In brief “Move-to-earn” app Stepn lets users earn crypto for walking, jogging or running. Users must buy NFT sneakers that offer differing returns while exercising; some have sold for thousands of dollars.
On February 19, 2023, the lifestyle app Stepn airdropped its rarest NFT sneaker yet, the Genesis Sneaker. Stepn is the evolution of two concepts that have been gaining traction for several years now: the augmented reality (AR) game and play-to-earn gaming.
AR games typically feature a virtual world overlaid onto the real one. The concept properly took off in 2015 with Pokemon Go, which scattered virtual Pokemon across a real life map of the world and let users track and collect them via GPS.
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.
The rewards come in Stepn’s native cryptocurrency, the Green Satoshi Token or GST, and are credited to a wallet created in-game or imported externally. Players must start by buying an NFT sneaker to play the game, then can boost the amount of GST earned per session by upgrading their sneakers. The sneakers, which are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and are
