STEPN is a web3 move-to-earn NFT mobile app with a cross of Social-fi and Game-fi elements. The project supports both, Solana and Binance and works on IOS or Android where users can buy or rent NFT sneakers from the in-app marketplace to walk, jog, or run outdoors to earn tokens GMT and GST. STEPN also uses motion sensors and health data, GPS, and Machine learning to detect cheating. With this system it seeks to eliminate the use of a treadmill, cars, etc., that users may use to try and cheat. In only five months of development beginning in August 2021, the team successfully launched their open beta and later followed a successful IDO back in March of this year. The growth has been astonishing.
The Team:
The creators behind STEPN are Co-founders Jerry Huang and Yawn Rong and was established in August of 2021 by fintech studio, Find Satoshi Lab. Both founders carry impressive backgrounds, as Jerry Huang is the former founder of Falafel Games; he carries more than 10 years of experience in game development, marketing, and testing with credit of launching multiple downloadable games on the IOS app store. Yawn Rong is a blockchain entrepreneur who has served as an ambassador for Algorand since 2019 with credit of being co-founder of a few other projects including Crypto SA, an Australian crypto fund and pro-regulation auditor. Within less than a year, this project has since soared above others with a profit of $26 Million in the recent months of 2022(Q1).
The Vision:
STEPNs main motives are to encourage the world’s population to lead a healthier and more active lifestyle all while grasping the concept of web3, the next-gen World-Wide-Web built on blockchain technology. The project also highlights their footprint in Carbon Neutrality by a partnership with Nori, a blockchain-backed Carbon Removal Marketplace.
A monthly portion (10%-70%) of STEPN profits invests in Carbon Removal Credit this way. In addition to this, STEPN(GMT) reached its highest price around $4.11 on April 29th only a day after its listing on Coinbase and Gemini. From the tokens release back in March it has gone up more than 3,000% with more than 84,000 holders.
Tokens & Gameplay:
GMT and GST are the two tokens that reside within the STEPNs project. Both tokens were deployed on Solana while currently GMT is the only token deployed on Binance.
- Green Satoshi token (GST) is the game token of STEPN and has an unlimited supply with burning mechanics such as, shoe-minting, repair, leveling up sneakers, gem upgrades, and unlocking sockets.
Earning mechanisms include:
- Total energy
- Movement speed
- Sneaker (type, attribute, quality & level)
- Gem (type, level & inserted socket quality)
- NFT badges
- With a current circulating supply of 600 million and a total supply of 6 billion, the use case of Green Metaverse Token (GMT) seems infinite. GMT is the governance token giving users the opportunity to stake the token for voting rights in the ecosystem. Other use cases include upgrades through burning mechanisms such as, leveling up, minting sneaker qualities, upgrading gems, and redistribution of attribute points. For GMT, earning mechanics are only available after sneakers have reached level 30 and it is necessary to have energy to earn GMT.
To initiate gameplay, users will have to download and enter the in-app marketplace. To do so, two codes are required for access, the verification code and then the activation code. Users will receive a verification code via email while the activation code can be acquired in the discord community by other players. This part of the process is tedious and requires patience but is essential to monitor and stabilize growth of the project. Players then create a wallet in-app and will need to transfer funds into that wallet to either purchase or rent a pair of sneakers on the marketplace that fit the user’s fitness level. Once equipped with a pair of sneakers, energy begins to restore at a rate of 25% every 6 hours. Once a user has their sneakers and enough energy, the outdoor games can begin.
These games can include a simple solo mode for users where they simply earn tokens to walk or run and have a chance of gaining a mystery box containing gems. Users may also join weekly and monthly marathons to compete for rewards. There will also be daily, weekly, and monthly quests for rewards and upgrades. To make it more festive, STEPN will announce holiday quests as well where users can have the chance to receive special NFT sneaker airdrops. STEPN has done an incredible job to make this project fun, innovative, engaging, and eco-friendly.
For more information to understand the gaming mechanics and use cases of these tokens, here are some focused locations in the whitepaper covering gaming and tokenomics.
Tokenomics: https://whitepaper.stepn.com/tokenomics
Game-Fi systems: https://whitepaper.stepn.com/game-fi-systems
* Final Notes from Analyst
STEPN had undergone maintenance on April 26th and later stated all users need the most updated version for IOS and Android to use the platform. Later, there were also reports of difficulties with user’s wallet transactions based on issues with the platform’s nodes. This occurred because the existing nodes were unable to keep up with the exponential growth and high traffic on the platform. The team promptly responded by adding more nodes and a new “dynamic node system” to handle the speed of transactions and are continuing to restore missing assets from users’ wallets. Continued, after this devastating rollercoaster of events, STEPN reported a DDOS attack on the project which occurred sometime early Thursday, the 5th of this month. The team immediately acted and restored functionality. The Solana network had also been experiencing degraded performance and a major outage. Through these devastating malfunctions, STEPN has still stood strong, the team has never given up, and never left their community in the dark.
In conclusion, this new project had sadly undergone complications due to high growth in these ecosystems.
Being a new project with its extremely high user growth (in such a short amount of time), I still believe it’s a good project and as a community we should let it correct itself, as these miss-haps do often seem to occur in the crypto space. The team and community is still faithful to the project and I do not see that changing anytime soon.
Written By Jenny Mongan
Disclosures: Not investment advice. It should be assumed that Sarson Funds or its affiliated managers hold positions in all projects that are discussed. It is not possible to invest in any project directly through Sarson Funds, Inc. or its affiliated managers. Any investment product offered by managers affiliated with Sarson Funds should be assumed to be only available to Accredited Investors and subject to the individual terms and conditions of that offering including but not limited to those eligibility requirements associated with U.S. Securities Regulation D, section 506c. Talk with your financial advisor before making any investment decisions or have them contact Sarson Funds directly at info@sarsonfunds.com
