Tap-to-earn was one of the defining crypto trends of 2024, concentrated almost entirely in the Telegram and TON ecosystem. The format was simple: open a mini-app, tap a button, complete tasks, refer friends, and accumulate points that would eventually convert into tokens through an airdrop or TGE. The games drew tens and hundreds of millions of users. The tokens, in nearly every case, collapsed within months of listing.
This review covers five projects from that wave — what each one was, when it launched, how it handled token distribution, and where things stand.
What Are Tap-to-Earn Games?
Tap-to-earn games are a category of crypto-native applications that run inside Telegram as mini-apps or bots. Players interact with the game directly through the Telegram interface without downloading a separate application. The core mechanic is straightforward: players tap a button repeatedly to accumulate in-game points, which the project later converts into cryptocurrency tokens through an airdrop or a token generation event.
The format gained traction in early 2024, driven by Telegram’s massive global user base and the low barrier to entry. Starting a tap-to-earn game required nothing more than a Telegram account. That accessibility produced user numbers the crypto industry had rarely seen outside of major exchange platforms.
How Tap-to-Earn Worked
The genre followed a repeatable pattern. A project launched as a Telegram bot or mini-app. Players farmed points for weeks or months through tapping, daily tasks, and referral programs. The team then ran a snapshot, calculated allocations, and conducted a TGE, usually followed by an exchange listing within days or weeks.
Projects issued tokens in the billions. Rewarding user bases in the tens or hundreds of millions required that scale. The design had a structural consequence: a large portion of supply entered circulation at listing, which generated sell pressure from day one.
The hype cycle peaked around mid-2024. By 2025, most projects had launched their tokens, most prices had declined sharply, and the genre had lost the mainstream attention it held during its peak.
Key Features of Tap-to-Earn Games
Most tap-to-earn projects shared a common set of mechanics. Tapping served as the primary action, but projects typically layered additional earning methods on top. Daily tasks, referral programs, and time-limited challenges gave players ways to accelerate their point accumulation beyond basic tapping. Some projects added progression systems, upgrade cards, or management layers that gave players more control over their earning rate over time.
On the infrastructure side, the majority of tap-to-earn games ran on the TON blockchain, which integrated natively with Telegram. The lifecycle of a typical project moved through distinct phases: a farming period lasting weeks or months, a snapshot that locked in final point balances, a TGE that converted points into tokens, and an exchange listing that followed shortly after. Token supplies ran into the billions to accommodate user bases in the tens or hundreds of millions, and community allocations typically covered the majority of that supply.
Tap-to-Earn Games Data Overview
| Game | Start | TGE Date | Total Supply | Circulating | Chain | Peak MCap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notcoin (NOT) | Jan 2024 | May 16, 2024 | 102.45B | 99.42B | TON | $2.22B |
| Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) | Mar 2024 | Sep 26, 2024 | 100B | 64.37B | TON | $560.33M |
| Catizen (CATI) | Mar 2024 | Sep 20, 2024 | 1B | ~450M | TON / L2 | $394.43M |
| TapSwap (TAPS) | Feb 2024 | Feb 17, 2025 | 1B | 490M* | TON | $40.35M |
| CEX.IO Power Tap | May 2024 | — | — | — | — | — |
*Self-reported
Game Profiles
Notcoin (NOT) — The Pioneer
Start date: January 2024 (beta late 2023)
Mechanics: Simple Telegram bot. Players tapped a virtual coin icon to accumulate points. No upgrades, no management layer.
TGE / Listing date: May 16, 2024. Exchanges at launch: Binance, OKX, Bybit.
Token supply (CoinMarketCap):
- Total / Max: 102.45B NOT
- Circulating: 99.42B NOT (~97% unlocked at launch)
- Community / airdrop allocation: ~78–80%
- No long vesting cliffs for team
Peak market cap: $2.221B — June 6, 2024
Hamster Kombat (HMSTR)
Start date: March 26, 2024
Mechanics: Players managed a virtual crypto exchange. Tapping earned coins; card upgrades represented exchange operations; daily combos gave bonus coins.
Growth: 300 million+ users within ~5 months.
TGE / Airdrop date: September 26, 2024. Exchanges at launch: Binance and others.
Token supply (CoinMarketCap):
- Total / Max: 100B HMSTR
- Circulating: 64.37B HMSTR
- Community / airdrop allocation: 60–75% (Season 1)
- Remainder reserved for subsequent seasons
Original TGE target: July 2024. Delayed multiple times.
Catizen (CATI)
Start date: March 2024 (open beta)
Mechanics: Cat-themed platform. Players managed a virtual cat city, collected and merged cats, and completed tasks. Included staking and a launchpad element.
TGE / Listing date: September 20, 2024. Exchanges at launch: Binance Launchpool, OKX, KuCoin, Bybit, Gate.io.
Token supply:
- Total / Max: 1B CATI
- Circulating post-launch: ~450–454M (~45%)
- Airdrop / ecosystem allocation: ~43%
- Team/investor: 12-month cliff, 48-month linear release
Distribution model: “Sustainable Quarterly Distribution” — 43% of supply released gradually to active players, DAO voters, and users interacting with their Layer 2 blockchain. The one-time airdrop model was not used.
Note: Listed 6 days before HMSTR (Sep 20 vs Sep 26, 2024).
TapSwap (TAPS)
Start date: February 2024. Strong user base in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Blockchain: TON
Mechanics: Tapping combined with watching videos, entering daily codes, and farming tasks.
TGE / Airdrop date: February 17, 2025. Original target: October 2024 — delayed multiple times.
Token supply (CoinMarketCap):
- Total supply: 1B TAPS
- Max supply: uncapped
- Self-reported circulating: 490M TAPS (CoinMarketCap marked this figure as unverified)
- Pre-TGE: heavy anti-bot audits run before distribution
CEX.IO Power Tap
Operator: CEX.IO — regulated crypto exchange, founded 2013.
Start date: May 2024. Today, the project is part of BeCEXY (becexy.io) — an independent platform merging several Telegram mini apps: Power Tap, Cedex Tap, Wigwam Drum Game.
Mechanics: Mining simulator. Players accumulate CEXP — an in-game activity metric — by tapping, completing tasks, and referring users. They reinvest in-game earnings into virtual mining pools and equipment to increase their accumulation rate.
CEXP: In-game activity metric only. Not a cryptocurrency. No market price.
CEX.IO does not have a native platform token. Power Tap’s CEXP points are not comparable to exchange utility tokens issued by other platforms.
Current status: The farming phase has concluded. Final reward calculations were submitted to becexy.io.
Final Thoughts
Every project in this list that conducted a TGE saw its token price fall significantly from its all-time high. The pattern held across all four: sharp decline in the days following listing, continued erosion over the following months.
The pattern is consistent with how the genre was structured. Billion-token supplies, large circulating percentages at launch, and user bases primed to sell rewards created conditions where sustained price appreciation was unlikely.
CEX.IO Power Tap did not follow the TGE path. CEXP was an activity metric. It did not trade on any exchange. Whether that approach produced better outcomes for participants depends on what the reward allocations at becexy.io ultimately represent — a question outside the scope of this review.
The tap-to-earn wave gave Telegram a category of crypto-native apps it did not have before. The games attracted audiences in the hundreds of millions. The tokens, for the most part, did not hold value.