Hamster Kombat, Once a Top Telegram Game, Is Turning to Blockchain Development on TON After Struggling With Declining Popularity

Hamster Kombat, a tap-to-earn game built on Telegram, is showing signs to deepen its blockchain roots, this time launching a layer-2 network on top of The Open Network, or just TON (TON).

Once a top Telegram game, Hamster Kombat is now turning to blockchain development on TON after struggling with declining popularity.

Hamster Kombat, a tap-to-earn game built on Telegram, is showing signs to deepen its blockchain roots, this time launching a layer-2 network on top of The Open Network, or just TON (TON). The decision comes after a community vote favoring the development of a dedicated network seemingly designed to enhance the Hamster Kombat token’s HMSTR (HMSTR) use cases.

HERE COMES THE BLOCKCHAIN

The vote on the 2nd proposal has ended!

The DAO community has spoken: there WILL BE Hamster L2 blockchain built on TON!

We will be serving our community, the biggest web3 community in the world, with the technological foundation it asked for!… pic.twitter.com/v4p3jydAPF

Layer-2 networks on TON are designed to improve transaction speeds and scalability on the existing blockchain. While Ethereum already hosts several well-known layer-2 networks, such as Coinbase’s Base or Blast, TON is still in the early stages of exploring similar technologies.

As of press time, there are no indications that TON hosts any operational layer-2 network. However, the TON ecosystem seems to be working on compatibility with Ethereum Virtual Machine protocols. The strategy may be aimed at attracting liquidity and dApp developers from Ethereum to integrate them into TON’s infrastructure.

For instance, in July, another project, dubbed TON Applications Chain, announced plans to develop a layer-2 network on TON. However, TAC aims to leverage Polygon’s layer-2 technology to achieve this goal.

State of Hamster KombatThe so-called “Hamster Blockchain” comes from a vote within the Hamster DAO. The proposal suggested building a network “where HMSTR token would be used for gas fees,” per the proposal’s description.

The vote met the required quorum of 1 billion HMSTR tokens on Friday, Dec. 27, with more than 1.18 billion HMSTR tokens in favor and just over 104,000 tokens against. However, it seems that over 60% of the total votes cast in favor of the initiative — amounting to approximately 737.3 million HMSTR tokens — were submitted by a single address, identified as UQDz…hUCu.

Launched in March, Hamster Kombat rapidly gained popularity, amassing millions of users within five months.

According to the Hamster Kombat team, a whopping 300 million people have signed up to play the game. Of these, a little under half of the players — 131 million in total — qualified to receive HMSTR tokens. Meanwhile, over 2.3 million players were flagged as cheaters and excluded from the token distribution.

The game’s integration with Telegram received a boost from the messaging app’s founder, Pavel Durov, who praised the game’s launch on TON as a way to bring blockchain benefits to millions.

Unclear roadmapHowever, for Hamster Kombat, things went south pretty quickly following the airdrop of its token, as it failed to meet players’ financial expectations. By early November, the user base had plummeted by 86%, dropping from 300 million to approximately 41 million active monthly players, per data from IntoTheBlock.

Several factors may have contributed to this decline:

The game’s mechanics were overly simplistic and repetitive.

Despite the game’s Telegram integration, it was largely inaccessible to non-Russian speaking players.

The promised airdrop of HMSTR tokens was delayed for several months.

In trying to solve these issues, the Hamster Kombat development team appears to be shifting the community’s focus toward the creation of a layer-2 network on TON. Nonetheless, several critical details remain unclear. For example, there’s no information thus far on who will develop the network, what technological stack will be used, or, most importantly, who’s gonna pay for the ambitious plan.

The missing details in the initiative’s description leave too many questions unanswered as well. On top of that, the proposed layer-2 network isn’t mentioned in Hamster Kombat’s roadmap at all, which appears to have not been updated since September.