STEPN
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In the past few months, the most popular chain game in the GameFi market is "". The game is built on the Solana blockchain and is known as the world's first Move To Earn (earning while exercising) NFT game.
In January of this year, “STEPN” announced the completion of a $5 million seed round, led by Sequoia Capital India and Folius Ventures, and became famous for a while; recently, Binance Launchpad announced that the STEPN governance token GMT will be launched soon, igniting chain game players again enthusiasm.
Amid the acclaim, "STEPN" has also been questioned as "a replica of fun steps". However, a careful analysis of the economic models and gameplay of the two shows that there are essential differences.
The core model of "Qubu" is a Ponzi scheme that attracts people and pays dividends, and the token is continuously issued without consumption scenarios. Eventually, the price collapses and the project runs away. "STEPN" does not rely on the development of offline and new, develops a variety of sports gameplay, and designs a variety of token application scenarios, and finally achieves a dynamic balance between token casting and destruction.
"STEPN's goal is to promote healthier lifestyles for millions of people, bringing them into a Web 3.0 world, while making a positive contribution to carbon neutrality," STEPN said.
Is the innovative gameplay of "Move To Earn" really reliable? Can "STEPN", a new player in the chain game market, succeed like "Axie Infinity" and bring increment to the crypto market? Odaily Planet Daily experienced this game firsthand, and will analyze the economic model and development prospects of the project in depth below.
There are many more people who are bullish on STEPN like Scott Dunlap. In the past few months, many fund managers and crypto KOLs have turned into STEPN's "tap water", recommending this chain game to users inside and outside the circle. They either affirmed on social media, or wrote articles to introduce gameplay and analyze economic models:
“It’s such a simple design. People wear NFT sneakers and earn tokens by walking or running. The game has a full decentralized wallet built into the game with SWAP swaps, cross-chain conversion, and a comprehensive anti-cheat mechanism. , to prevent exploitation,” said Mike Dudas, a former Google Wallet executive and a partner at 6th man Ventures.
“STEPN is the first game of its kind, full of gamification and mobile earning mechanics. Soon, every runner will be earning tokens and collecting NFTs while tracking their progress. Crypto Incentives, NFT Collections, and the Real World This intersection of utilities gives us a vision for the fusion of the physical and digital worlds of the future," said Dan Patterson, Partner at Sfermion Fund.
STEPN is a Move To Earn (earning while exercising) NFT game based on the Solana public chain. It has previously won the fourth place in the Solana "Hackathon" chain game section and won the official Grant reward.
The Move To Earn game is a new form of GameFi where players can use their movement data as gamification input and then be rewarded with tokens and NFTs.
"As early as early August last year, STEPN came up with this idea. Although it was not the first project to propose the concept of M2E, STEPN was the fastest project to "realize" this idea, and it took only 120 days to complete. Product delivery. ” said the STEPN team.
According to the official website, in November last year, STEPN launched the beta version. During the beta phase, more than 1,000 players from 43 countries were invited to participate, achieving a weekly player retention rate of over 70%; the public beta version was launched in December last year, and less than one In January, STEPN surpassed Nike in Japanese app store downloads, detonating overseas forums. At present, STEPN has more than 30,000 daily active users and is known as the next "Axie Infinity".
（1）Diversified gameplay, jumping out of the homogeneous competition of chain games
The basic gameplay of STEPN is very simple. Players can participate in the game by equipping NFT sneakers in the game application; they can earn token income by running in the real world, and the income can be used to upgrade and repair sneakers to improve the efficiency of "earning coins". Can be sold directly.
In the app market, players can purchase NFT sneakers, which are of four different types: Walker (walker), Jogger (jogger), Runner (runner) and Trainer (trainer). Different types of shoes have certain restrictions on the speed of the player's movement. For example, the Walker's speed limit is 1-6 km/h. If it exceeds the corresponding range, the movement will not generate token income. Different types of shoes have different prices, with the Trainer being the highest as it has the widest speed limit of 1-20 km/h.
Each type of sneaker is further divided into 5 qualities: Common (common, gray), Uncommon (rare, green), Rare (rare, blue), Epic (epic, purple) and Legendary (legendary, orange) ). Shoes of different quality have different attributes and generate different token returns.
