For some reason, people are surprised that this is happening, and that's the comical part.
There hasn't been any time in history that value networks don't get exploited, so long as a system works, it has to be milked for all it's got until it gets better at protecting it's value flow.
This goes way beyond monetary benefits, although at the end of the day, that's often the purpose of all exploitation.
TON, The Santa That Came Early
Maybe a lot of us are not paying attention or have simply decided to turn a blind eye to it but Bitcoin did really start this bullrun, in fact, everything bitcoin bullrun related failed to bring any significant market movements.
All the talks on ETFs underperformed, it really didn't wake nada up. Which is no surprise considering that ETFs are not exactly retail solutions, who the fuck of the average Joes cares about ETFs?
Exactly.
TON, however, started a bullish trend through Notcoin and the popularization of tap-to-earn and it's suffered exploitation since then.
I was a tad annoyed that Hive project developers made not a single move on the trend when it was literally the easiest time to attract fresh users, a combination of attention spenders and investors.
TON took crypto to the world, single-handedly, over 300 million people became aware of crypto and incentive protocols through TON and Telegram, starting with Notcoin, then Hamster.
Sure, Hamster Kombat's allocation to users was not worth the time spent on the game for months, but that's what happens when you have 130 million mouths to feed.
But this post is not about hamster kombat, but almost every other project after it.
MemeFi, Catizen, Tomarket, Major, X Empire, and probably a lot more.
It's important to note that some of these projects may have launched before hamster kombat, but what was common was the liquidity drain of the TON community.
Surely, it quickly led to the “pay-to-earn” model being adopted, where players who spent more on the games would receive larger airdrops.
A lot of people are tempted to say: well, it only makes sense to reward those bringing revenue.
That is absolutely not a great strategy!
Pay-To-Earn Is Flawed
It's not sustainable if widely adopted. Remember how hamster kombat struggled because it had more mouths to feed?
The same will happen as more players understand that it's “pay-to-earn” and begin to spend on these emerging projects expecting 10x of their investment.
The problem is that where the majority are paying users, there's nobody to pass the losses on as non-paying players need to be significantly higher for a pay-to-earn model to be functional.
That said, the second problem with this development is that it exposes players to a variety of scams — which are already growing in numbers on Telegram(TON) off the back of tap-to-earn exposure.
When users simply come in believing they have to pay and cash out, scammers will simply exploit them and ditch.
Legally, you cannot hold them for nada because profitability isn't promised because of what you pay for are in-game assets and some upgrade features, things that are regular for traditional digital games.
Airdrops, if any, are just secondary incentives for all players, not explicitly paying players.
I mean, Notcoin literally marketed itself as “probably nothing” so what stops others from explicitly throwing bold disclaimers that it's all just for “entertainment purposes” while extracting value where they can?
It even gets worse when some of these projects don't even move forward with an airdrop and I happen to see some now totally switching blockchains, leaving TON behind at launch, after milking said community.
A while ago I saw a report of Tomarket preparing to launch on Aptos blockchain, after riding the TON fame for months and earning several $$ from TON users.
Sad? Sure, what can anyone do?
All TON can do is distance itself from emerging projects, but that's going to be hard given their approach to welcoming developers on their network and community.
Besides, the real funnel is Telegram and that's off-chain and above TON's control.
As much as scammers will continue to maximize their talents on emerging value networks, TON will be fine, liquidity on the chain will grow overtime, in fact, I would call all this events a good thing as it might help it grow past the shadow of being the “Santa Chain” with so much free gifts to give without expecting anything in return.