"Tap to Earn" Trend on Telegram Loses Steam Despite Active Market

According to data from Google Trends, searches for “tap-to-earn” have dropped by a staggering 80% between June and December 2024, reflecting a significant decline in community interest. This suggests that players and investors may be shifting their focus to other opportunities within the cryptocurrency market.

Popular Telegram games such as Hamster Kombat, Notcoin, and Catizen have experienced a massive exodus of users. Statistics from TGStats reveal that Hamster Kombat alone lost over 3 million players in a single month. Notcoin and Catizen faced similar struggles, with 428,000 and 407,000 users departing, respectively.

This trend is further supported by on-chain activity data. The Open Network (TON), the blockchain platform powering these games, recorded a decrease in daily active wallets from over 1 million in September to fewer than 500,000 in December, according to TonStats.

The number of daily active wallets dropped from over 1 million in September to below 500,000

Reasons Behind the Player Exodus

A survey conducted by Chainplay with 957 players highlighted several reasons for the declining appeal of tap-to-earn games:

Repetitive Gameplay:
Over 51% of respondents cited monotonous and repetitive tasks as their primary reason for leaving. Despite developers’ efforts to improve gameplay, many games still fail to break away from overly simplistic mechanics.
Unattractive Rewards:
With a large player base, the value of airdrop rewards is diluted, leaving more than half of users feeling that the effort isn’t worth the return.
Security Concerns:
About 21.8% of players expressed worries about hacking and fraud. For instance, Hamster Kombat had to suspend millions of accounts due to abuse of its reward system.
Withdrawal Issues:
35.9% of players faced difficulties withdrawing their rewards, further prompting them to abandon the games.

A report by Animoca Brands highlighted that even the most successful projects manage to retain only 60% of their daily active users at peak times. For less fortunate projects, this figure drops to as low as 25%.

To revive and grow the tap-to-earn genre, game developers must focus on:

Enhancing the player experience with more engaging and diverse gameplay.
Ensuring fair distribution of rewards.
Strengthening security measures to build trust among users.

Addressing these core issues will be essential for the long-term sustainability of the tap-to-earn model and its ability to attract and retain players.