Tap-to-Earn Gaming Expands From Telegram to TikTok via Solana's Sonic SVM

By Ryan S. Gladwin

Tap-to-earn took over the crypto gaming landscape this summer, as Telegram based mini apps attracted over 300 million players at a time. But a Solana-based project has launched a tap-to-earn game called SonicX that launches natively inside of TikTok, in the pursuit of becoming the Notcoin of the Gen Z-favored social media platform.

Sonic SVM, a layer-2 gaming chain built on top of Solana, plans to partner with content creators and run a series of ads on TikTok that players will be able to click to open the SonicX game natively inside TikTok. Much like mini apps on Telegram, TikTok allows users to open webpages inside its native browser, where gamers will start collecting in-game points after using a social login.

The game ultimately follows a similar premise to the other games in the tap-to-earn genre. Players will furiously tap their screens to collect rings, purchase upgrades to passively progress in-game, and invite friends to jump the ranks—all in the hopes of a future token airdrop that has yet to be confirmed.

Screenshots from the SonicX tap-to-earn game. Image: Sonic SVM

All of this takes place inside a world branded similarly to the classic Sonic The Hedgehog video game series, although there is no official connection to Sega.

One interesting quirk is that every in-game tap will be recorded as an on-chain transaction. We’ve seen this before with a “tickle-to-earn” cat game called Tapos on Aptos, which recorded over 115 million transactions in a single day in May with just over 63,000 players. For perspective, Ethereum processed just 1 million transactions a few days prior. 

“We talk about bringing a billion users when we don't even have a million oftentimes, and I think a million is a low bar,” Chris Zhu, CEO and co-founder of Sonic SVM, told Decrypt. “Even with just 1% of the entire TikTok population, we are at 10 million users. So I think that's not a dream anymore.”

TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users, with its total user base expected to grow to 2.35 billion by 2029, according to Shopify. For comparison, Telegram, which has been the epicenter of the tap-to-earn craze thus far, has 950 million monthly active users as of this summer. While these figures aren’t far off, Zhu believes that TikTok is an untapped market that is much easier to reach through advertising.

“Gen Alpha, Gen Z are already trading meme coins and looking at this content on [TikTok],” Zhu explained. “There’s a very shitty experience when it comes to advertising on top of Telegram. That being said, we think TikTok will be one of the largest traffic pools, if done right.”

Screenshots from the SonicX tap-to-earn game. Image: Sonic SVM

Sonic SVM is a Solana layer-2 network, also referred to as a “network extension,” that is acting as a publisher for crypto games—similar to the model that Ronin has deployed on Ethereum. Sonic SVM already plays host to 67 playable games, but the team believed that TikTok was the best place to launch SonicX.

This was due to the team’s background working at Bytedance, the developer of TikTok. Zhu believes that they can maximize usage of the platform

Of course, players engage in tap-to-earn gaming due to the promise of their in-game progress translating to token rewards. SonicX is no different with a Sonic token on the horizon, although the game doesn’t officially advertise this as such.

Many other tap-to-earn games have also done this, likely to avoid any potential regulatory issues, but SonicX is specifically contending with TikTok advertising restrictions in this case. Otherwise, Sonic SVM could face having its main distribution channel being removed.

Notcoin was the pioneer of the Telegram tap-to-earn movement. The game successfully launched its NOT token on The Open Network (TON), peaking at a market cap just shy of $3 billion as the largest crypto gaming token launch of 2024. Since then, Notcoin has reinvented itself by partnering with other projects and aiming to become the ‘Netflix’ of social, viral games.

This is a similar model that SonicX aims to replicate, albeit on TikTok. Zhu explains that the vision is to onboard other games into the tap-to-earn genre, as it aims to share its audience around the Sonic SVM ecosystem.

This can be done through social tasks that reward players, such as following a project’s TikTok account. That’s a similar method that many Telegram tap-to-earn games have also employed, which Zhu calls “decentralized advertising.”

SonicX on TikTok in many ways is designed as a “growth strategy” for the broader Sonic SVM gaming ecosystem. And with every in-game click being recorded on-chain, it could serve as an advertisement for the level of scalability that Sonic SVM offers, should it find a sizable audience.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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