Play to earn is back? The TON ecosystem game Notcoin, backed by 900 million users, is sounding the horn!

Trends are a great cycle, the madness of "play to earn" seems to have awakened the memories of the once prosperous crypto gaming scene, which was once a hot industry in crypto, where users turned gaming into a side job by farming gold and chopping trees. But why did it ultimately become a solo game and a hidden transaction?

The burdensome learning curve, the singular game model, the complex trading system, the collapsing token economy in the later stages, and most tokens being listed, have led chain games from the initial beautiful expectations of the metaverse to endless painful sell-offs. "Play to earn" has also become a pitiful venture in the frontier, with early chain games turning into slaughterhouses of the dark jungle.

When the mainstream is looking for opportunities in traditional and stable value coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum, suddenly a chain game project similar to H5 mini-games, Notcoin, is sounding the horn for the return of play to earn at a rocket-like speed.

Notcoin is a Web3 game project launched in the TON ecosystem at the beginning of this year. Remember this TON, as it brings a new experience and scale to chain games.

TON is a third-generation blockchain, originally created by the Telegram team and then shared with independent community developers. It is known for its high performance and scalability.

The main competitive advantage of TON compared to other blockchains is its deep integration with Telegram, which has over 900 million monthly active users.

The TON ecosystem is currently in a relatively early stage, backed by Telegram's massive user base, with great development potential. The TON Foundation has announced a series of Grant project lists to support innovations in social Web3, gaming, DeFi, and other fields, strongly supporting project development. With this strong funding and the traffic boost from Telegram, games in the Telegram + TON ecosystem have recently become very popular, with user numbers and project heat rapidly increasing.

Telegram has become a natural customer acquisition channel for TON ecosystem games. Additionally, Telegram allows users to send and receive USDT, Bitcoin, TONcoin, and now Notcoin directly in private messages, enabling token conversion and payments, thus lowering the economic threshold for gaming.

Notcoin is a Web3 game based on the TON blockchain, launched as a Telegram mini-program in January, "listed on Binance," "attracting 30 million users," "5 million daily active users," boasting a series of highly valuable honors. Notcoin combines cryptocurrency with gamified elements, provided to users through the Telegram platform. This traffic-star game project, due to its simple, lightweight, and fun nature, quickly attracted a large number of users, becoming one of the most active channels on Telegram.

Notcoin's ability to attract users mainly lies in several aspects:

1. Simple and fun game mechanics: First, NOTCOIN meets the basic conditions of a "popular game," with easy-to-understand gameplay that allows users to earn virtual currency by simply tapping on their phone screens. Secondly, its lightweight design is similar to Telegram games in WeChat mini-programs, requiring no official cryptocurrency wallet, trading account, or transaction fees, which increases user engagement, retention, and activity.

2. Diverse gameplay: A deep understanding of the game's core content, including teamwork, point leagues, energy management, and referral rewards. These gameplay designs are cleverly crafted to not only attract existing users to improve retention but also to spread rapidly within the community and attract new users.

3. Community support and endorsement: NOTCOIN has received public support from TON Labs and the TON Foundation from the very beginning, effectively endorsing the project and leading more people to recognize it. After Binance's listing on May 16, this brand endorsement effect will be even stronger.

4. Natural customer acquisition channel: Due to its integration with Telegram and TON, NOTCOIN can maximize the use of Telegram's vast user base and easily accessible natural advantages to acquire customers quickly and at low cost.

5. Open-source code and fair distribution: The NOTCOIN game code is open-source, allowing developers to audit its operational principles, ensuring project transparency and fairness.

6. Fair token distribution: The token distribution of Notcoin favors the community and users, with 78% allocated to miners, 9% to the ecosystem fund, 5% for community incentives, and 5% for developers, with no allocation for investors. This shows its emphasis on the community compared to many other projects. Its token economic strategy also includes relinquishing ownership and a 0% transaction tax, greatly enhancing the project's decentralization and fairness.

7. Meme attribute bonus: Current market trends reflect investors' increasing interest in meme coins and community-driven projects. NOTCOIN carries meme attributes, catering to current market and investor preferences.

8. Technical support enhances project potential: Supported by TON's high performance, which employs a unique multi-layer, multi-chain architecture, it improves network scalability and transaction processing speed, providing a technical foundation for NOTCOIN's success.

Are there other mini-games worth paying attention to besides NOTCOIN?

Notcoin is not the only one; there are many similar products emerging in the TON ecosystem. In terms of user numbers, Hamster Kombat and Tapswap are also chasing Notcoin's success.

According to TGstats data, Tapswap's community has become the second-largest Telegram channel in the world, with over 8.4 million subscribers. Meanwhile, another mini-game, Hamster Kombat, has surpassed 15 million users, with its community channel's subscriber count around 7.9 million, ranking third globally. The subscriber numbers of these two projects have already exceeded the previously very popular Notcoin, which has a channel subscriber count of 6.4 million, ranking fifth globally.

The gameplay of Hamster Kombat and Tapswap is similar to that of Notcoin, both earning game coins by tapping the screen. Due to the need for multiple taps, some users use tools like massage guns to complete tasks. This type of game requiring frequent tapping is also referred to as "massage gun mini-games."

"Massage gun mini-games" are not a new concept; they have been overused in the Web2 world. However, in the successful case of Notcoin, it successfully combined token mining with screen tapping. Perhaps because Notcoin made its game code public, this model has now become a simple and easily replicable template for crypto games on TON.

But the TON ecosystem is not just about "massage gun mini-games"; there is another active mini-game platform on TON called Catizen, which primarily features cartoon cats and is similar to match-three games. The Catizen official states that there are currently over 7 million users, with more than 1 million daily active users.

Conclusion

The TON ecosystem, relying on Telegram's user scale, will trigger more explosions of new products in the leisure and entertainment category, providing a good native environment for GameFi and NFTs. If further regulations and security measures are improved, it may lead to more successful projects similar to Notcoin.