It looks like STEPN perfectly tapped into the moment. While 2021 was the year of play-to-earn gaming when millions of lockdown citizens turned to NFT games to have a fun time and earn rewards, the year 2022 brought us a new move-to-earn trend. And it arrived very timely since two years of reduced physical activity due to Covid restrictions caused many of us to lose pre-pandemic physical shape. Well, with STEPN, you can work it back while collecting funny NFT sneakers and earning rewards in GST tokens.
To start earning with the STEPN platform, you should first buy NFT sneakers. These digital collectibles come in different tiers, shapes, and rarity, but there are four main types: walkers, joggers, runners, and trainers. The type of sneakers determines your earnings. However, there are other stats as well that affect your rewards.
Since STEPN runs on a Solana blockchain, the NFT sneakers are bought for SOL. The price starts at 10 SOL, which is about $700 at the time of writing. However, such a basic pair will allow you to get rewards only for ten minutes a day, so you’d probably need to upgrade them, reinvesting your already earned crypto. The game itself incentivizes users in the native Green Satoshi (GST) token, which currently trades just below $4.
Remember that STEPN doesn’t sell sneakers – you can only buy them from other users on the marketplace. The game launched with only 10,000 NFT shoes in circulation, so it’s a relatively scarce commodity. The new items can be minted through “breeding” two pairs of shoes that reach level 5 or higher in stats. Breeding STEPN sneakers is another option to earn crypto in the game economy besides staking and receiving tokens for physical activity.
Following the skyrocketing success of STEPN, other platforms launched their move-to-earn games. For instance, Dotmoovs allows you to monetize your sports skills by challenging other users, while Genopets is centered around training digital pets you can pit against other players. Still, STEPN remains an undisputed leader in the emerging field of move-to-earn gaming.
The VC fund Sequoia Capital, known for its backing of Google, Reddit, Tumblr, Apple, PayPal, and Zoom, invested $5m in STEPN in January 2022. That indicates that the startup’s performance is nearly impeccable, as Sequoia is known for its rigorous audit procedures. In April, STEPN announced its partnership with Asics, the Japanese sports equipment company. Together they launched co-branded NFT sneakers, hosted and minted on the BNB chain on Binance NFT Marketplace. The collection received participation from over 195,000 users, while the total trading volume reached $10m.
At the same time, the number of active users on the platform keeps rising. On May 3, STEPN tweeted that daily active users jumped to 533k, while weekly and monthly users increased to 1.1m and 2.3m, respectively.
“STEPN intends to be the best health and fitness app with the best incentives for its users to stay healthy and socialize. We are blazing a trail in this new unexplored world — an assurance that our users can hold on to is that the team is always going to work for the betterment of the users and create the first-of-its-kind platform that promises a Better You and a Better Planet!” company wrote.
