TON memecoins 2025-2026: what's left of the airdrop season

The 2024 tap-to-earn season will be remembered in the TON ecosystem as a moment of unprecedented reach: hundreds of millions of mini-app installs, simultaneous listings on top exchanges, and a steady stream of headlines in niche media. By May 2026 that wave is over, and it is possible to take stock — both quantitatively and qualitatively. This article documents what survived from each major token and the structural pattern behind the recurring story of launch, sell-off, silence.

TL;DR

• NOT is the only TON memecoin with an active community and visible product evolution (Not Games, Squad).
• DOGS has one of the widest holder bases in TON thanks to its Durov association, but near-zero product activity post-TGE.
• HMSTR is the cleanest case study in a one-season collapse: the team retained neither audience nor price nor narrative.
• CATI / Catizen is the only example of a successful transition from a single tap-game to a diversified mini-app platform.
• MEMHASH and the second tier — most clone-wave tokens are effectively dead or trading at noise-level volumes.

Map of TON memecoins 2024-2026: launches and peak states

To anchor the timeline, here are the key events of the season:

• NOT (Notcoin) — listed 16 May 2024 simultaneously on Binance, OKX, Bybit, and KuCoin. Peak FDV around $2.5B in June 2024.
• DOGS — listed 26 August 2024 across roughly the same exchange set, marketed as “Durov’s token.” Peak FDV above $2B in the first trading days.
• HMSTR (Hamster Kombat) — listed 26 September 2024 on Binance Launchpool and parallel venues. Peak market cap around $1B, followed by a near-linear decline.
• CATI (Catizen) — listed 20 September 2024 on Binance, Bybit, and OKX. Smaller in raw reach at launch, broader in product footprint.
• MEMHASH and similar — late 2024 and early-to-mid 2025, attempts to replicate the formula without a comparable distribution channel. Mostly second- or third-tier listings, sometimes DEX-only.

A common feature of the first wave: 80-100% of supply distributed through gameplay, with team and investor allocations either small or buried inside “community funds.” This is the model Notcoin established and the second wave attempted to copy.

NOT — what happened after the first viral drop

NOT remains the benchmark for what a tap memecoin lifecycle can look like with at least minimally competent post-TGE execution.

After the June 2024 peak the price corrected for several quarters, but the OpenBuilders team made a few decisions that distinguish NOT from the rest:

1. Not Games — a gaming hub hosting third-party mini-games where players can earn NOT-denominated vouchers. This turned the token from “a souvenir of the airdrop” into a working unit of a platform.
2. Squad seasons — team competitions with a distributed prize pool. This retained at least a thin slice of the original audience in a regular-activity loop.
3. NFT vouchers and integrations — a narrow but consistent stream of on-chain activity.

The holder base remains one of the broadest in TON by address count. The active base is now a fraction of a percent of the peak. In retention terms NOT is the best result of the season — but it is the best result against a very low average.

DOGS — the flagship of the second generation and what it left behind

DOGS was built around Pavel Durov’s personal brand: the original sticker sketch, the implied tie to Telegram itself, the “token from the messenger’s creator” narrative. That gave the project a one-of-a-kind asset — instant trust from millions of users.

In numbers, that converted into one of the widest holder bases in TON. From a distribution standpoint DOGS succeeded: the token sits in an enormous number of wallets, which alone supplies spot liquidity and steady volume.

From a product standpoint, things are quieter. No Not Games-equivalent, no second-act game mechanics, no obvious integration into Telegram infrastructure. The token has settled into being a pure social-coin: a meme with no utility, propped up by narrative and distribution breadth.

For a deeper dive, see the Dogs token retrospective 2026.

HMSTR / CATI / MEMHASH — short takes

HMSTR (Hamster Kombat). Launched in autumn 2024 to skeptical reception: the team stretched the time to TGE longer than competitors, and by the listing date the genre’s heat was already dissipating. Season 2 was announced, quietly scaled back, and effectively frozen. By 2026 HMSTR is the textbook example of a tap project that did not survive its first year. Price is near noise-level relative to the listing peak; liquidity is concentrated on one or two venues. Detailed treatment in Hamster Kombat: what remains after the hype.

CATI (Catizen). A unique case: the team built a mini-game platform from the start, not a single tap-game. After TGE Catizen kept shipping new titles, onboarding third-party games, and operating as a Telegram-native publisher. That has not prevented CATI as a token from declining — but it is the only example of preserved product logic after the distribution event. See Catizen and the second generation of mini-apps.

