Hamster Kombat, which launched on Telegram, managed to attract over 300 million players by incorporating cryptocurrency elements into its gameplay. Players manage virtual crypto exchanges to earn in-game coins. A large part of the user base was onboarded via TikTok, which features a slew of resources for Hamster Kombat. Many users and content creators have shared tutorials and guides to help new players get started with the game. For instance, there are videos detailing how to register and open an account and discussions about the game's features and strategies. TikTok has almost a billion users, and its global popularity inspires trust, helping introduce a broader audience to Web3 and cryptocurrencies.
Niche platforms and creators recognize the social medium's potential in accessing a vast user base. Sonic SVM, the team behind the hit tap-to-earn game SonicX, announced an airdrop of the $SONIC token to all users onboarded through TikTok. This initiative comes after Sonic onboarded more than two million users through a TikTok app layer developed by the platform. It represents an effort to tap the social medium's vast user base and potential market. Intuitive use has helped the initiative succeed. TikTok users don't need to create and link a Web3 wallet to access the airdrop. The wallet is created automatically after logging in with an existing TikTok account. Users can carry out on-chain activities without approving transactions. The latter are gasless, ensuring a seamless Web2-like app experience.
Onboarding through widely used social media is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't suffice to ensure mass adoption. A robust decentralized infrastructure must exist to enable uninterrupted capital flow and social interactions. Next-gen data layer Powerloom is helping realize such an infrastructure via its decentralized network of Snapshotter nodes, which have accumulated over a billion unique data points (snapshots) since the first testnet launch in February 2024. Its more than 5,300 Snapshotter nodes continuously capture event emissions and state changes and combine them into practical, higher-order datasets. Each Powerloom dataset is synced to blocks by default and gets real-time updates to match the underlying blockchain's latest state. This eliminates the risk of smart contracts and dApps executing on outdated information. GameFi apps, DeFi protocols, and NFT platforms can fetch and use the data points in their platforms without any RPC requests or additional queries, furthering mainstream adoption of the technology.