Notcoin founder Sasha doesn’t expect that button masher games will find long-term success.
Instead, he reckons that games must find sustainable models to survive.
Notcoin was the first Telegram game to pioneer the clicker model, where all users had to do was press a button and earn in-game currency, which later became a $1 billion token airdrop.
But it was also the first to pivot from this mechanic — where the app gives you something for free with the notion of a possible airdrop down the line — and the pseudonymous founder, who goes by Sasha, reckons it won’t be the last.
“I do not expect it will last forever,” said Sasha “I do not expect it will have any sustainability. From my perspective, only the games that have sustainable models will survive.”
Sasha argued that there are a number of games that have sustainable models. He cited Catizen, which claims that more than half of its users are paying customers and that it has generated millions of dollars of revenue.
As for Notcoin itself, Sasha said he wants to move on from the clicker narrative. He said that the plan for the next four years is for the project to become independent of the team by building sustainable and efficient subsystems.
One of them is the project’s current focus, where the Notcoin app provides campaigns that let users earn Notcoin by interacting with other, newer Telegram games. The idea is to become a hub for kickstarting other ecosystem projects while stimulating demand for Notcoin and burning some tokens in the process. He expects the number of these campaigns to increase up to 50 to 100 per week.
“It’s like farming, but not for providing liquidity, but providing your time and attention. This model allows us to be sustainable because we don’t have to print new notcoins,” he said.
However, Sasha noted that this is just one of a number of possible subsystems. He said others could involve contests, means of incentivizing contributors, game platforms, or even a decentralized university based on AI content that’s open to anyone.
“We experiment with this. Some models will die, some will evolve and become successful, and so on,” he said.