After purchasing NFT sneakers, players can officially participate in the game. Gameplay includes:
· Single-player mode: Players can click "Start" on the game page to start running and earn tokens; under the same conditions of NFT sneakers, the longer the exercise time, the more tokens they will get. Of course, the daily exercise time ("energy") has a certain limit. Once it is used up, it will stop earning tokens. The economic model will be highlighted later.
· Forging new shoes: Players can use two pairs of sneakers with level 5 to forge new shoes, each sneaker has 7 chances to forge new shoes; each time a shoe box is minted, players can directly invest It can be sold on the NFT market, or it can be opened on its own to continue upgrading and casting new shoes.
It is quite interesting that when new shoes are cast, there will be "mutations", and even two pairs of ordinary shoes can be cast into high-quality, other types of shoes. Some players said in the community that they used two pairs of Common shoes to cast a pair of Uncommon shoes and sold them directly, earning thousands of dollars.
· Rental sneakers: If you have a lot of sneakers, the shoes that reach level 10 can be rented out; during the rental process, no deposit is required, but the NFT cannot be transferred out of the account; STEPN will charge 8% in the final split The tax rate for lessee and lessor is fixed at 3/7. The rental game can cooperate with the future gold studio, and the revenue will be shared, which will bring a lot of income to NFT players.
（2）Some problems still need to be improved
"STEPN's game design is really good, but it's a bit "hand-intensive", sometimes walking without swinging your arms and putting your phone in your pocket, there will be some gaps in the data, resulting in a decrease in the amount of coins earned. ' Player A responded to the Odaily Planetary Daily.
In fact, the fundamental reason for the above problems is the design of the anti-cheating mechanism of STEPN games. In order to prevent players from falsifying the movement situation and thus obtaining improper benefits, STEPN uses the gravity sensor to obtain the player's movement situation. In different motion states, the "wavelength" of human motion is significantly different, thus proving the authenticity of the player's motion.
Of course, this mechanism may occasionally have "accidental injuries". For example, in the cold north, players only want to walk with their mobile phones in their pockets, and then the system will determine that they are in a non-motion state. This also requires the project party to further optimize the system algorithm to achieve a more accurate motion state.
In addition to the above problems, some players also reported that STEPN is often unable to record steps or inaccurate data in some underground passages or office buildings. STEPN said that these problems are mainly caused by unstable GPS signals, and there is no ready-made solution, but they have studied a new set of algorithms - in the latest beta test, with traditional running applications and GPS devices. Compared with , its GPS accuracy is improved by 70 times.
In the game, players need to transfer the SOL in the wallet address to the Spending Account in the game system, so that they can buy NFT sneakers and get game rewards in the game. However, sometimes the wallet transfer time period is long, and the two accounts are inconvenient to operate, and the built-in wallet transaction is occasionally not smooth; and the existing NFT market display is relatively chaotic, and historical records cannot be viewed. In response to these problems, the official announcement recently announced that in the next version upgrade, the consumer account will be merged with the wallet, and the NFT market will be upgraded to facilitate user transactions.
Finally, some players reported that the NFT floor price has risen from the initial 1-2 SOL to the current 8-10 SOL, and the token GST price has risen, resulting in an increase in the game cost of new players and an extended return period. Of course, this problem reflects the rising popularity of the game to a certain extent, which is also a common problem faced by all chain games in the rising period, and it is difficult to effectively solve it at present.
For those who love sports, the "Move To Earn" model has indeed brought a lot of income to this group. This also made STEPN an instant hit, quickly out of the circle, and became the new favorite of the chain game market.
However, STEPN's model is also interpreted by some users as "movement is mining", which is reminiscent of the popular game "Fun Bu" in the past few years. There are also some skeptics that STEPN is a replica of the fun step, and will inevitably collapse in the end. But is this really the case? Will STEPN repeat the same mistakes?
STEPN believes that the fundamental reason for the failure of projects such as Qubu and other similar projects is that the project party has not found a mechanism to balance the minting and destruction of tokens, and the emergence of GameFi just solves this problem. To this end, STEPN has designed a more complete economic model and adopted a dual currency model.
First, let’s analyze the economic model of Qubu. The gameplay is that players need to invest in scrolls and generate candy tokens through scrolls and activity; if new users are invited to buy scrolls, they can get higher activity and thus higher returns. The end result is that the game becomes a head-pulling relay race that defeats the original purpose of the sport. In addition, Qubu’s candy tokens continued to be issued, and there was no consumption scene. The price fell in a waterfall, and finally collapsed. In two years, the number of victims of Qubu has increased to 120 million, and Qubu has also been investigated by police in many places on suspicion of pyramid schemes, illegal fundraising, and financial fraud.
The most essential difference between STEPN mode and Funbu is that players do not need to pull people to go offline, nor do they issue rewards for inviting users; STEPN sets up multiple application scenarios through the dual-currency mode, increases the consumption of tokens, and constantly sets up "obstacles" Reduce output, so that additional issuance and consumption form a dynamic balance.
Specifically, there are two tokens in STEPN: GST and GMT. The functions and roles of the two are overlapped and different. The supply of GST is unlimited, mainly generated by players exercising in single-player mode or background mode; GMT is limited (6 billion pieces), after the sneakers reach the highest level (level 30), players will get .
In terms of output, STEPN has set a daily output limit. Players can earn a limited amount of GST and GMT per day. Initially, they can only earn a maximum of 5 GST per day to start the game, and then upgrade their sneakers by upgrading their sports shoes. After that, the daily limit of GST earned can be increased to 150; while the daily limit of GMT is 5.
In terms of usage scenarios, the main uses of GST and GMT are as follows:
Upgrade the shoe level. Players can upgrade their sneakers from Lv1 to Lv 28 by burning in-game GST, but the number of Tokens required to upgrade will increase exponentially with the level of sneakers; to upgrade from Lv28 to Lv30, in addition to burning GST , also needs to burn GMT. The consumption of tokens required for each stage of the upgrade is as follows:
2.Speed up the upgrade time. Each upgrade takes time. For example, it takes 30 hours to upgrade from level 29 to level 30. Some users can choose to accelerate the upgrade. At this time, GST is also required as a token, and the cost of each level of acceleration is different, showing an exponential level growth.
3.Sneaker repair. Every time you use NFT for running, the shoes will wear out (the full score is 100 points, and it will continue to decline). Once the wear degree is higher than 50%, the token generation efficiency will also drop sharply, which also means that players must constantly maintain the sneakers. GST is There is a strong rigid need to maintain the basic certificate of shoes.
4.Synthetic new shoes (Mint). Normal, green and blue shoes need to consume GST for Mint; while purple and orange shoes need to consume GMT, as the number of Mint increases, the number of tokens required also increases linearly. For example, two pairs of regular shoes with 0 Mint First Mint, cost 200 GST, which is currently around $700. The specific data are as follows:
In addition to the functions mentioned above, GST can also unlock gem slots (gems can add skill points to shoe attributes), as well as upgrade gems and wash sneakers.
GMT can be used for high-end in-game activities, such as rebranding sneakers and advanced upgrades; more critically, GMT can be used for game governance. In-game profits are voted in a DAO fashion, and GMT holders will decide how much of the game's profits will be paid to them as a reward for carbon neutrality. At the same time, players will also gain higher voting power by locking GMT in the profit pool.
Many people may compare GST and GMT in STEPN to SLP and AXS in "Axie Infinity", but the two are still very different.
SLP is uniformly minted, and there is no continuous destruction of tokens. It will only be destroyed in specific application scenarios (baby birth), which will cause the generation of tokens to be faster than consumption, resulting in inflation, and when game developers pass When more interventions in the game economy, it will irreversibly change the market's expectations for external interventions, causing external interventions to become increasingly useless. STEPN iterates on the basis of its predecessors, and designs various "token application scenarios" for paying players, which can allow "Krypton Gold" players to fully burn their tokens; at the same time, it also takes care of players who do not have NFT, and provides them with access to The game provides windows (rental system).
“Through careful analysis of Axie Infinity’s native token SLP economic model, we have seen where the challenges of game token design lie – if there is no cap on the supply of game tokens, how to balance supply and demand? From Keynes to Hayek, from We have researched everything from currency circulation to network effects.” The STEPN team said, “We found that the unified minting of game tokens must be managed through the unified destruction of game tokens to convert them into different forms of assets. This conversion It can be voluntary, mandatory or structured. Temporary minting of game tokens must be managed through the consumption of game tokens to create value beyond money.”
The final result is also as the team imagined. After GST goes online, the price runs smoothly, and there is no sharp rise or fall. Affected by market sentiment recently, some new users began to hoard GST, which caused the price to rise to $3.5 at one point.
