Pluto Studios the developers of Telegram-based web3 game Catizen are facing backlash after reducing the community’s allocation of $CATI token ahead of its upcoming airdrop on The Open Network.
The $CATI airdrop was initially planned for mid-July, but following subsequent delays, the Catizen community were doubtful as to whether an airdrop was ever going to materialise.
In late August, Catizen partnered with Hong Kong-based digital asset firm HashKey Group to help bring about the airdrop for the 26 million-strong Catizen community.
The airdrop has now been scheduled for September 20th, but despite this, many Catizen players are frustrated. This is because the token allocation has fallen short of what they were expecting, with only 15% of the total $CATI supply being used in the initial airdrop.
What is Catizen?
Catizen is a swipe-to-earn game, a variation on the popular tap-to-earn genre, available to play on mobile via Telegram – akin to other popular Telegram titles like Pixeltap and Hamster Kombat.
Rather than earning coins through taps, players are tasked with managing a cat shelter where they can merge cats together to upgrade their levels and earn an increasing amount of coins.
Unlike others, Catizen developers Pluto Studios have promised to donate 1% of the game’s revenue to an array of cat charities.
Why is the Catizen community frustrated?
Last weekend Pluto Studios told players how many tokens they were set to receive from the airdrop on September 20th. This caused frustration amongst the Catizen community and started the hashtag “#catizenscam” trending on X since many players felt they deserved more tokens for the amount of time they spent on Catizen.
The $CATI token isn’t live yet, nor does anyone know how much each token will be worth, but Catizen players believe they have been misled by Pluto Studios and their previous comments that 43% of the $CATI supply would be given to the community.
In reality, only 30% of 1 billion $CATI tokens (305 million tokens) will be circulating at launch and just 15% (150 million tokens) will be used for the initial airdrop, with more to be shared as rewards for quarterly in-game seasons.
Aside from token distribution, the Catizen community also felt aggrieved by Pluto Studio’s failure to communicate their changes to the airdrop allocation criteria. Pluto Studios initially stated that vKitty profit speed would be the primary factor that determines a player’s airdrop allocation.
The day after informing each player of their airdrop allocation amount, Pluto Studios announced that due concerns over the exploitability of vKitty profit speed, they had changed the airdrop allocation criteria to align with “factors that more accurately reflect genuine player activities, such as: on-chain interactions, task completions, and fish coin purchases and consumption.”
This caused further upset because some of the new criteria require players to spend real money.
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