Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has thrown his weight behind Hamster Kombat, praising the crypto game that’s taking over his dominant messaging platform as “the fastest-growing digital service in the world.” 

“A new era is arriving, and we are witnessing its arrival in real time,” Durov said on Thursday in his Telegram channel, describing Hamster Kombat as the current leader of a “new wave” of mini apps that he believes are poised to bring blockchain tech to the masses. 

Mini apps like Hamster Kombat can be played by any of Telegram’s 900 million-plus users without leaving the messaging app. Many of them, including Hamster Kombat and its spiritual predecessor Notcoin, have integrated with The Open Network, Telegram’s blockchain network of choice, to lure players with promises of crypto rewards in the form of token airdrops. 

While Hamster Kombat has claimed to boast a massive and rapidly expanding userbase for weeks, Durov confirmed those assertions for the first time on Thursday—saying the mini-app has reached a staggering 239 million signups within a span of just three months.

Durov further stated that, on average, the game is gaining four to five million new players on a daily basis, making it by his estimate the fastest-growing digital service on Earth right now.

Hamster Kombat is undoubtedly making an impact across the globe. Last week, Iranian government officials condemned the game’s popularity in their country as an attempt by the West to conduct a “soft war” ahead of its presidential election, and seduce Iranians with “the dream of becoming rich overnight and gaining wealth without effort.”

The game’s hotly anticipated airdrop is tentatively scheduled to land at some point this month. Hamster Kombat is the biggest of a growing pile of rising Telegram crypto games, with other prominent games including Yescoin, TapSwap, Catizen, PixelTap, and W-Coin.

Edited by Andrew Hayward