2 months running with NFT Fitness App Stepn

by James · July 17, 2022

Back in April, all the digens on Crypto Twitter boasted of the money they earned by going out and running and using “move-to-earn” Stepn. The app rewards you with the GST (Green Satoshi) token for walking, jogging or running outdoors. Some Web3 people received more than $ 20 in GST per race.

But that was in April, when GST was close to $ 9.

By May 10, when I started using the app (late to the party), it was down to $ 3.50. I earned 0.65 GST for my first 2.5-mile run, or $ 2.27. Still, hey: free money (well, “money”) for an activity I was already planning to do. And then GST continued to fall in the midst of the broader cryptocurrency. At my third race at Stepn, May 1st, the GST was 97 cents. Today it is at 8 cents. (Can this thing go to zero? Absolutely.)

To date, in eight races at Stepn at 1.6 to 3.6 miles, I have earned 31 GST, currently worth … $ 2.17.

And I have not even mentioned the catch. To use Stepn, you must start by buying a NFT sneaker, parked at Solana and priced at SOL. When I bought mine towards the end of April, SOL flew high, close to $ 100, so I shudder to share what I used on my sneaker: more than $ 400. Market research!

Those who were out early with Stepn talked about how quickly they expected to earn back the money they spent on the NFT sneaker and start making money. With the current crypto prices, I will earn back what I spent in 363 months, or about 30 years. The app is also constantly trying to get you to spend more money by “repairing” your sneaker or “upgrading” by buying another one.

If tokenomics is not enough of a turnoff (it certainly gives Ponzi accusations), UX is far worse than leading Web2 training apps like Nike Running Club and Strava. (When I drive now, I use all three apps.) Stepn currently has no social features (but CMO Shiti Maghani told us on the GM podcast in June that they are coming), and will only show calculations in kilometers. Like Axie Infinity, the ancestor of the promising-but-problematic “play-for-earn” model, these products ask users to shop before they can even see if they like the app or the game.

All that being said, I think Stepn, which gathered 3 million users in just six months, is a very cool proof of concept for NFTs.

As I have written in previous columns, I think NFTs are here to stay and will develop far beyond the wealth flexibility of PFPs like Bored Apes. I imagine that we have not yet seen the most interesting uses of the technology – whether it is for ticket sales (as Mark Cuban thinks), games, the meta-verse or something else.

I love the idea of an NFT as the entrance to a club. At NFT NYC last month, several parties only allowed people who owned a particular NFT, and they used apps like Tokenproof to check. I think Stepn’s mistake was to price the entrance ticket to the sneaker too high; the latest trend is now shifting towards more affordable NFTs.

I also think the element of society is central. Despite Stepn’s design flaws, I feel that there are people who actively use it the most because they want to support this type of project. I’m in two different Stepn Telegram groups, and they buzz all day, every day.

So I look at Stepn’s meaning as symbolic. We are at the very beginning of the token economy, and first-time attempts like Axie Infinity and Stepn should be praised for trying to figure this out, although someone else is likely to come along next time and do better.

That’s why both Axie and Stepn are making meaningful adjustments to their products (Axie created free startup NFTs for new players, Stepn will buy back and burn the GMT control token and add Ethereum support) to board the next wave of crypto-curious.