The creators of Telegram-based game Notcoin currently have their hands full, with millions of users eagerly anticipating the game’s imminent NOT token launch on The Open Network (TON).
And yet, the game’s developers already have their sights set on even bigger things: Namely, transforming Notcoin from a viral, coin-tapping sensation into a comprehensive, scaled gaming ecosystem powered by a community of builders.
“We want it to become the Netflix of social, viral games,” Open Builders founder Sasha Plotvinov told Decrypt’s GG at Token 2049 in Dubai last week.
The Open Builders team was certainly delighted by Notcoin’s overnight—and continued—success. But Plotvinov is keenly aware that in crypto, phenomena like Notcoin can only ride forward momentum for so long.
“You cannot build a viral thing that just grows forever,” he said.
So the developer and his team of four fellow engineers are now racing to leverage Notcoin’s success into a larger and more sustainable enterprise—one that effectively serves as a launchpad for other, independent developers to create their own “viral, funny, entertaining, competitive social crypto games,” tapping into the infrastructure and audience that Open Builders already has at its disposal.
A crucial component of Notcoin are “squads,” teams of players brought together by an incentivized referral program. Plotvinov says there are over 30,000 such teams already involved with Notcoin—which could easily be onboarded into a new game. And that's on top of the 35 million total players who checked out Notcoin during its "mining phase" earlier this year.
“We already bonded together in Notcoin,” the developer said. “And now Notcoin says the next adventure is coming. One click and you’re already in the same squad, you have your achievements, and you have your reputation.”
Plotvinov envisions the future of Notcoin as a Netflix-like environment of playable games and social experiences in which users can jump from one experience to the next, all while taking data and connections with them. The entire ecosystem, like Notcoin, will live on The Open Network (TON), the blockchain affiliated with popular messaging app Telegram.
It’s quite an ambitious goal, certainly, to turn one viral game into a sustainable and interconnected web of dozens. Such a project could take years.
But Plotvinov knows Notcoin has the momentum now, and his team is trying to strike while the iron is still hot: They plan to have some version of the gaming ecosystem operating within the next month.
"It's time to ship," he said.
Edited by Andrew Hayward