TikTok Tap-to-Earn Game Tops a Million Players as Solana's Sonic SVM Teases Token – Decrypt

SonicX, a tap-to-earn game launched on TikTok, has passed the milestone of 1 million players just a month after its debut, developer Sonic SVM told Decrypt on Monday. Now, the team is eyeing up its token launch date.

Previously, the tap-to-earn genre was siloed on Telegram due to the messaging platform’s seamless ability to launch mini apps, along with native wallet integration via The Open Network (TON). However, Solana-based project Sonic SVM figured out a way to create this type of game on TikTok, as previously covered on Decrypt‘s GG, opening up the genre to a whole new audience.

SonicX, the first such game, sees players tap away at their smartphone screens to earn in-game points via a mini app that launches within the TikTok app. It features artwork that is very similar to classic video game Sonic The Hedgehog, but has no official affiliation with Sega. 

Over the month since it has launched, the game has expanded its player base by pushing out advertising to potential new users—a major factor in hitting this recent milestone.

The team shared internal documents and figures with Decrypt that show that SonicX has reached millions of views across numerous TikTok advertising efforts—a portion of which has converted to active users. Decrypt also viewed SonicX’s Google Analytics and internal analytics data, both of which align with the player numbers reported by the developers.

The team has yet to officially state that an airdrop is tied to in-game progress. That said, Sonic SVM confirmed that a token generation event (TGE) is on the way.

“SonicX will continue to be in the mining phase until our TGE—aimed for Q4 2024, or Q1 2025 latest,” Chris Zhu, the co-founder and CEO of Sonic SVM, told Decrypt. “That said, the mining will continue with a differentiated reward mechanism post-TGE.”

The “mining phase” is typically used to describe the period where tap-to-earn games track player progress and account for it in the upcoming airdrop. When the mining phase ends, this usually means that player data is being recorded via a snapshot, and that eligible players will be rewarded with tokens via an airdrop. 

While 1 million players is nothing to scoff at, it still pales in comparison to the 300 million players that Hamster Kombat reportedly gained on Telegram earlier this year. But Zhu believes that SonicX’s users could be of a “higher quality” due to know your customer (KYC) requirements.

“TikTok users require phone numbers and identity verification for KYC, while products on Telegram don’t,” Zhu explained. “[This is] effectively bringing higher quality registration into Solana and Sonic.”

Interest in Hamster Kombat has started to wane following the game’s airdrop, and it’s not the only Telegram game to struggle with retaining users after handing out rewards.

SonicX aims to avoid this by using the TikTok app as an “app layer” for other projects to integrate into. Telegram tap-to-earn project Notcoin has employed a similar strategy, partnering with other projects (like Flappy Bird) to expand its offerings. 

“Hamster Kombat is a single game that garnered a lot of traction in a short period of time,” Zhu told Decrypt. “We are building SonicX as an ‘app layer,’ meaning we’re not only having users play our game, but also enable other games to use SonicX as a distribution platform.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward