Telegram Crypto Mini-Apps: The Notcoin and Blum Boom

Clicks and Airdrops: The Fever for Telegram Shitcoins

How much can you earn from an app that only asks you to tap the screen? During spring 2024, the answer circulated group by group, fitting into a single phrase: just enough to keep the habit alive. Notcoin was the first to pay out, distributing its airdrop on May 13, surpassing 35 million users, and nearly reaching $0.03 in its first week, with a market cap above $2 billion. Weeks later, it had settled at $1.6 billion and $0.016. The template was set: free game, promised token, and countdown.

What is Hamster Kombat and why are daily combos shared?

Because the game distributes extra coins to those who guess the day's card combination. Hamster Kombat, the tapper that arrived after Notcoin, changes the three upgrades that multiply rewards every day, and much of the interest in these mini-apps lies in copying others' combos before they expire. In late May and early June 2024, combos circulated daily with the promise of five million coins. With one nuance nobody hid: upgrading cards often cost more than the bonus itself.

Official recognition also appeared. The application was highlighted as the best clicker within the editorial selection of Telegram's app platform, a spot previously held by Notcoin. Projects are arranged like a ladder: the one that pays out first legitimizes the next.

Blum, DOGS, and CATS: From Minigame to Pre-Market

Blum was born with pedigree: created by former Binance employees, it was presented as a hybrid exchange combining an off-chain order book and on-chain settlement, with self-custody from external wallets. The figure it recorded was user count: 10 million. Meanwhile, DOGS reached 10 million users in less than four days of life and was already trading in pre-market at $0.013, with listing expected by month-end. CATS launched two days later, wrapped in the same mystery and with very few details on its distribution.

Behind them loomed a list that multiplied week by week: Tapswap on the Solana network, MemeFi, Minepoo, PocketFi, Yescoin, Farmfrens, Vertus, Dotcoin, DropHunter, or the BabyDog clicker. Supply grew faster than any allocation. It was warned that the next big event was Pixeltap, the Pixelverse project, with mid-July as the marked date.

TON, the Layer Supporting the Structure

All this rests on TON, the network associated with Telegram. With a quote of $7.30 in the data handled then, it ranked as the eighth cryptocurrency by market cap. The promise attached to it was having euros, dollars, and rubles in the same pocket and moving money instantly between two people without going through a bank. That is where uncomfortable questions arise: how do you fund it from a checking account, how do you convert it to another currency, and what happens afterwards with tax authorities? Nobody gave a complete answer to those three.

Catizen: When the Clicker Demands Strategy

Not everything is tapping the screen. Catizen, the game of merging two identical elements to obtain a third, requires resource management: the auto-extractor costs 3,500 Fish, the blockchain bonus unlocks with 0.0043 TON, and coins are spent on fishing rods to get accelerators and, hopefully, a temporary hyper-accelerator. Every day, a package appears with a different coin whose use nobody fully explained. Among shared routines was injecting one TON every two weeks to avoid losing bonuses.

Wallets, KYC, and Scam Warnings

To collect, you need a wallet, and the messaging app itself offers one. The identity verification process, KYC, was described as "trivial," not even asking for documents. Not everyone sees it that way. Against the enthusiasm, two objections rose: that many of these launches are coordinated operations to inflate the price and dump it on laggards, and that connecting the wallet to claim an airdrop is the usual path for funds to disappear. There are also those who missed the distribution and claim to have lost money along the way.

Snapshots, Claims, and the End of the Cycle

The second half of the cycle had less epic and more paperwork. Snapshot captures for distribution, notices that a token can now be claimed, new links to upload to maintain position. Fatigue set in. When the next project arrives, users abandon it: not because it consumes time — barely a few minutes a day with an automatic clicker — but because interest no longer sustains the round. Those who arrive late to a distribution rarely recover their investment, and high-demand slots close up.

Left behind are the wallet, the trivial identity verification, and the promise that the next token changes everything. The click is free. Time is not.