Are you looking forward to the X Empire airdrop? If so, then you’d better log into the Telegram tap-to-earn game, as the creators are about to purge the coins of inactive users.

The viral, Elon Musk-themed Telegram crypto game, formerly known as Musk Empire, has a token coming around the end of September or early October. In an announcement Thursday, the project confirmed that it will soon start burning (or eliminating) the in-game tokens of users who haven’t played in a while.

“On September 1, we'll be conducting our first in-game currency burn for users who haven't logged into the game for over 30 days,” the game’s official Twitter account posted. “This is our way of honoring our most loyal and active users by giving them more tokens!”

To be clear, the vast in-game coin totals in X Empire are currently off-chain; they're just a reward for players who tap the screen and invest in various improvements for their Musk-like avatar and his companies. But when the on-chain token drops, players will be rewarded for their coins and/or in-game activity.

Tap-to-earn game Notcoin, which set the mold for games like X Empire and Hamster Kombat, performed a similar purge of coins from inactive accounts before its airdrop—which went on to be part of the largest crypto gaming token launch of the year.

Notcoin co-creator Sasha Plotvinov told Decrypt's GG that this was done so “people who are not contributing their time” didn’t benefit from the airdrop. The developers of X Empire appear to have a similar motivation in mind as the token launch nears.

According to a Telegram update, some 30% of X Empire users may potentially face their tokens being burned as September begins. The game claimed some 20 million total players on August 18, and Telegram showed some 17 million monthly active players earlier this week, so millions of players are poised to potentially lose their in-game earnings.

This is good news for active and engaged players, however, as it is a clear sign that the project is gearing up for its airdrop. This comes amid the wider trend of Telegram tap-to-earn mini apps encouraging users to play by teasing future token rewards.

Most notably, this was done with Notcoin’s NOT which peaked at a market cap of $2.97 billion. Earlier this week Hamster Kombat, which has the largest Telegram channel in the world with over 52 million subscribers, set its token launch date for September 26.

Like both Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, X Empire will debut its token on The Open Network (TON), the Telegram-linked network that has gained substantial traction over the past several months. It has also, however, suffered two bouts of downtime over the last two days as the network suffers apparent growing pains.

All of this is happening amid Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov’s recent arrest in France as part of an ongoing investigation into the platform’s alleged role in facilitating criminal activities. The developers of various Telegram-based crypto games have shown solidarity in support of the free speech advocate.

Edited by Andrew Hayward