The Hamster Kombat follow-up story; sulky CEOs post-airdrop

Hamster Kombat seems to be following a similar path as other crypto projects that struggle to survive after the airdrop campaign ends and beneficiaries cash out immediately. In this case, it may be because the community airdrop went contrary to what members (CEOs) anticipated. 

Crypto airdrops are strategic ways for these startups to distribute tokens and coins to specific wallet addresses that meet predetermined conditions. They play a major role in creating awareness and promoting the adoption of the crypto project. Hamster Kombat seems to struggle after its airdrop on 26 September, despite airdrops being a positive light to crypto startups.

Hamster Kombat’s airdrop goes live amid controversies  

The project’s developers termed the airdrop the largest in the history of blockchain technology. The game’s developers reported having more than 300 million accounts and 100 million monthly active users, numbers that make Hamster Kombat the most popular clicker game. 

✍️ HAMSTER MATH ✍️

🔥 The results of Season 1 have been finalized:

🚀 Over 300 million people have joined Hamster Kombat since March 26, 2024, 131 million qualified for the airdrop on September 26th and around 2.3 million were banned as cheaters.

📤 30.6 million of qualified… pic.twitter.com/LH5eD3i8al

— Hamster Kombat (@hamster_kombat) September 22, 2024

The airdrop was so hyped that the TON developers urged the blockchain’s validators to show up for any urgency during the distribution process. The call to action was to prevent a possible downtime from the expected influx of on-chain activity.

Hamster Kombat already found itself amid controversies after banning 2.3 million users for cheating allegations and reclaiming 6.8 billion tokens from them. Some banned users came out on social media claiming an unfair exclusion as they did not cheat. More controversies emerged, accusing the developers of awarding a small portion to regular players while influencers received the lion’s share of the airdrops.

Binance announced it would list HMSTR tokens on the Binance launchpool on September 26th at 12:00 UTC. The prompt listing made the exchange the largest beneficiary of the HMSTR token flow according to data from TON’s Tonviewer. Binance also leads other exchanges in terms of HMSTR token flow. Its pre-deposits exceeded 6.2 billion HMSTR and the current balance on Binance’s Hot wallet is 18.1 billion HMSTR (equivalent to 18.17%).

HMSTR caused increased traffic on major exchanges. Arbitrum One-based decentralized exchange, Ebi.xyz, received overwhelming traffic from millions of users due to the Hamster Kombat airdrop. The traffic caused delays in airdrop claims, according to the exchange’s press release. The DEX platform apologized and offered to refund affected users with 50k EBI each.

Hamster Kombat’s airdrop leaves CEOs underwhelmed

Hamster Kombat’s airdrop sparked a wave of negative reactions from the crypto community, with most airdrop recipients only receiving a minute amount of tokens. 

A Hamster CEO highlighted that the project’s token distribution was unfair since they banned legitimate participants. The user also expressed discontent with influencers getting massive airdrops while real users only got “dust.” The user stated that the project was “not a Hamster” but a “Scamster.”

Another frustrated Hamster  CEO explained how farmers made only $10 after more than five months of farming. One particular Hamster CEO showed their Hamster Allocation of 8.2 million PPH but only received 3009 HMSTR, equivalent to $20 based on the current HMSTR market price.

Another user claimed that the Hamster Kombat team failed to mention that 12% of the tokens are locked after listing, and participants only received between 100 and 5000 HMSTR tokens.

One crypto analyst and researcher criticized the project for having an unprofessional team behind its development. The analyst stated that the concept was not original and had initially been presented to the market by Notcoin.

According to the crypto price tracking website Coinmarketcap, HMSTR is trading at $0.006867. The token’s price has dipped by 29% in the last 24 hours. It has a market capitalization of $442 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $1.08 billion.