Hamster Kombat token goes live for trading with airdrop to 131 million user accounts

What appears to be Telegram's most popular clicker game, Hamster Kombat, had its token go live for trading with 60 billion tokens distributed to 131 million qualifying user accounts.

The distribution was based on Hamster Kombat user participation during season 1 of the tap-to-earn game on the Layer 1 The Open Network (TON) blockchain, which has always been closely associated with the popular messaging app Telegram. Hamster Kombat said more than 300 million user accounts have signed up to play the game since it launched in March.

Trading began for HMSTR tokens at 8 a.m. ET on Thursday. HMSTR is listed on several centralized exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Bitfinex and Bitget. 

The 60 billion tokens represent 60% of the total supply of 100 billion HMSTR tokens. According to Hamster Kombat's team, another 15%, or 15 billion tokens, will be dropped during Season 2 of the game. Due to the size of the airdrop and the number of recipients, the TON Core team has said the TON blockchain could face challenges managing the distribution volume.

"The network will undoubtedly face more technical pressures and possibly some unforeseen issues, but we are unwavering in our commitment to building and addressing these challenges as we move toward mass adoption," the team said in its Telegram channel earlier this month.

Hamster Kombat's token airdrop follows in the footsteps of other Telegram-based games like Notcoin and Catizen, which have also had their tokens go live for trading. Notcoin's launch of its NOT token was primarily viewed as a success as, at one point, its market capitalization peaked at around $1.5 billion, according to The Block’s Notcoin Price Page.

'Bots and cheaters' deemed ineligible

After Hamster Kombat announced that only 131 million of the game's over 300 million signups qualified to receive tokens, some players took to social media to complain about the planned distribution. The game's creators said 2.3 million user accounts deemed "bots and cheaters" were deemed ineligible to receive the token.

"The airdrop is extremely evenly distributed," the game's team told The Block. "We’ve analyzed all player activity and allocated most of the airdrop (about 80%) based on the profit-per-hour rate, which was the most important metric applied to each player. About 20% was allocated to the remaining activities."

The game's developers said 11.25% of the HMSTR tokens will be "vested and unlocked ten months after the listing."

Updated roadmap

On Wednesday, Hamster Kombat outlined its upcoming plans with a new roadmap. The game's developers said that in the future, it plans to use advertising revenue to buy back tokens for redistribution, an NFT in-game asset integration for November, and the intention to launch in new regions to grow its ecosystem.

"Season 2, which we plan to launch in the coming weeks, will seamlessly connect the platform's content, including the Hamster Kombat metagame and third-party games," the clicker game's team said. "We're also planning to use ad revenue to buy back tokens from the market for regular distribution to players and token burns."

Hamster Kombat's team also said it plans to launch a progressive web app, or PWA, for both desktops and Apple and Android devices.

In July, the company launched a mini-app store and an in-app browser supporting Web3 pages amid a series of mini-apps launching on Telegram, a messaging app popular with crypto users.

According to a recent report from Bitget, the TON blockchain has roughly 900 million active users and hosts over 1,100 crypto projects. The TON ecosystem's daily transaction volume has exploded from 100,000 to 1.2 million this past year. TON's total value locked, or TVL, currently stands at about $430 million, according to DeFiLlama.