Hamster Kombat founders reveal game's origins, plans for a second airdrop

Claiming over 250 million users, Hamster Kombat appears to be the reigning king of Telegram-based "clicker" games.

However, little is known about the game's origins or its creators as people throughout the crypto world speculate about what's next for Hamster Kombat, especially with the game's first airdrop slated for sometime this month.

In an emailed response to questions posed by The Block, Hamster Kombat's founders discussed the game's origins and gave hints of what the future could hold for the tap-to-earn crypto game. 

"Hamster Kombat is more than just a game, it’s a worldwide family, and we believe in the long-term power of the community," the founders told The Block. 

Not Notcoin

Hamster Kombat's creators' view that they are building something enduring contrasts with those of other project developers, who now distance themselves from earlier iterations of their own games. 

In a recent interview with The Block, Sasha, founder of Notcoin, considered the first Telegram crypto game to pioneer the clicker model, expressed doubt about the longevity of clicker games. "I do not expect it will have any sustainability," Sasha said. "From my perspective, only the games that have sustainable models will survive."

As with the first iteration of Notcoin, the goal in Hamster Kombat is to accumulate rewards through clicking. Assuming the role of CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange, Hamster Kombat players attempt to rack up in-game coins as they manage their fictitious, virtual business.

Unlike most crypto-based games, with Hamster Kombat and Notcoin, playing is as easy as downloading the Telegram messaging app, which is currently used by nearly 1 billion people worldwide. And from the looks of it, millions of users appear to be playing Hamster Kombat in the hopes of eventually turning their in-game rewards into actual cash after the game finally airdrops tokens to players. 

Notcoin airdropped more than 80 billion NOT tokens in May, worth about $1 billion at the time. In part, what Notcoin has accomplished and its popularity played a role in the creation of Hamster Kombat.

"We were inspired by the success of Notcoin and the popularity of social media games in the 2010s. So we kind of took the best of both and added our philosophy of unity and a lot of educational content," Hamster Kombat's founders told The Block.

Curiously, the game's founders also said they drew inspiration from meme stocks and social media when creating Hamster Kombat. "We were largely inspired by the GameStop and Reddit story, where retail investors showed their power over Wall Street," they said.

While they choose to remain anonymous, the game's founders said the Hamster Kombat team has experience in both gaming and blockchain development and has been active in crypto since 2013.

Second airdrop

When asked about the game's chances of survival after the first airdrop set for later this month, Hamster Kombat's founders waxed optimistically. They said they are already planning for a second airdrop.

"The game will go on, and there will be a second season with the second airdrop in the next two years," they said. "We think that the token, which will belong to millions of users throughout the world, holds a huge value in itself."

Like its Telegram-based rivals, Notcoin and Catizen, Hamster Kombat uses the TON blockchain. Given the games' rising popularity, activity on the blockchain has surged recently. In recent months, the number of transactions and daily active wallets on the network have both risen substantially.

Simultaneously, the blockchain's toncoin has become the world's ninth largest token as measured by market capitalization. Toncoin's market cap is currently over $18 billion, according to The Block Price Page .

Bot control

To help protect the integrity of the game, Hamster Kombat's founders said they eventually plan to deal with bot deployment. "We see everyone who is trying to flood bots, and we will be cleaning them up before the listing," they said. "Notcoin was able to ban around 20% of bot accounts, we’ll try to do the same ... Using bots and referral cheating will be punished."

It's uncertain how many bots help make up the over 250 million users the project has said are playing Hamster Kombat .

Separately from dealing with bots, Hamster Kombat's team also there are no plans to prevent users from playing on multiple devices.

Mission to reach 1 billion people

While only time will tell how serious and sincere they are, Hamster Kombat's founders appear committed to a rather idealistic agenda for now.

"We are an edutainment project created with the goal of mass adoption. And our mission is to reach 1 billion people worldwide who will be a part of this whole project and will be learning about the blockchain and web3 worlds, they said. "We also care about financial literacy and universal basic income, and it looks like we’re becoming one of the biggest projects in this area."