Can Stepn, the new hottest crypto project, go the distance?

Crypto fans love to embrace any new project that earns them money, but can Web3 actually convince people to get healthy?

While this idea may sound like another crypto fairy tale, it’s already here. A spinoff of the play-to-earn (P2E) model, the move-to-earn (M2E) concept allows players to get cash or rewards by simply letting a mobile app track their movements. Whether it’s actually sustainable is another question, but a growing number of companies are attempting what gyms fail at: getting people to embrace a healthy lifestyle.

Jerry Huang, co-founder of Australia-based M2E startup Stepn, estimated in January that new players could earn up to US$30 a day just by going for a walk. But as of June, the payouts, which are based on token prices, have fallen by almost 90%.

Stepn, which claims to have more than 800,000 daily active users and over 3 million monthly active users (MAU), is one of the biggest apps in the M2E space. The app, which was developed by Adelaide-based Find Satoshi Lab, says that it makes US$3 million to US$5 million in net profit from daily trading fees and earns up to US$100 million every month.

By comparison, popular P2E game Axie Infinity had almost 1.7 million MAU in May, making US$5.2 million from sales of non-fungible tokens alone, according to Cryptoslam.com.

Compared to gyms, M2E works because crypto-based workout apps offer more than just a financial incentive, according to Shiti Manghani, chief marketing officer of Stepn.

Get a return on your workout

“[Gyms] are supposed to be like the biggest charities in the world because people give them 2,000 pounds a year, and then we turn up just a few days a week,” Manghani tells Tech in Asia.

While the executive did not want to “go into figures,” she says that people who use Stepn “actually get something in return.” Manghani cites the “financial incentives, social incentives, gatherings and events, sense of belonging, [and] sense of community,” among others.

She added that while workout apps have become extremely popular over the last few years, blockchain-based apps offer users something they can’t find in Web2: digital ownership of their assets. This makes it easier for players to sell their assets when they’re finished with them, although recouping their costs is not guaranteed. Other advantages include the use of NFTs as game tokens and the ability to network.

According to Manghani, Stepn’s data, app retention figures, score testimonials, and Telegram testimonials, as well as the number of people who come to events, show that a third of users are new to crypto. This proves that people are being incentivized by the app.

That said, the real-world impact of Stepn is debatable. A recent study published on scientific journal Nature showed that while monetary incentives did increase people’s activity, they failed to have lasting results.

According to a synopsis of the report, 30 scientists from 15 universities in the US worked in small groups to develop 54 four-week digital programs aimed at motivating participants to exercise. The researchers found that the programs helped boost gym attendance by up to 27%, but once the incentives were dropped, so did most of the exercising.

“You lose most of the benefits when you stop offering the program – which suggests you should keep program going,” Katherine Milkman, one of the project’s researchers, told The New Scientist. Milkman is a professor at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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