Notcoin is a Telegram-based game that has captured the attention of millions of players over the past few months. The game has racked up 35 million total players, and hit a peak of six million daily active users. That’s vastly larger than most crypto games.

The game, created by Open Builders, is based within the Telegram messaging app, and will launch a token on The Open Network (TON) this month. Its founder previously told Decrypt that the team sees it as a unique way to distribute tokens to community members in a fair manner.

What could motivate 35 million players to tap a golden coin in a messaging app? Crypto rewards, of course! Here’s what you need to know about Notcoin and the upcoming token.

What is Notcoin?

Notcoin, simply put, is a social clicker game. Players who want to earn in-game coins can open up the Telegram app, tap the Notcoin bot, invite friends to the game, and dive in. 

Once you’re in the game, a gold coin is displayed on your screen—and you tap the coin to earn an in-game currency called Notcoin. You’re given limited energy that depletes and then refills slowly over time, so you can’t click endlessly without barriers.

As you earn more and more Notcoin, you climb up a global leaderboard that’s broken into different tiers—from Silver league to Diamond league. Players can earn extra tokens by completing quests that usually involve actions such as following a Twitter account or joining a Telegram community.

Players can also use “boosts” or power-ups in the game that increase their earning potential. There are two categories of free boosts that refresh daily, the “Full Energy” and “Turbo” boosts, as well as additional permanent boosts that players can buy with their Notcoin. Such perks let players increase how many coins they earn per tap and how much energy they can spend at once, plus there’s an Auto-Tap bot that keeps collecting coins while you’re away.

Players can use the Notcoin they’ve earned to purchase cosmetic upgrades to change the background of the game, or what the coin they’re tapping looks like.

Note that the game ended its "mining phase" on April 1, which means that when you open the Notcoin app in Telegram, you cannot currently play the game. It's expected to return after the token launches later this month.

What is the NOT token?

After all that, you might still be wondering: Why did 35 million people tapping a coin to earn an in-game currency? The Notcoin team announced an airdrop for a real token that will be awarded to players, after being cagey about the possibility at first.

The token, called NOT, will go live on The Open Network (TON)—the network that Telegram itself originally founded—and be exchangeable for the in-game Notcoin that players have been earning.

On March 30, the Notcoin team shared a look at the tokenomics, saying that 100% of the NOT tokens will by default be provided to the more than 35 million players who mined them by tapping the coin. There won't be "Bitcoin-style early whales," they wrote in a tweet thread and via the official Telegram community. However, some tokens could be useful for boosting the ecosystem.

"It would be helpful for the ecosystem growth to have a meaningful amount of Notcoins for the product development, upcoming listings, and for all the millions of people that will come next," they wrote. "If there are no good ideas for these tokens, they will be burned."

As a result, Notcoin is asking players whether they want to contribute a share of their mined tokens to an ecosystem fund. In the Notcoin app on Telegram, a message now appears asking whether players want to donate 10%, 20%, 30%, or 50% of their coins—or they can choose "Keep for yourself." And there's no obligation or incentive here.

"There will be no bonuses for participation, only respect," the message reads.

When is the NOT token launching?

The Notcoin team has been particularly mysterious about when the token will launch. Recently, they deployed a glitch-like graphic that briefly appeared on players screens saying “7 Days.” They followed up the glitch with a post in the community channel, letting players know that the “mining phase” would end on April 1st—and then a new phase of the game would begin. 

But now we know the answer: Notcoin says the token will launch on April 20, the same day as the Bitcoin halving. Notcoin announced this on April 2 via Twitter after teasing something aligned with the Bitcoin network event.

Pre-market vouchers

Leading up to the airdrop, the Notcoin team launched an NFT voucher program. Any player with over 10 million Notcoin earned can convert their Notcoin (in 10 million increments) into NFT vouchers.

The vouchers can be bought, sold, or traded before the actual launch of NOT, allowing players to speculate on the eventual price of the real token. At the moment, Notcoin vouchers are trading for around 14 TON per voucher, or just shy of $100.

Players who don’t have 10 million Notcoin need not worry—their Notcoin will become directly exchangeable for NOT when the token goes live, and they’re not really missing out on anything by not partaking in the voucher system. Well, besides a little bit of speculation.

The future

Notcoin's gameplay is currently on pause until the token launches, but worry not—it's coming back, albeit with some changes. The coin-tapping game will be revived, but since no new tokens will be minted after the launch, it will be funded by companies that want to gain exposure to the sizable audience that Notcoin built.

"They will just continue to click on a button and earn coins, with more complexity and less rewards than they had in the mining phase," Open Builders founder Sasha Plotvinov told Decrypt's GG ahead of the end of the mining phase.

Notcoin had already been integrating with other projects and providing coins for engaging with their content, but under the new format, such projects will need to buy up NOT on the open market and pay it into a smart contract to activate such features.

There are other potential additions and changes ahead. For example, Plotvinov said that the team plans to build "trading bot" functionality into Notcoin to let people buy and sell crypto tokens via Telegram. Open Builders aims to build a more visual interface than the text-based approach of some other trading bots.

At the Hashkey Web3 Festival in Hong Kong on April 11, Notcoin apparently revealed some of this functionality, as shown in photos shared by the project. One shows the ability to send crypto like Toncoin (TON) to users on Telegram, handle crypto assets within a Telegram wallet, and connect to TON-based apps.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor's note: This story was originally published on March 27, 2024 and last updated on April 11.