Why Dapper Labs Is Launching Several CryptoKitties ‘Meowcoins’ on Flow

CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs is set to launch six “Meowcoins” on Flow on Wednesday, with a seventh coin coming in a week’s time—and they’ll all feed into each other through a new gameplay loop for the firm’s Telegram game.

To kick-start the new era, players of the two previous seasons of Telegram game CryptoKitties: All The Zen will receive an airdrop of some of these tokens on Wednesday.

Releasing seven tokens, rather than one, is unusual in the world of Telegram gaming. But even single gaming tokens haven’t fared well of late. After attracting 300 million players last year, Hamster Kombat’s HMSTR token airdrop was met with frustration, and has fallen 63% since its launch as hype dwindled. CryptoKitties is opting for a different kind of approach.

“We obviously saw the ups and downs, the pump and dumps, the big launches going nowhere. We wanted to create something that is sustainable and fun,” Arthur Camara, VP of product at Dapper Labs, told Decrypt.

In the quest to avoid a token immediately dumping on launch, the team conjured up a Meowcoin ecosystem that incentivizes playing with blockchain tools in order to boost your earnings. Dapper believes that it’s more beneficial for a player to use their airdrop to earn more by playing the crypto game, rather than simply holding a token and speculating on its price before selling.

“We said we brought the first game to the blockchain in 2017,” Camara explained of the original CryptoKitties NFT collecting experience. “We’re trying to do that again, in a way.”

Meowcoins is an umbrella term for three types of tokens on the Flow blockchain: Fancy Coins, Beancoins, and Family Coins.

As players level through All The Zen, they will earn Fancy Coins and Beancoins, with this process being sped up by completing certain quests. These coins will also be attainable via in-game crates that are often given out as a login bonus. Beancoins are earned at a slower rate.

There are five different types of Fancy Coin, one for each family in the game’s universe. Once a player has one from each family, they can be burned together to craft a Family Coin. There is only one Family Coin for each event, although a player can own multiple of the same coin. This is a badge of honor—a sign of a player’s excellence within an event.

There will be multiple events within this season, and each will result in another set of Fancy Coins, Beancoins, and Family Coins being released. That said, Camara explained, each event will seamlessly transition into another to reduce players ending up with thousands of tokens with no in-game use as the events pass.

Part of the Meowcoin vision is to implement the NFT ethos of wanting to collect digital assets, but in the world of meme coins—done through the prestigious nature of Family Coins and the range of Fancy Coins a player can earn. On top of this, the model encourages players to engage with crypto-native concepts like prediction markets and staking as an onboarding tool.

As such, players can earn more Fancy Coins by wagering them in the Rumor Mill, which will essentially act as an in-game prediction market. In the Rumor Mill, stories about characters in the CryptoKitties universe will leak, and players can bet their Fancy Coins on the eventual outcome. This will be available via a Telegram bot, on social media, and in-browser.

Equally, in the future, players will be able to stake Family Coins against Beancoins to help generate even more Beancoins.

While the Meowcoin ecosystem is closely tied to the idle game All The Zen, due to Telegram’s exclusivity deal with The Open Network, there will be no direct integrations for Meowcoins in Telegram.

On Wednesday, players of the previous two seasons of All The Zen will receive their airdrops of Fancy Coins and Beancoins. From engaging with All The Zen, players will receive Fancy Coin and Beancoin airdrops at the end of each phase, each of which is expected to last a matter of weeks.

Such a robust plan was crafted so that the CryptoKitties token launch doesn’t meet the same fate as those from other games in the tap-to-earn genre, with so many tokens cratering after launch. Notcoin (NOT), the largest tap-to-earn token, is down 93% from its all-time high, with Catizen (CATI) down 92% and Zoo (ZOO) falling 94%.

Nearly across the board, prominent Telegram games have struggled to keep players around after the token launch—but Camara said it’s about more than the speculative element.

“I think those experiences do not survive because they were not fun,” Camara told Decrypt. “We’re trying to create a fun experience that is sustainable from both an on-chain perspective, but especially the game itself.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward