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New play-to-earn meme coin PlayDoge ($PLAY) launched its ICO yesterday on May 28th and has raised close to $300k in its presale thus far.
The new meme coin is witnessing significant hype, already featuring in popular news publications and backed by famous crypto influencers.
However, new meme coins are often associated with scams and rug pulls. In this article, we review whether PlayDoge is legit or a scam, based on its smart-contract audit as well as other relevant information.
What is PlayDoge?
PlayDoge is a new play-to-earn crypto gaming project, with $PLAY as its native cryptocurrency. Its whitepaper claims that PlayDoge is aiming to be a “groundbreaking movement”, combining the iconic Doge meme with Tamagotchi-style virtual pet management.
Similar to Tamagotchi, players will have a digital Doge pet, operated via a Web3-enabled mobile phone application. They will be expected to keep their pet well-fed, trained and entertained.
Additionally, players can complete a series of classic mini-games – similar to the 8-bit 2D side scrollers – to earn free crypto in the form of $PLAY tokens. They will also earn XP points, which will reflect on the PlayDoge leaderboard.
Leaderboard toppers will receive bonus $PLAY rewards and other additional benefits.
Simply put, the project is banking on the popularity of the Doge meme and the nostalgia of Tamagotchi to attract a sizable community backing. $PLAY’s early presale figures highlight that this strategy appears to have worked so far.
Furthermore, PlayDoge has its own staking protocol, which is currently offering an APY of over 900%. However, this yield percentage is expected to decrease as an increasingly higher number of tokens are staked in the pool.
Investors can check the latest reward rate through the PlayDoge staking dashboard.
PlayDoge Token – Scam Or Legit?
Investors are often hesitant to invest in new meme coins and for good reasons. New tokens carry the risk of being scams, rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes.
However, PlayDoge appears to have taken steps to alleviate such concerns.
The PlayDoge smart contract has been audited by SolidProof.io. According to the audit report – which is available on the PlayDoge.io website – the $PLAY smart contract did not have any security risks or vulnerabilities.
Additionally, the meme coin also did not have centralization risks. For instance, the contract did not have any ownership privileges. This means that the owner cannot engage in malicious activities such as locking the contract, blacklisting wallets or minting new tokens.
More importantly, the ownership of the contract has been renounced, which means that the settings of the smart contract cannot be changed.
PlayDoge’s staking protocol also reduces the risk of pump-and-dump price action, considering that investors can earn significant passive income by holding and staking their $PLAY tokens.
PlayDoge also has an active, verified X and Telegram account, which is often a mark of a legitimate crypto project. More importantly, the X account became functional in May 2024 itself, meaning that it is not an old scam account masquerading as a new project.
Additionally, the meme coin has been featured in popular news publications including the Economic Times, Binance Square, TradingView and CoinTelegraph, which does offer some legitimacy to the project.
Similarly, popular crypto educational YouTube channel 99Bitcoins – with over 700k subscribers – mentioned the $PLAY in a positive light in their recent video.
Finally, PlayDoge has published its project tokenomics on its website. A significant allocation of the token supply has been reserved for the community. This includes 50% of the tokens for the ongoing presale, 6% for staking rewards and 20% for additional community rewards.
The remaining tokens have been allocated to exchange liquidity, marketing strategy and project funds. No tokens are set aside for the developer team or any private sale.
Therefore, with the information available thus far, PlayDoge appears to be a legitimate crypto project.
*Cryptonomist did not write the article or test the platform.
 launched its ICO yesterday on May 28th and has raised close to $300k in its presale thus far.){kind=link}