What Is DOGS and Is It a Scam? Reviews, Opinions, and DYOR
Telegram mini app DOGS claims to have amassed 1 million players in its first 24 hours of its existence. What is it? Are the creators of Notcoin and Blum involved in its development? And most importantly, is this another mini-game a scam?
What Is DOGS?
A new mini app has launched in Telegram, which is rapidly gaining momentum among its users. DOGS intends to calculate the number of years you have been using the messenger and distribute memecoins of the same name. The number of DOGS memecoins depends on the age of your Telegram account. Simple as that. No wonder, the game attracted a huge number of users in no time.
The official Telegram channel of DOGS says the memecoin launch is inspired by Pavel Durov's favorite mascot, a dog named Spotty.
Spotty has become the unofficial logo of the VK social network. Its image was drawn by Durov himself during a charity auction in support of orphanages. After that, Spotty became a favorite among VK users and was the first sticker character in the social network.
The creators of DOGS claim that Spotty represents the spirit of a dynamic community and is also the most native memecoin for Telegram.
DOGS Gameplay
At the time of writing this article, the author has tested the mini-app and concluded that there is no gameplay as such. The bot offers to count the amount of time a user is on Telegram and reward him for it:
The bot then checks and analyzes, and all the user has to do is scroll further:
Next, it reports how many years the user has been on the messenger:
And DOGS coins are awarded, which cannot be withdrawn yet. On the main page, you can also notice that additional coins are awarded if the user has a premium account, as well as if they have invited friends. Interestingly, some may not be distributed tokens if they don't have a username. And they don't care if your account is the most ancient.
There is also a separate tab "Leaderboard". As you can see, for a few days of its existence, some users have earned several million in-game coins. Mostly thanks to referrals.
And according to what math a certain number of coins is awarded, it is unknown.
The interface of the game is reminiscent of Blum and Notcoin. Perhaps, that's why the players thought that these teams are behind the project.
And that's where the charms of gameplay end. Perhaps, the creators will add something more interactive.
DOGS Reviews and Opinions
The main stream of discussions falls on various Telegram channels. In the posts of major channels that pay attention to DOGS, people are actively discussing whether the app is a scam, who is behind the project, and what its usefulness is.
Some people have doubts about the rapid growth of DOGS.
"Influencers are promoting it, that's why it became popular"
Others note that the bot does not correctly count the years of the account's existence. Users are also concerned about how the bot calculates a certain number of awarded coins.
"6 years. The bot is incorrectly calculating account years"
But the main problem with DOGS users see is not the uselessness of the mechanics, but the breach of data privacy. Some speculate that this is not just a scam, but a way to collect data.
"So Telegram gives this information to a mini-app that is on third party hosting?"
Still, the vast majority of users connected to the game, as evidenced by the fact that the game attracted 1 million users in the first day, and this figure increased to 3.5 million on the second day.
Community, Website, and Social Media Accounts
DOGS is a newborn project in Telegram. Of the official social media accounts, it has only a Telegram channel with about 2 million subscribers, at the time of writing this article.
The team shared a small description of their mini-app, emphasizing the intention to launch the DOGS memecoin. From the team's claims, the memecoin will launch on TON. It is claimed that mostly people from Notcoin and Blum have joined the game. The channel is being used to highlight the latest developments.
One would hope that the project will have more channels to interact with its community in the future, but for now:
DOGS Founders and Investors
It is unclear who is behind the project. But users are actively spreading a rumor that either the founders of Blum or Notcoin are involved in DOGS. Some believe that both teams have united in a new project. The grounds for the rumors are not only the similar interface design, but also the fact that Vladimir Smerkis and Sasha Plotvinov, the founders of Blum and Notcoin respectively, were the very first to join the bot. This was indicated by the Leaderboard table. Whether this is actually the case, we can only guess, as the Leaderboard has changed several times since then.
Another fact that Blum is behind the project is the separate messages of two co-founders of Blum: Vladimir Smerkis and Gleb Kostarev. They "paid attention" to DOGS and praised its mechanics. Smerkis even emphasized that he was amused to see DOGS ownership attributed to him. Kostarev was more brief. None of them have confirmed that they are the founders of DOGS, and the denial by Smerkis looks vague. Users even joked in the comments that Smerkis pretends throughout the post that he is not the founder of DOGS.
If the creators of Blum are really behind the project, then their latest posts are part of a PR effort to promote DOGS. And speaking of PR specifically, another reason for such a lightning-fast growth of an unknown mini-app that just appeared was not so much the "unique" mechanics, but the active advertising campaign of influencers.
But if we look from the other side, if we believe that the founders of Blum are not involved in the creation of DOGS, but are only in the same boat as influencers, then who let the DOGS out?
Could it be Notcoin? Right now, the team is busy actively developing their ecosystem, running two accelerators for mini-apps on TON. Supporting the NFT collection Lost Dogs, which is launching its WOOF memecoin. Just as DOGS was launching, Notcoin was actively promoting WOOF. If DOGS is part of Notcoin, wouldn't the team have started promoting it too?
Perhaps this statement is a bit of a stretch. But let us remember the words of Sasha Plotvinov, who said that mini-apps, including Notcoin, need usefulness for their long-term existence. And the Notcoin team started to change the course towards this usefulness. Let's be honest, DOGS doesn't have it. For now. Why would the founders of Notcoin then create something outside their new vision?
Unless the Blum and Notcoin teams are really behind DOGS, the real founders of the project are unknown to us. Should we trust a crypto project whose team we don't know?
Final Verdict
In the comments, people claim that DOGS is a scam, but they can't name any obvious signs indicating this. The project has just been launched, and it is too early to say anything. But they quite rightly express their concerns and point out the obvious flaws of the game. The vast majority are jumping on the DOGS wagon, though.
DOGS revolves on the concept of asking participants to find out how many years they've been on Telegram and get project tokens for doing so. It's already looking dubious. Distributing tokens, even if they don't exist yet, for nothing? Even games like Notcoin, Blum and Hamster Kombat encourage people to engage in some kind of activity to get in-game coins.
What the future plans are is unknown. If this project is indeed legitimate, then the limited concept of distributing tokens for the age of the account will not last long, and then the creators need to come up with something else. In this case, the game may soon have another activity that allows you to earn more in-game coins for completing various tasks. At the moment, additional tokens are given out for invited friends. It turns out that you can not gain more coins by using different accounts and bots. Or is it?
The app has been around for a few days at most. If you look at the Leaderboard, you may wonder how some accounts have a few million coins when the app is distributing a few thousand. Is it because those accounts have a lot of friends? Or a lot of empty accounts that they gave out their referral link to? Then such a quick achievement of a few million players becomes understandable. We don't claim that it's impossible to gain 1 million unique players in a day, after all, the Leaderboard is mostly populated by big influencers who could attract thousands of referrals.
The fundamental question is, is it worth paying attention to yet another mini-app that promises to distribute coins? Notcoin has become a successful precedent. Perhaps it will remain the only exception. We should talk about the success of the wave of tap-apps after at least one more mini-app officially starts trading its token.
