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.

Telegram Tap-to-Earn Gaming Is Huge. Can It Avoid Play-to-Earn’s Fate?
Telegram gaming has been one of crypto’s biggest winners in 2024. Hamster Kombat pulled in 300 million players ahead of this week’s airdrop, and Notcoin launched a token that neared a $3 billion market cap—a screen-tapping game yielding one of the 100 biggest coins on the planet. All of this revolves around the tap-to-earn mechanic, a simple concept with a growing list of variations and permutations. But has this model truly evolved upon the fraught play-to-earn gaming craze that dominated the l...
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.

7 Hot Telegram Crypto Games to Play After the ‘Hamster Kombat’ Airdrop
It’s a new era for Telegram crypto games. The long-awaited Hamster Kombat token launch and airdrop happened last week, and while the game is currently in the midst of a short “interlude” season before embarking on an expansive roadmap of future plans, players are starting to look for the next buzzy games to play that haven’t yet launched their own respective tokens. Luckily, we’ve been knee-deep in Telegram games all the while, both playing the other big ongoing games and trying out a bevy of ne...
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.