'Hamster Kombat' Players Gripe as Telegram Game Airdrop Delivers 'Dust'

On Thursday, the Telegram-based tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat conducted its long-awaited airdrop, showering its users in HMSTR tokens. But whether players will continue tapping after that is an open question, with some users vocalizing disappointment online with their reward for months of touchscreen tapping.

Out of the 300 million users who have played Hamster Kombat since late March, Hamster Kombat said that 131 million players qualified for the distribution—with another 2.3 million users cut for apparent cheating. In total, 60 billion HMSTR was earmarked for so-called CEOs who managed their own crypto exchanges in-game.

Under Hamster Kombat’s trading announcement post on Twitter (aka X), several users described their HMSTR reward as “dust.” The term is often invoked to describe trivial amounts of crypto that is typically left over from a transaction or trade. Many of the accounts that critiquing the airdrop complained their HMSTR stash was worth less than $10.

The smart contract responsible for minting HMSTR on The Open Network (TON) also received some pushback on-chain, according to Tonviewer. “Assholes, be cursed with your airdrop!” one message read alongside a Russian translation.

Not long before Telegram founder and CEO Paul Durov was arrested in France on charges stemming from the messaging platform’s lack of moderation over alleged illegal activity, he lauded Hamster Kombat as “the fastest-growing digital service in the world.” Amassing hundreds of millions of users within the span of a few months, the game could serve as a key driver of blockchain adoption, he said.

Yescoin, TapSwap, Catizen, PixelTap, and W-Coin are a few examples of prominent tap-to-earn games echoing Hamster Kombat’s core game design, all following the lead of Notcoin from earlier this year. Depending on players’ reaction Thursday, however, expectations could be reset toward games cropping up day-by-day on Telegram that incentivize engagement by promising rewards.

It appeared that many Hamster Kombat players were cashing in on their work Thursday as HMSTR’s price fell to a price of about $0.007. CoinGecko showed that HMSTR had fallen 41% from an initial price of $0.012, while CoinMarketCap displayed a 25% drop from an initial price of $0.009. The listed starting price can vary between price oracles due to early volatility.

As of this writing, more than 108,000 wallets hold HMSTR, according to Tonviewer. And a wallet labeled as a Binance hot wallet holds nearly 18% of HMSTR’s circulating supply, suggesting a significant portion of Hamster Kombat players redeemed rewards to the top crypto exchange.

On Twitter, Hamster Kombat said that 30 million users had already begun trading HMSTR. And the project warned that “overwhelming demand” could impact users' ability to trade the coin.

The Open Network, which was initially developed by Pavel and Nikolai Durov before Telegram abandoned the project in 2020 due to regulatory scrutiny, has been stranded under the weight of user activity recently. Last month, the launch of a meme coin called DOGS was linked to two network outages in a single week.

While Hamster Kombat has built a global following, Google search volume for Hamster Kombat has been concentrated in Africa over the past day, in countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Somalia. Out of 51 regions ranked by Google Trends, the United States came in last.

Even though the Balkan country Turkey was ranked 24th in search interest, the nation’s currency played a pronounced role in HMSTR trading. On Binance, $24 million worth of HMSTR had been traded against the Turkish Lira since trading opened, according to CoinGecko data.

Using Binance’s conversion service, users could exchange as little as 1.2 HMSTR for a penny’s worth of the stablecoin Tether, according to Binance’s website. Still, one user flagged that spot trading on Binance required a minimum order size of $5 when exchanging HMSTR for Tether, purportedly making it impossible for some people to exchange the coin.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based crypto exchange HashKey Global launched perpetual futures trading for HMSTR, according to a press release. Allowing traders to speculate on the in-game currency’s price using leverage, the move mirrored listings from lesser-known exchanges, such as WOO X and Bitrue.

Prior to Thursday, Hamster Kombat said it had reserved 15 billion HMSTR for the game’s second season, looking to reward players with more of the in-game currency. However, some virtual CEOs, following Thursday’s airdrop, expressed a desire to tender their resignation.

Edited by Andrew Hayward