StepN

What Is Stepn? The 'Move-to-Earn' NFT App That Pays You Crypto to Exercise

Stepn takes that element—accruing points based on progress made via GPS—and adds onto it the newer play-to-earn model that was pioneered by crypto games like Axie Infinity, which reward players in crypto tokens. The result: A game that tracks users' IRL exercise and accrues points to them in the form of crypto.

Thus play-to-earn becomes a GPS-tracked "move-to-earn": Think of it like Fitbit meets Pokemon Go meets Axie Infinity.

What is Stepn ?

Built on Ethereum competitor Solana and created by app developer FindSatoshi Lab, Stepn is a smartphone app that lets users earn money by walking, jogging, or running for a narrowly delineated time period that refreshes every 24 hours.

How does Stepn work?

Two features are crucial in understanding how Stepn works. The first is the sneaker, which has a profound effect on how much money a player can earn and explains why some of these NFTs go for such astronomical sums.

As with a standard roleplaying game, where you might upgrade your armor to withstand certain attacks, in Stepn you upgrade your sneaker to maximize one or more of five different characteristics: Resilience, which slows down wear and tear (and diminishing returns); Luck, which increases the chance of random prizes during a session; Comfort, which increases the intake of another kind of token called GMT which relates to governance; and Efficiency, which increases the amount of GST made per "energy" spent.

That brings us to that other key feature: Energy. On Stepn, Energy is the unit of time allocated to a player for a move-to-earn session; one unit represents five minutes. Each player starts with a mere two energy units which replenish every 24 hours, meaning newbies are afforded only ten minutes to per day during which they can earn GST (the app will also make sure you're moving at the required speed relative to your sneaker type).