MEMHASH and peers. Late 2024 through all of 2025 was the era of clones: projects copying tap + airdrop + listing without a comparable distribution channel. Most landed second-tier listings, never reached top exchanges, and never built a holder base. By 2026 these tokens are either delisted or trading at daily volumes under a few thousand dollars — which, for practical purposes, means there is no market.

Structural pattern: why tap-to-earn → sell-off → silence

The recurring shape of the curve is not accidental. It has a structural explanation.

Supply side. Distributing 80-100% of supply through taps means that at TGE the market is hit by the widest, most non-native-to-crypto audience possible. The median recipient is a Telegram user who was never told what “hold” means. The “withdraw, sell, forget” path is the base case, not an anomaly.

Demand side. Spot buyers after TGE are either rebound speculators or case-by-case fundamentalists. Organic demand of the form “I want to own this token for a long time because I need it” rarely exists at listing — product utility is typically either absent or promised for later.

Liquidity dynamics. Within 30-90 days of TGE, trading volume falls by an order of magnitude. That compresses the book to a thin layer of orders, and any attempt to realize a large remaining allocation triggers cascade moves. The “down with volatility” curve is a natural consequence, not a team failure.

Holder-base retention. Addresses that received the token and did not sell in the first 30 days tend to keep holding — but they do not buy more. That creates the deceptive picture of “the base is there, the activity is not”: formally millions of holders, in practice only thousands of wallets trading on any given day.

What’s working in the second generation of drops

From the accumulated experience of 2025, a few formats have outperformed the tap-standard.

Smaller but more focused. Second- and third-tier drops in 2025 increasingly targeted narrow communities — DeFi users of a specific protocol, NFT holders, early-access program participants. Smaller audiences, but higher retention: a recipient who already understands a DEX is more likely to know why a token matters.

Utility-based drops. Airdrops tied to actual protocol use — staking, bridging, trading — produce a different curve. Recipients on average hold longer because they are already users of the product.

Multi-stage distributions. Instead of “one big TGE,” a series of smaller distributions against specific activity metrics. That stretches sell pressure and gives the team a window to ship utility before final distribution.

Caps and vesting on recipients. Some 2025 projects experimented with linear unlocks even for retail recipients. The effect is ambiguous (some users skip the drop entirely), but average retention is higher.

What this means for teams planning a token

The headline takeaway from 2024-2025: an airdrop does not build a community; it cashes one out. If a project does not have a working product before TGE, the distribution event will not create one after the fact.

A few practical implications for any team contemplating a token in 2026:

1. Do not confuse reach with retention. Thirty-five million mini-app installs is reach. If 0.5% of them are active six months later, that is the real product audience.
2. TGE is the peak of supply, not the peak of demand. Plan liquidity for the scenario “80% of recipients sell within 60 days,” not for ideal holder loyalty.
3. Utility must exist before the token. The most durable TON projects of the season are the ones with product pre-TGE: Catizen was already publishing games, Not Games launched alongside the token. Where there was no product before, none appeared after.
4. Smaller distribution, higher quality. A narrow, targeted drop bound to genuine activity holds retention better than a mass distribution.
5. Plan for the price to fall. This is not “failure,” it is the base case. Treasury, marketing, and roadmap should be sized for the price being below listing for at least 12 months.

Conclusion

The 2024 tap-to-earn season was a unique window: top exchanges’ appetite for TON, the novelty of Telegram mini-apps, and the broader market backdrop happened to align. By 2026 that window has closed. From the entire wave only a handful of projects are durable — those with product logic pre-TGE (Catizen) or teams that kept shipping post-TGE (Notcoin).

For everyone else from the TON memecoin first generation, one description fits: the token still exists, but the market around it does not. This is not unique to TON — the same thing happened to most memecoins on every other L1. It just happened faster and louder on TON, which makes the case study more useful.

The next airdrop cycle will arrive. Teams that took nothing from this season will repeat it exactly. The ones that learned will build the product before the token, not after.

Sources

• coingecko.com — historical price and market cap for NOT, DOGS, HMSTR, CATI.
• coinmarketcap.com — exchange volumes and venue distribution.
• tonscan.org — on-chain holder counts and distribution metrics.
• defillama.com/chain/TON — TVL and ecosystem activity on TON.