Hamster Kombat HMSTR

Hamster Kombat launched on Telegram in March 2024 as a game, and the HMSTR token followed several months later. The team told Wired that the idea came up in January 2024, inspired by the success of Notcoin. In an email to The Block, the team said it also drew on social media games of the 2010s and on meme stocks. It added that its members had worked in blockchain and games since 2013.

The token went live on 26 September 2024 with an airdrop of 60 billion HMSTR, 60% of the 100 billion total. It went to 131 million qualifying accounts, based on their activity in the game's first season. The airdrop campaign began on 8 June 2024. Its first task asked players to link a TON wallet, either Telegram's @Wallet or Tonkeeper, to the game bot. The token was first planned for July 2024 and was then delayed, as such a large distribution needed more planning. The team said it was working closely with the TON team to make the airdrop happen, and that it had to move the date to 26 September because of how the airdrop was being implemented technically. The other 40% of supply is set aside for market liquidity, ecosystem partnerships, grants and squad rewards. The team said a further 15%, or 15 billion HMSTR, would go to players during the game's second season.

HMSTR started trading on 26 September 2024. It listed that day on Binance, OKX, Bitfinex, Bitget and other exchanges. Bitget opened trading at 12:00 UTC and placed HMSTR in its Meme and TON Ecosystem Zone. Listings were confirmed ahead of launch: OKX was the first, on 30 August 2024, followed by Bybit on 3 September. On 12 September Binance announced HMSTR as its 58th Launchpool project, where users could lock BNB and FDUSD to farm HMSTR from 19 September.

Many players expected allocations to follow the in-game coins they had collected. Instead, allocations were set by several measures of participation. Typical allocations came out far smaller than many players had expected. Much of the criticism targeted the game's design. For months it had stressed 'keys' and 'profit per hour', yet invites and referrals turned out to carry the most weight in the final allocation.

The team stayed anonymous before launch. It told Wired that it had about 50 people, all working remotely with no headquarters. It said it had no outside investors and made money from advertising in the game, on YouTube and on Telegram. In June 2024 the outlet The Bell reported that Eduard Gurinovich, founder of CarPrice, Aleksandr Zelenshchikov and Aleksandr Pasechnik were involved in creating the game. According to the report, an email used to register a domain on the same day as the game's website belongs to Arenum Ltd, a Cyprus company whose shareholders include all three. This comes from a media report, not from a statement by the project. In August 2024 Nikita Anufriev, whom Lenta.ru described as a partner and marketing director, said he had left over a pay dispute. He alleged that Gurinovich had promised him 25% of revenue, equity or team tokens. In September 2024 Vedomosti reported that investors in Arenum claimed the game was built with Arenum's staff and resources. Gurinovich said the game was separate from Arenum.

In mid-2024 officials in Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan and Ukraine publicly warned against the game. On 18 July 2024 Anatoly Aksakov, who chairs a committee of the Russian State Duma, proposed banning it in Russia. The game's popularity also attracted fraud. In July 2024 Kaspersky reported that scammers were stealing Telegram accounts with false promises of cashing out in-game coins.

In September 2024, just before the airdrop, the team shared its plans with The Block. It said the second season would launch in the coming weeks and connect the Hamster Kombat metagame with third-party games. For November 2024 it planned a progressive web app for desktops and Apple and Android devices, and NFTs as in-game assets. It also said it planned to use ad revenue to buy back tokens from the market for regular distribution to players and for token burns. In late December 2024 the team announced plans for a layer-2 network on TON, which it said came from a vote in the Hamster DAO. In February 2025 it unveiled Hamster Network, a gaming-focused second-layer network described as a key pillar of the wider HamsterVerse, with a native wallet, an asset bridge and a decentralized exchange.