decrypt.co
Just days after breakout Telegram crypto game Hamster Kombat launched its HMSTR token, another prominent Telegram game has ended its gameplay phase ahead of its own impending token launch and airdrop to players.
X Empire, the Elon Musk-themed game that has you tap to earn in-game coins and then invest in various upgrades for Musk and his businesses, concluded its “mining phase” Monday as planned, with the game effectively shut down until the token is launched.
Marking the end of the initial phase of the game, the developers of X Empire—which originally launched as Musk Empire over the summer—said that the game had attracted nearly 48 million players, and that users had minted some 570,000 NFT vouchers that allowed them to effectively withdraw a share of their airdrop allotment for pre-market trading.
When the airdrop will come—and the game’s X token on The Open Network (TON) will launch—remains unclear as of this writing. A Telegram community message notes that the next move is “very soon,” while the Telegram mini app itself notes that the “token distribution” is “in progress, though no further detail is provided.
It’s a time of transition for Telegram tap-to-earn games, with some of the biggest mini apps in the space dropping their tokens, rewarding players, and attempting to keep them around for a next phase with additional rewards to come.
Catizen kicked off the recent bonanza on September 20, with Rocky Rabbit next on September 23 and Hamster Kombat—a game that had reportedly attracted more than 300 million players—following suit on September 26. Now, X Empire looks to continue that trend while a new wave of games starts to take root on Telegram.