Author: Zen, PANews
The mini-game applications in the TON ecosystem have become an unavoidable topic in the crypto industry this year. With the rise of click-to-earn games like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, the TON ecosystem has seen unprecedented growth. Particularly with the launch of Telegram game tokens like Hamster Kombat on the TON network, the number of TON token holders has grown from only 4.3 million at the beginning of the year to over 100 million.
However, under the prosperity that seems imminent, the TON ecosystem also faces some hidden worries. Not only do projects like Hamster Kombat have many controversies, but their "latecomers" have also repeatedly broken the hearts of players and users. It seems that the vast majority of mini-applications are unable to avoid criticism from the community and a fleeting end.
The market cap is less than $40 million, and X Empire cannot escape the airdrop curse
Last week, the Telegram click-to-earn game X Empire launched its X token on the TON blockchain. This small game, which claims to have 50 million players, had been hyping up before its launch and received support from many mainstream exchanges, including OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Kucoin, gate.io, and MEXC. However, the grand marketing and hype did not translate into an outstanding token price performance, but instead received widespread criticism and complaints from the community.
The community's grievances initially erupted after X Empire announced the X token distribution on October 18th, mainly from players who were excluded from the airdrop for unknown reasons. It is worth noting that X Empire had announced on October 8th that its player count had exceeded 50 million, but ultimately only 6 million users were eligible to participate in the airdrop.
Project founder Alex Falcon argued that "active friends" was the most important criterion in the final airdrop calculation, on par with hourly profits and task completion rates. He also stated: "Every person who truly invested time in X Empire had a chance to receive this reward." Prior to this, X Empire had told players that they needed to pay 0.5 TON in transaction fees to claim the airdrop, but later announced that payment was not a necessary condition for receiving the airdrop.
Such inconsistency completely angered the X Empire community, with some even directly complaining to Musk on the X platform, saying "This is a complete scam, very unfair" and "It's a scam project using your name, go interrogate the X Empire team." Currently, although Musk himself has no connection to X Empire, the project is full of elements related to him. From using the game name "Musk Empire" when it first launched, to using him as the main theme, to always including Musk's cartoon image in their tweet announcements, X Empire has been riding on Musk's traffic.
In addition, the average trading price of the X token before its issuance was $0.0002, but the actual opening price was about half of that. After the official launch of the X token, its price has basically been on a downward trend. On social media, many players claim they are operating at a loss and most have only earned tokens worth less than $10. As of October 25th, the X token price is around $0.000054, with a total circulating market cap of nearly $37 million.
The choices of other "hit" applications: change blockchains and the delaying tactic
After X Empire, the next focus of attention are the Telegram mini-applications MemeFi and Tomarket, which claim to have over 40 million users, and their tokens are also set to be launched in the near future.
In the previous article "Multiple project airdrop dates postponed, the 'crazy killing' of the top click-to-earn game project TGE is a mystery?", we briefly introduced MemeFi. The distinctive feature of this project is that it did not choose the TON network to launch its token, but instead chose the Ethereum Layer 2 solution Linea. However, just before the planned token issuance on November 12th, MemeFi suddenly announced that it would be transferring the tokens to the currently popular Sui network. The project stated that they have collaborated with Sui network creator Mysten Labs to formulate strategic initiatives around the launch, including marketing work and plans to showcase the broader Sui ecosystem.
So far, MemeFi plans to take a final snapshot of player activity on November 6th to determine the token distribution in the airdrop, and the developers expect to release detailed information about the token distribution on November 8th. Previously, the MemeFi token was originally scheduled to be issued on October 9th, but was delayed due to the development team's re-evaluation of their strategy. Or perhaps due to MemeFi's repeated delays, the news of launching the token on the Sui network did not excite the community, and there are even multiple users under the announcement post starting to recount MemeFi's "migration history" and express pessimistic views.
However, in terms of community disappointment, Tomarket, which is scheduled to conduct its TGE on October 31st, is not to be outdone. As of October 30th, Tomarket, which is about to issue its tokens, has not yet disclosed the token economics and token distribution, and the community's most concerned issue of listing has also not been responded to. However, according to Tomarket's roadmap, its $TOMA token is supposed to be issued and listed in October, but now only talking about TGE without mentioning listing, naturally causing great anger in the community. In addition, Tomarket is also playing a similar "trick" to X Empire, telling players that the fourth step of the TGE is an "optional" TOMARKET premium badge, for which users need to pay 1 TON.
Tomarket founder Oliver Tomassi tweeted on October 28th that users will be able to determine their $TOMA allocation starting November 1st, and stated that a portion of $TOMA has already been allocated to eligible participants, but the specific amount is not yet determined. Later, he posted on X saying "No to hackers, scammers and bots." On October 29th, Tomassi tweeted again to promote "TGE in two days" and said "Listing is coming, one thing at a time (sweating soybeans)."
Although MemeFi and Tomarket have not yet officially issued tokens or listed, based on the current reputation and the precedents of Hamster Kombat and X Empire, it will not be easy for these two projects to turn the situation around.
Popular games continue to decline, and the number of active addresses in the TON ecosystem plummets
According to data from analysis firm IntoTheBlock, as of October 28th, the number of active addresses in the TON ecosystem has dropped to 1.18 million, a significant decrease from the peak of 5.16 million reached a month ago. In addition, the proportion of active addresses has been continuously declining after reaching a high of 6.52% at the end of September, and the average active address ratio for the past 30 days has now dropped to 1.76%.
It is clear that although Hamster Kombat was controversial, it did bring a "huge" number of users and traffic to the TON ecosystem, which led to the data peak at the end of September.
However, with the conclusion of Hamster Kombat's super airdrop, its token HMSTR has basically been in a steady decline, and the view count of its YouTube channel has also dropped from easily breaking 1 million to around 200,000 now. According to CoinMarketCap data, as of October 30th, the price of HMSTR is around $0.0028, with a total circulating market cap of about $286 million, a price drop of over 67% since its launch. For many Hamster Kombat players, receiving the airdrop and immediately selling it is the greatest respect they can give to their months of effort.
Why is it difficult to maintain the popularity of hot games in the Ton ecosystem?
Perhaps, when we talk about large-scale adoption, we should not forget that the essence of blockchain and Web3 technology is to benefit more groups. If a mini-application with tens of millions of users cannot bring happiness, convenience or wealth, but instead deception, calculation and loss, it will not be able to last long. Then, such projects will be abandoned and swept into the industry's trash heap after TGE and listing.
