‘Tickle-to-Earn’ Cat Game Prompts Massive Spike in Aptos Transactions

Aptos, a layer-1 blockchain network, logged two consecutive days of huge daily transaction tally gains—and it was all thanks to a “tickle-to-earn” cat game.

On Friday, Aptos recorded over 90 million transactions, followed by over 115 million transactions on Saturday, according to data from Aptoscan. Here’s some perspective: On Wednesday, Aptos processed 875,000 transactions, while Ethereum, according to Etherscan, processed just over 1 million transactions.

Why has this all happened? Because a Notcoin-esque cat clicker game launched on the network that records every click on-chain.

Tapos is a “tickle-to-earn” game on the Aptos network that prompts users to tickle an on-screen cat for HEART tokens. Just like clicker games of the past, or the more recent Telegram-based game Notcoin, users were able to click multiple times per second—some former Cookie Clicker pros claim they can click up to 15 times per second. That adds up.

“We had 2,000+ transactions per second modifying [the] global counter for days, and they were all executed in parallel!” the Tapos Twitter account proudly posted. “This is pushing the boundary of what blockchains can do.”

The clicker game claims to have garnered 63,000 users that broadcast over 323 million transactions over its three-day campaign—working out to over approximately 5,000 transactions per person, or 1,700 each day per user.

This explains why we aren’t seeing a significant increase in users on Aptos. In fact, there were more active accounts on Aptos on Monday, despite logging only 960,000 total transactions, than on Saturday when the transaction tally peaked at over 115 million.

And the boasts by some Aptos builders of massive transaction gains on their chain didn't sit well with everyone who dug into the details behind the spike.

"Looked into this. It's from a game where you earn a shitcoin by clicking on a screen fast," tweeted Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz, an outspoken Solana builder. "The clicks are counted as [transactions per second]. We will do literally anything to game metrics in this industry rather than build anything with real users or demand LMAO."

Tapos follows in the footsteps of the widely popular Telegram-based clicker game Notcoin. This game captured the attention of over 30 million players earlier this year, hitting a peak of six million daily active users. With Notcoin however, none of the in-game taps are registered on-chain. Only Notcoin’s NOT token and the pre-token NFT vouchers are on-chain.

Under the Tapos model, assuming the 1,700 clicks per day per person figure that Tapos achieved, Notcoin would have recorded over 10 billion transactions per day at its daily peak. Notcoin’s blockchain of choice, The Open Network, has only ever processed just over 15 million transactions in a single day, per data from TON Stat.

But Tapos is yet to reach anywhere near the kind of player base that Notcoin has. Now that its three-day campaign is over, those keen to tickle a digital kitten must wait for the developers to set her free.

“We will update you on the next step of the game,” the official Twitter account wrote. “We are cooking something yummy for our Top 50 on the leaderboard.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward