What has happened to the tap to earn games?
Another crypto fad?
At one point last year there were millions and millions of players involved with Hamster Kombat, tapping away daily and building up points for a potential airdrop that was hyped up.
Thanks to the initial success of the Notcoin tap to earn app everybody thought that they could also earn thousands from the next big thing.
But like most things in crypto it was all hype and no substance. I tried it myself tapping away at 5 different apps trying to hit a big win. My big rewards for weeks of tapping was $20 that i can't even remember if i claimed or not.
Games like Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and TapSwap gained traction due to their simplicity and accessibility, especially on Telegram. Notcoin, for instance, amassed over 35 million users by mid-2024, driven by its tap-to-collect model and viral airdrop campaigns.
The influx of tap-to-earn games led to oversaturation. Many projects copied Notcoin’s model, diluting quality and player interest. By 2025, users on X noted declining enthusiasm for repetitive tap mechanics.
Tap-to-earn games haven’t disappeared but have lost some shine. Notcoin remains operational, integrating new features like NFT collaborations (e.g., Lost Dogs) to retain users. Other games like PixelTap and Yescoin continue on Telegram, focusing on community events.
The idea was good.
I think that simple games with low mechanics and easy access are a great way to bring users to web3. Unfortunately though, most of the projects today have no source of revenue, no long term plans and tend to implode if they gain some big investments.
Telegram is a great place to recruit more people into crypto but the project has to be right.
In my 8 years of crypto i have yet to see a game that was easy, entertaining, self sustainable and can reward it's audience.
Imagine Hive building an app that reeled in 35M users and then not capitalizing on it and building out a full eco-system of apps, social media presence and income streams. We can't even imagine those numbers as a semi mature project with actual tokenomics.
I've seen so many of these fads come and go but we are still waiting for a real breakthrough app for people to start learning about web3 and start earning for their online activities.
I think that social media is going to be the one that does the trick but whether the app is hive based or not is still to be seen. We have a great head start and nobody else has built anything worthwhile so it is going to be interesting.
A social media arms race.
Posted Using INLEO
Apart from the reasons you mention, a part of the copycats noticed the gold mine it was to create countless YT videos and rack the profits from all the followers views; no point in actually creating something if you can just keep milking the cow. Nowadays it's basically a desert, although I'm starting to see some mildly fun games on telegram, such as the Void.
I also think the problem was in the execution and not being able to manage expectations with the users. It's not really sustainable to have a high expectations when underneath the project has no product or way of building a business out of the marketing they were doing. They only got market-fit with no product, as in product-market fit.
Hamster Kombat itself was like a pyramid scheme create by someone smart who wanted to grow their YouTube and Twitter account and thanks to the success of notcoin, they actually did it successfully. The idea was smart, but they ended farming over 50m people
no long term plans, that's the key word. If all you do is to reward tappers after some months then its a doomed project. Everyone just waiting for D-day to sell out. Always fad