W-Coin is one of the latest Telegram-based games to enter the tap-to-earn arena. It sets itself apart from its competitors with a couple variations from the standard tap-to-earn model, which anyone paying attention to the Telegram gaming ecosystem has become very familiar with lately.  

According to the W-Coin community channel on Telegram, the game has already amassed 16 million users in around 3 months of being live. It still has a ways to go before catching up with the recent tap-to-earn sensation TapSwap, or the original Telegram sensation Notcoin, but it still has room to grow ahead of an expected airdrop to players. Here’s what you need to know.

What is W-Coin?

W-Coin uses the same basic mechanics as other tap-to-earn games, as you tap the screen to make your in-game coin stash grow, plus there are various power-ups and persistent upgrades you can unlock to boost your earnings.

However, the game does bring some added twists. With W-Coin, the players get to collectively decide which blockchain the eventual token will be launched on: Ethereum, Solana, or The Open Network (TON). The last of those is the same chain that Notcoin used, as will other Telegram games like Hamster Kombat, Yescoin, and TapSwap.

W-Coin also differentiates itself from the competition with the addition of staking. Players can stake their earned W-Coin to earn additional rewards. To stake tokens, players specify how long they want to lock up their tokens: three, seven, or 14 days, with varying yield rewards ranging from 2% to 20% depending on the chosen period.

At the end of the staking period, your rewards are automatically added to your coin balance. You can choose to stake only a portion of your in-game coins, or all of them—but make sure to leave enough to pay for boosters!

How to play W-Coin

Similarly to Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and TapSwap, you’ll start the game within the Telegram app on iOS or Android by starting a conversation with the W-Coin bot. Once the game is booted up, players are greeted with the oh-so-familiar coin in the center of the screen, ready to be tapped. 

You have a finite energy bar that decreases as you tap the coin, and each tap of the coin earns you 1 W-Coin at a time—at least until you get some upgrades. There are two types of free daily boosters that players can use to optimize their daily earnings: Full-Battery, and Lucky Dice.

Full-Battery recharges your energy bar, so you can keep tapping after you’ve used up all your juice, while Lucky Dice rolls a dice that generates a number between 1 and 20. Whatever number you roll is a multiplier that is applied to your earnings for 10 seconds, plus your energy bar doesn’t deplete during that period. You get three free daily uses of each boost, so don’t let them go to waste.

Players can also purchase upgrades, which differ from boosters in that they’re applied to your game permanently and aren’t temporary perks. The upgrades available in W-Coin are: Tap, Maximizer, Charger, W-orker, and Multiplier.

The first four upgrades are similar to those found in other tap-to-earn games. Tap increases the amount of coins you earn per tap, Maximizer increases your total energy limit, Charger increases the speed at which your energy bar replenishes, and W-orker is an auto-tap bot that continues to earn you coins when you’re not in the app.

The last upgrade, Multiplier, is a new addition to the tap-to-earn meta. Using the multiplier upgrade gives you a chance to randomly hit a multiplier of up to 100x points per tap, though it’s a pricey upgrade to invest in.

When is the airdrop?

We still don't have a date, but thanks to an update shared in the game's official Telegram community on August 5, we have a sense of what's on the horizon for W-Coin and its token, which will apparently indeed be called WCOIN.

The vote for which blockchain to launch the official W-Coin token on is apparently still live, though TON was widely leading a month ago and the game has since launched a TON wallet connection feature. The chain has rapidly become synonymous with Telegram itself, which makes sense given its origins, so the results aren’t a huge surprise.

W-Coin says to "expect to see WCOIN on your favorite tier-1 exchanges," and also notes that a "new concept for the W-Coin mini app is coming to shake things up after sticking to the simple tap-to-earn approach thus far.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor's note: This story was originally published on July 1, 2024 and last updated with new details on August 5.