Hamster Kombat’s Highly Anticipated Airdrop Goes Live

The highly-anticipated airdrop from, Hamster Kombat, the booming tap-to-earn Telegram miniapp, is now live.

Claims for the HMSTR token went live on Sept. 26 at 7:48 am EST, followed by the token listing on centralized exchanges 12 minutes later.

The token last changed hands for roughly $0.012, implying a $772.5 million market cap and positioning the token as the 102nd-largest cryptocurrency if all airdropped tokens are claimed, according to CoinGecko.

However, HMSTR’s price is quickly falling as supply enters circulation, with the token falling 6% in just a few minutes.

TON anticipates disruption

Hamster Kombat tipped that its airdrop would comprise the largest ever, with 131 million users qualifying for token allocations on The Open Network (TON) — a Layer 1 network integrated with Telegram.

On Sept. 10, TON predicted that its network may suffer disruptions during the HMSTR airdrop, anticipating the event would drive a massive spike in on-chain activity. TON’s comments came after the network suffered a seven-hour outage during the DOGS airdrop, with the team estimating it received 150,000 DOGS claims every minute after the drop began.

In total, 17 million users claimed DOGS tokens over two weeks, driving an average of 1.1 million daily users and 14.4 million daily transactions.

TON validators have been urged to closely monitor the status of their nodes over the next three days.

Airdrop backlash

Despite 131 million wallets qualifying for the HMSTR drop, Hamster Kombat faced backlash earlier this week after announcing that 57% of its 300 million users would miss out on token allocations.

The excluded users included 2.3 million wallets disqualified for “cheating” after being identified as using bots or multiple accounts to interact with the game. Developers have launched multiple tools automating Hamster Kombat’s in-game tasks.

HMSTR tokenomics

HMSTR has a maximum supply of 100 billion tokens, three-quarters of which have been earmarked for airdrops to players. Hamster Kombat’s first drop will distribute 60 billion tokens to users, with 53.25 billion HMSTR immediately claimable and the remaining tokens subject to a 10-month vesting schedule. A future Season 2 airdrop will distribute the other 15 billion tokens allocated to users.

Players are not the wallets receiving HMSTR allocations today, with the 4% of the token’s supply allotted to marketing initiatives, 4% for exchange liquidity, 3% for Binance Launchpool stakers, and 0.13% of the 6% earmarked for partnerships and grants also unlocked. The partnerships and grants tokens will vest over four years.

An 8% allocation to the Hamster Kombat team will also begin unlocking after 12 months and vest over four years.