To sum up, STEPN has set up a dual-token economic model: on the one hand, it creates a variety of scenarios for GST and GMT to improve ease of use; at the same time, it controls the output of GST and GMT to reduce selling pressure. It is difficult for players to simply seek rent through digging, selling, and asset returns are implicitly limited and diversified. This solves the previous problems of chain games to a certain extent, and helps prevent the game from falling into a death spiral in the bear market, which is precisely the biggest hidden danger faced by most chain games.
In 2021, "Axie Infinity" will be popular in Southeast Asia, expanding the "play while earning" P2E beyond the crypto community, allowing more people to learn about GameFi chain games. The emergence of "Stepn" also set off a wave of change in the chain game industry: a paradigm shift from P2E to M2E.
From the perspective of gameplay, chain games used to have high professional requirements for players, and players needed to learn related skills. Some gold-playing studios even specially trained players. STEPN focuses on the more refined "M2E" concept. It has a wide base of people and low operating thresholds. Players do not need a lot of operations. They only need to click to start on the home page and exercise to participate in the game.
For users outside the circle, the learning cost of blockchain is high. If the chain game adds a lot of cumbersome operations, it will further hinder traditional users from entering the blockchain world. From this point of view, STEPN is undoubtedly more friendly to users outside the circle.
In STEPN's view, "M2E" has a broad market space. A survey data mentioned on the project's official website shows that in 2017, in the United States alone, 55.9 million people will participate in running, and 111 million people will participate in walking fitness; in 2021 , the online fitness industry has achieved an annual growth rate of 33%, and if it can expand in this area, it means that M2E games can drive millions of people into the Web 3 market. So to further promote the concept, STEPN has previously sponsored two charity runs in Australia.
In addition, taking sports health as an entry point further enhances the social value of STEPN. In the previous chain games, players needed to stare at the screen for a long time and perform manual operations; STEPN liberates players' hands and eyes, and players only need to gain health and economic benefits through exercise.
"Unlike the Play to Earn games we've seen, the Move to Earn project creates a system that more closely connects the on-chain world with the real world. It's no longer a game of decentralized finance. It is no longer to motivate players to earn profits, and let them tediously click on pages with almost the same mechanism design, but to fully mobilize their enthusiasm for sports, provide them with passive benefits, and exercise their bodies at the same time. ” said the STEPN team.
More importantly, by adhering to the values of low carbon and health, STEPN has also made its own contribution to the global carbon neutrality cause.
According to the official plan, GMT holders will decide through a community referendum how STEPN allocates the proceeds of the project treasury to purchase Carbon Removal Credits on the chain to more openly and transparently support the global carbon neutral cause. In addition, users can voluntarily choose to donate their GST - these GST will be exchanged for USDC/fiat to purchase carbon neutral credits or destroyed.
Every game has its own life cycle, and it is very difficult to keep a game alive for a long time. In order to solve this dilemma, most games continue to introduce new and diversified gameplay in an attempt to retain old players. But successive version iterations have gradually pushed up the learning cost for new players.
STEPN has learned this lesson and insisted on the simplest sports gameplay, so that more users outside the circle can easily enter the world of chain games and participate in the wave of blockchain in a healthy way. At the same time, through the dual-token economic model, a balance is formed between token minting and consumption, which helps to avoid the game from falling into a death spiral in a bear market.
The concept of STEPN has also won the favor of capital. In January this year, STEPN announced the completion of a $5 million seed round, led by Sequoia Capital India and Folius Ventures, Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, 6th Man Ventures, Sfermion and other institutions, former ParaFi Capital partner Santiago Santos and Republic Asia Pacific partner Zhen Cao and others participated in the investment.
The new paradigm of M2E is changing the future of chain games.
"It's great to witness the origins of Move to Earn, and I think in 2022, more people will be obsessed with STEPN. "Recently, Adidas Vice President and CEO of Runtastic posted on social media. This is not the first time Scott Dunlap has praised STEPN, who has tweeted several times to promote the project, saying "STEPN will Become the dark horse of the industry in 2022".
The specific operation steps are as follows. Players first need to download the mobile application STEPN App on , and register STEPN account by email; after registration and login, players can create or import existing Solana wallets in the game, and transfer them from the trading platform. Enter SOL into the wallet address so that you can buy NFT sneakers in the game and get game rewards.
In addition to the above three ways to play, STEPN will also open a marathon mode, players can choose to participate, and finally get a lot of money according to the ranking. In addition, a background mode will be supported in the future, players can earn GST without opening the STEPN App, and the App background will directly obtain the number of steps from the health data of the player's mobile device.
