Catizen confronted criticism after making a $100,000 donation to PETA.
Catizen, a tap-based sport on Telegram, mentioned on Tuesday that it’s delaying its CATI token airdrop, initially slated for July, following backlash from its group.
On July 22, the gaming platform donated $100,000 to the animal rights non-profit group Individuals for the Moral Therapy of Animals (PETA).
“We have received feedback from the community regarding PETA’s past actions of euthanizing animals,” Pluto Studio, the company behind Catizen, said on Monday. “In response, we have confirmed with PETA that all donations from Catizen will be used exclusively for feeding, vaccination, rescue, and adoption assistance.”
The team has not specified a particular reason for the delay but cited issues such as the need to “safe main exchanges, guarantee adequate liquidity, present buying and selling choices, and decide the itemizing worth.”
Currently, there is no revised timeline for the airdrop, which is set to be launched on The Open Network (TON), the Layer 1 blockchain affiliated with Telegram. Pluto Studio plans to distribute 43% of the CATI supply via an airdrop to players.
Pluto Studio claims that Catizen has around 25 million players, with 1.4 million on-chain players, 19 million on-chain transactions, and 1.8 million Telegram Premium players.
Data from Dune Analytics indicates that the game’s deployment on Mantle, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, has generated 3.6 million on-chain transactions, with a daily average transaction count of 20,000. Daily transactions peaked at 181,887 on April 28.
On July 23, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov praised Catizen for introducing millions of users to Web3.
“Catizen launched hundreds of thousands of individuals to blockchain, as a result of it makes use of TON-based sensible contracts for its in-game rewards. Their crew additionally constructed instruments for different builders to simply launch their video games on Telegram and TON. Effectively achieved, Catizen crew,” Durov wrote.
In Catizen, players engage in simple puzzle games where they combine and upgrade virtual cats in a cat-themed café to earn tokens.
The delay of Catizen’s token launch comes as another major Telegram-based game, Hamster Kombat, is also suspending its airdrop plans. Initially planning to launch its token in July, Hamster Kombat’s builders shared on Monday that they’re nonetheless figuring out the main points to deploy the large-scale airdrop.
Telegram-based crypto video games started to realize traction earlier this 12 months, kickstarted by Notcoin, which attracted 35 million gamers and achieved a market capitalization of $1.6 billion inside simply two months after its launch in Could.
