How long will Tap to Earn games remain popular?

Would you download a boring game on Steam that only involves clicking on bananas with a mouse?

Maybe you wouldn't, but a clicker game called "Banana" became the hottest new game on Steam in June, with more than 750,000 people online at the same time, and it was on the historical rankings. The reason why this game, which is very monotonous to play, became so popular is that it has a trading mechanism. Players only need to go online and click on the banana in the middle of the screen at intervals and go online at a specific time to click on the rare bananas that have been dropped to start in-game transactions and withdraw cash.

This gameplay that is not playable but can make money has been questioned by many people, but the inspiration for "Banana" is the new wave of cryptocurrency games this year.

If Play to Earn is still used as the slogan of Web3 games, it is too behind the times. In 2021, StepN expanded the "X to Earn" narrative to Move to Earn, and in 2024, this narrative has evolved into Tap to Earn - before you had to walk to make money, now you only need to tap the phone screen to make money.

Pioneering Tap to Earn

In November 2023, Notcoin's closed beta version was launched on the Telegram channel. Enter the Bot, click /start, and a gold coin logo will appear in the middle of the screen. Users can get Notcoin by simply tapping the screen. At that time, Solana had just set off a wave of on-chain meme craze, and Notcoin was just a meme coin.

Despite its humble start and the limited experience of the development team, Notcoin quickly gained a lot of exposure, attracting more than 650,000 users in a few weeks. On January 1, 2024, Notcoin was officially released. Within the first week, more than 5 million players joined, with a peak daily active user base of more than 6 million. It was also supported by the TON Foundation and gradually became the first truly popular game in the Telegram ecosystem.

In the game, players need to click on a token icon and capture rockets to speed up upgrades. Notcoin is not limited to a single click, but also includes features such as teamwork, points league, energy management, and referral rewards. In addition, Notcoin can be obtained by completing advertising tasks.

On May 9, Notcoin tokens were listed on multiple CEXs; in June, NOT rose to $0.029 at its highest, with a market value of $2.4 billion, surpassing the market value of tokens such as TIA and LDO.

Notcoin's success can be attributed to several key factors. First, a simple onboarding process allows Telegram users to start using Notcoin without complex identity verification. Second, Notcoin's viral strategy is very effective, with 94% of users joining through invitations from others. In addition, the integration with TON provides Notcoin with a unique platform, and it also contributes to popularizing blockchain knowledge and learning more about cryptocurrency content. After all, one of the main reasons for CEX to list NOT is that it brings incremental users.

Continuous imitations, no innovation

After Notcoin's great success, many imitations emerged in the market, just like the crazy market of Move to Earn created by StepN and its imitations.

While the idea of making money just by clicking on the screen sounds tempting, the reality of these imitations is often not so sexy. Most of these games offer very little reward per click, and it may take hours of repeated clicking to accumulate a certain number of game points, and the final airdrop results may not necessarily satisfy the players.

The market environment cannot be copied, and neither can the God disk. As the crypto KOL @thecryptoskanda said, "The imitation disk is a competition against the God disk. You can't win or lose. If you win the God disk, you will bring down the imitation disk. The imitation disk cannot reach the scale and cannot obtain traffic from trading platforms, media, etc. Now it is the middle and late stages of the bull market. It takes half a year for the imitation disk to develop like Notcoin. There is no time."

At the same time, Sasha, the founder of Notcoin, also bluntly stated that it is difficult to maintain the long-term with only a simple "click" game model, and Notcoin needs to adopt a sustainable model in the future. Therefore, it plans to increase the demand for tokens and reduce the supply by providing users with opportunities to interact with other Telegram games, and may launch multiple Notcoin subsystems such as competitions and reward systems in the future.

In other words, Notcoin wants to build a game system to bring more organic development to the entire game ecosystem.

What a better Tap to Earn game looks like

Perhaps we can say that the focus of Tap to Earn is not on the action of Tap itself, but on the content after the user Taps. As Sacha expressed, a game cannot survive just by tapping the screen. Therefore, a better Tap to Earn game needs to have a lot more than Tap.

In June this year, a cyberpunk-style Tap to Earn game Pixelverse attracted the attention of capital and announced the completion of a $5.5 million financing earlier this month. It is a task-driven plug-in game and Telegram Bot game ecosystem, which now has more than 15 million registered users and more than 5 million daily active users. Its Telegram channel has also become the second most popular choice.

Pixelverse is based on the click game PixelTap on the Telegram mobile terminal. Unlike other similar games, it adds a PVP battle mode and daily task updates on the basis of Tap to Earn, which greatly improves the playability of the game.

In the current PVP mode of PixelTap, the higher the level of the user's robot, the more powerful it is, and the more gold coins you get in each battle. Currently, game opponents can be matched randomly or PVP with designated friends. Real-time PVP battles are also a highlight of PixelTap, and more rewards will be given later.

Players can also participate in PVE battles by browsing the mission system and building and customizing robots, and then upgrading robots and competing for resources to make money.

In addition, Pixelverse integrates third-party game IPs, covering multiple mini-games and immersive storylines. Third-party developers can also use SDK and Pixelchain to integrate with Pixelverse to promote a more organic development of the ecosystem. This is also what I think a really good Tap to Earn game needs to have. In addition to the recommendation system and level competition mechanism, it has a richer content ecology.

The reason why Pixelverse can do this is that it has a transparent and efficient leadership team, which is composed of top Web3 team members from Binance, Trust Wallet, Zerion, etc., who have built this complete brand and game ecosystem together. Just as Notcoin has its soul figure Sasha, Pixelverse also has its core figures. CEO Kirill Volgin previously worked for Binance and the chain game Step App team, and has gained market recognition by closely integrating fitness and blockchain. CSO Kori Leon is an entrepreneur focusing on business development and GTM. He participated in the creation of the Binance NFT platform and established a business development department at Trust Wallet.

Kori said in an interview, "Pixelverse is not just creating a game, we are in the business of the attention economy. We are building a retail-friendly brand that attracts audience attention and attracts millions of users to our product line. An example is our social channels, such as the YouTube channel, which received 1 million views in 24 hours. When you have a distribution channel, it opens up unlimited possibilities for further development."

Whether it is the gameplay architecture or the game operation, Pixelverse has everything a lightweight Tap game needs, and the answer is given by the user.

Pixelverse Airdrop and Token Economics

$PIXFI is the native token of Pixelverse, which will be deployed on Ethereum with a total supply of 5 billion tokens. According to previous financing information, Pixelverse is valued at approximately $60 million.

The $PIXFI token adopts a deflationary model to maintain its value by destroying tokens during transactions and character upgrades. Players can earn tokens by playing games and spend tokens by selling or buying in-game robots or summoning new characters. In addition, developers can also consume tokens through the Pixelverse SDK to promote game development.

In June, more than 50 million players joined Pixelverse and participated in more than 500 million arena battles. As TGE approaches, as the fastest growing game, Pixelverse not only provides simple click games, but also provides a sustainable gaming ecosystem and third-party IP integration, which will become the core driver of its long-term operation.

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