NFT Sneakers and the Move-To-Earn Trend: Get Rewarded While Jogging

As the market for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) evolves, big brands are springing up with more and more ways to engage audiences. Developers are coming up with new game-changing mechanisms to keep customers interested, and one of them is the "NFT sneakers".

Why are NFT sneakers being made at all?

The NFT market, like the cryptocurrency market, is largely speculative. Investors buy tokens to resell them later at a higher price. However, this business model limits developers in project development: having released an NFT collection, at best, one will then have to write new smart contracts to identify token owners to move the community strictly from NFT to another cryptocurrency project or metaverse, as was the case with Bored Apes.

NFT sneakers, for the most part, are trying to solve this problem by forming a strong bond between the product and the customer. To do this, some projects produce trainers that can be "tried on" through augmented reality, while others create a whole symbiosis between cryptocurrencies, games, and NFT.

What projects are there?

In brief, there are quite a few projects and they differ in terms of their ‘reason for existing’: some projects are simply designed for investment, while others try to make money through game mechanics. For example, as part of a collaboration with Atari for a collection of virtual trainers, NFT studio RTFKT has released a plugin for Snapchat where users can try on virtual trainers.

Buyers liked the experiment so much, that the volume of RTFKT Creators exceeded the threshold of 1,000 ETH ($2.4 million). The sneakers by RTFKT currently sell at a floor price of 7.9 ETH ($19272.29).

STEPN is a different project on the market that, apart from fancy shoes, also includes Game-Fi and Social-Fi elements. STEPN is believed to be the very first project that brings the full-featured "Move-To-Earn" concept to life.

Move away Play-to-Earn, it's time for Move-to-Earn

If you are interested in how to potentially earn money from NFT, you should know that most NFT games work on a Play-to-Earn basis. That is, the player receives rewards in the form of game tokens for performing certain actions, or achieving results in the game.

The STEPN app uses a similar token-earning principle to apply to sports gamification and calls it Move-to-Earn. In other words, while in Play-to-Earn games you earn by winning virtual battles or races, in STEPN you earn tokens and NFT by going for a run in the real world.

The goal of the STEPN app is to motivate users to run, turning running not only into a sporting activity but also into a playful way to earn money for NFT.

The main STEPN token is called the Green Satoshi Token (GST). Tokens are paid to the user for each movement made while running or walking. GST can be spent in-game (for example, to upgrade your running shoes) or exchanged for USDC stablecoin. Earnings can then be converted to fiat currency (e.g. dollars) if desired.

The user only starts earning in-game tokens when they have their own virtual NFT trainers in the app and move around with their smartphone. Your activity while running or walking is tracked using the GPS on your mobile device. The app is designed so that you can't run all day long, earning tokens for it. You have a limited amount of energy to earn while you run/walk. When energy runs out, you have to wait for it to be restored to start earning GST tokens again.

Trainers are divided into 4 types depending on the level of the desired exertion:

• Walker (Walking, 1-6 km/h). Gives 4 GST per 1 unit of energy expended; • Jogger (Jogging, 4-10 km/h). Deliver 5 GST per energy expended; • Runner (fast jogger, 8-20 km/h). Provides 6 GST per energy expended; • Trainer (Suitable for any pace, 1-20 km/h). Gives between 4 and 6 GST per energy expenditure, depending on your pace;

How to make money on STEPN?

There are now 2 main ways to generate income with the app:

1. Earning directly from running or walking.

This is the main way of earning money. After all, one of the key objectives of the app is to motivate us to move more. Earlier in this article, we talked about how your earning level in this scenario is affected by many parameters, from the level and attributes of your trainers to the element of chance (STEPN has an integrated randomiser in its game mechanics).

2. Making money by creating (minting) new NFTs.

This method requires more investment, and is less predictable than the previous one, as the results of a "mint" depend largely on your luck. But, potentially, you can earn large sums here as well. The higher the risk, the higher the return. Again, a guaranteed result in this scenario is more difficult to predict. So, there is room for experimentation here.

The developers are actively introducing new gameplay mechanics to the app. There will probably be additional ways of earning money, such as selling trainers that fall out of loot boxes (Mystery Boxes), participating in various types of competitions between players, renting out NFTs, and staking GMT tokens.

In a Nutshell…

Whereas in most NFT games, you earn by sitting in a chair, the Move-To-Earn trend, apart from the financial incentive aspect also motivates you to exercise. Anyone who wants to be fit is shown a certain level of moderate physical activity per day. All in all, a 10-minute jog or walk could not only give you a source of extra income, but it will also benefit your health;

The Move-to-Earn is causing a lot of buzz in the cryptocurrency space, although the concept is still relatively new, and it's too early to tell if the Move-to-Earn concept will exist in the long term.

In recent years, technology has become more and more a part of the culture of healthy living, with runners and athletes incorporating ‘digitalized kicks’ into their fitness routine. The digital asset market has the potential to bring a new selling point to this phenomenon.

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