P2E gaming has been under scrutiny since the $620 million Ronin hack, but another type of game is gaining traction.
Find Satoshi Lab’s move-to-earn project STEPN earned $26 million in the first quarter. In a similar way to play-to-earn, move-to-earn rewards users in cryptocurrency for their steps.
“Our active users counted 100,000 by mid-March, and it has doubled since then,” said Shiti Manghani, the site’s chief business officer, during a recent interview.
In contrast to other P2E games that incentivize online gaming, STEPN is emerging as a game that promotes health and fitness. For every step users take, they can earn rewards with the non-fungible token (NFT).
STEPN’s strength is creating spillover effects. A good example is the STEPN 5K scheduled for the AthensDAO conference of Solana-based decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) in late May. According to Dean Pappas, the leader at the social networking project Grape who is helping to organize the conference, many Grape members already use STEPN.
“We’re excited to show people the in real life crypto applications, and STEPN is one of the best examples. STEPN succeeds in making the entire experience simple and seamless: Exercise for 10 minutes a day and earn,” he said in a Telegram message.
Users earn cryptocurrency for their steps in the app. In the last 30 days, the price of GST increased by 50%, according to CoinGecko. At press time, it was trading at $4.80.
As with the P2E giant Axie Infinity, getting the rewards requires ownership of NFT. The game’s mobile app allows users to exchange their SOL for NFT sneakers – and then they can start running.
On Solana, STEPN sees over $12 million in daily NFT trading volume, according to Manghani. A former CEO of the home-fitness company Breathe Happy said that the project is appealing to users since “you don’t have to buy a Peloton or £1,000 [$1,300] bike.”
A pair of NFT sneakers costs 11.5 SOL (around $1,100) at the time of writing. To run for money players will need to purchase pricey NFT.
The company plans to create a rental feature in which shoeless users can effectively lease each other’s sneakers and share the profits from running.
Grape director Papas said the feature is much needed.
“STEPN sneakers are getting really expensive,” he said.
A game called Genopets, in which players are rewarded in crypto for real-world actions, combines free-to-play and play-to-earn, since it costs nothing to create the NFTs necessary to play and earn tokens.
Genopets is still in beta mode and has rather modest statistics. CoinDesk’s Jay Chang told CoinDesk over Telegram that the platform is especially popular on Fridays, when new challenges entice 30,000 players.
These numbers pale in comparison to STEPN, implying that people are more than willing to pay for move-to-earn experiences.
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