How TON-based games and crypto airdrops are attracting millions of users

The next is a visitor publish from Yaniv Baruch, COO at Playnance.

Blockchain gaming lately reached an all-time excessive of 4.2 million every day lively customers, in keeping with a DappRadar report. The GameFi business is seeing an unprecedented wave of latest customers. Nevertheless, this development is considerably overshadowed by buzzier developments reminiscent of AI and memecoins. Three key components are driving the inflow of customers: developments in crypto merchandise (together with TON ecosystem developments), airdrops, and broader technological developments within the crypto house.

These components helped entice – and most significantly retain – this huge person base, setting the stage for one more GameFi growth in 2025.

Remodel tomorrow with TON

Telegram’s TON (The Open Community) is quick, scalable and expenses minimal charges, making it a super blockchain for gaming. In any case, gaming networks must deal with participant interactions in actual time to make sure a easy expertise. Any delays can frustrate gamers and trigger them to desert the sport.

TON’s capabilities permit for extra superior gaming experiences like Catizen and TapSwap, and its integration into the Telegram app makes it one of the accessible gaming networks on the market. This isn’t simply hypothesis; it is a reality, confirmed by over 239 million gamers in Hamster Kombat, 21 million in Catizen and over 60 million customers of Tapswap. The determine is spectacular for normal blockchain-based video games and even Web2 video video games.

TON’s essential function for the approaching GameFi growth subsequent yr is that almost all of this viewers, in keeping with the builders itself, is totally new to the cryptocurrency business. After getting their first Web3 gaming expertise or airdrops in these and different Dapps, a few of them will ultimately flip to different GameFi merchandise and different blockchain ecosystems.

Crypto Airdrops: A Double-edged Necessity

Along with TON’s rising GameFi viewers, airdrops play a key function. They distribute in-game tokens to newer gamers, permitting them to discover the chances of a sport with out investing.

For instance, Hamster Kombat, the TON community’s most profitable tap-to-play sport, held an airdrop on September 26 alongside the HMSTR token launch for its 131 million eligible customers. Gamers have been having fun with the sport’s first season of content material in current months, with rewards paid out primarily based on participant exercise and different standards.

This technique encourages gamers to log in and stage up day-after-day, full missions, full limited-time actions, and develop the sport’s every day lively participant base. The promise of a performance-based payout additionally encourages gamers to share the sport with their buddies, additional growing the variety of gamers.

Whereas crypto airdrops have their drawbacks – reminiscent of “airdrop farmers” who soar from sport to sport gathering tokens and promoting them with out investing within the sport – these challenges are outweighed by the advantages. Although 88% of tokens launched alongside airdrops this yr have fallen in worth, the general advantages of airdrops stay important.

They ignite a sport’s group and entice a devoted group of avid gamers, inspired by the preliminary free funds. That group will then unfold the phrase and entice extra gamers, strengthening the fanbase and delivering the efficiency of a GameFi product.

This will increase consciousness of the challenge’s token, doubtlessly growing its worth and rewarding early adopters. When carried out correctly, with truthful and considerate distribution of tokens to loyal customers, the person airdrop mechanism creates a cycle of consciousness, participation, and rewards. This mechanic helped many tasks throughout the bear market, and can quickly create much more traction within the coming GameFi growth.

Keep regular momentum

As is the case with a number of Web3 sectors, GameFi is presently experiencing a rise within the variety of customers. Nevertheless, it’s simply as vital, if no more so, to maintain gamers engaged in a sport. To create one other GameFi growth subsequent yr, builders should leverage one of the best practices of latest applied sciences, tasks and ecosystems like TON to create new, significant and seamless gaming experiences for his or her gamers (on this case current developments in L3, zero fuel and Account abstraction-based options have made nice progress).

Approaching Web3 sport improvement with these objectives in thoughts will encourage builders to draw gamers and monetize their gaming efforts, however an excellent gaming expertise connects the participant to it on an emotional stage. That robust bond then ensures that they follow a sport that goes past the monetary advantages. A significant expertise may also invite them to inform their buddies and get different gamers concerned, in the end benefiting the GameFi ecosystem as an entire.

That mentioned, we’re nonetheless ready for the emergence of a dominant drive – just like Conflict of Clans or Sweet Crush in Web2 a number of years earlier – that may lastly redefine the present GameFi market standing. We’re all ready for an expertise that may seize the minds (and palms!) of the hundreds of thousands who play fashionable blockchain-based video games.

Discovering the precise stability between play-to-earn fashions and enjoyable gameplay will maintain gamers engaged even because the monetary rewards fluctuate. Collectively, these gaming experiences will maintain customers within the business for the long run. With the current $1.4 billion of investments within the GameFi business within the first half of 2024, the data of every day lively customers this yr and the wave of completely new customers attracted by GameFi tasks on TON, we will certainly see a brand new growth within the GameFi business in 2025.

By then we are going to undoubtedly see new applied sciences and sport mechanics come to gentle. Builders should then apply the earlier ideas to those new concepts to create even higher experiences for his or her gamers. These components might spark one other GameFi growth in 2025 as applied sciences and sport mechanics mature.