expecting income.
If you want to earn — this is a poor channel. TON DeFi (staking, LP farming) or off-chain work delivers more predictable per-hour results.
Why the genre will not return in its old form
Several structural reasons why the 2024 virality level is hard to replicate:
- Cynical audience. Those who lived through Hamster Kombat do not respond to “guaranteed airdrop.” 2024 marketing does not work.
- Sybil war. Best sybil defences need complex onboarding, which reduces virality. A trade-off now tilted toward quality.
- Regulators. In individual countries formal classification as games-for-money is a real risk.
- Stars and on-chain alternatives. If micro-reward at scale is the goal — Telegram Stars provides a cleaner channel without promising financial outcome.
- Content competition. Catizen and second-gens raised the bar: a game must be playable on its own. Pure-tap loses on any extended exposure.
✓A healthy future. Tap-to-earn died, but TON gaming did not. Replacement came in the form of a second generation of mini-games: lower peak virality, better retention, more sustainable business case. Slower, less exciting in news-cycle terms, but more durable as an industry.
A short checklist for evaluating a new tap project in 2026
If a new tap-to-earn appears and you are deciding whether to spend time:
- Is the team public? No — skip.
- Is tokenomics published? No — skip or play free only.
- Is there anything beyond tap? No — skip (the format is dead).
- Does the team promise a “mass airdrop”? Yes, without sybil qualification — red flag.
- Regulator of the team’s jurisdiction? Offshore without reputation — elevated risk.
- Are retention metrics public? If the team shows Day-30 retention — that is already a good transparency sign.
A sum of 3+ red flags — better not to spend the time.
Conclusion
Tap-to-earn after Hamster Kombat is a field with little left alive. Of dozens of 2024 projects, sustainable product-market fit was demonstrated by a few (Catizen as the main example). The rest are either tokens without an active product, quiet tails, or dead projects.
The main lesson: initial audience scale does not equal a business. You can collect 300M registrations and build nothing. You can collect 1M active users and build a sustainable game. 2026 showed that the industry chooses the second path.
For a 2026 user, tap-to-earn is a historical category. Play it for nostalgia or for variance-chasing (low chance of meaningful airdrop). Do not build a financial plan around it — it will not work in the average case.
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