Why both Crypto OG and athletes use STEPN? Talk about this explosive Web3 lifestyle application
On February 7 this year, according to the download data of the App Store in Japan, the Web3 "Move to Earn" application STEPN officially surpassed Nike Training Club. The latter (NTC for short) is a popular application designed by Nike master fitness coaches combined with the training of world professional athletes after years of research, aiming to help practitioners improve the functions of various parts of the body.
This phenomenon shows that STEPN has already occupied a place in the field of traditional sports and fitness. Coincidentally, according to a set of official data, it also reflects the current popularity of STEPN. In just over two months since its launch, STEPN already has users from more than 180 countries, with a daily retention rate of 80%.
Not only has won the fans of many athletes and health enthusiasts, STEPN has also been favored by many Crypto OGs and has become a must-have application for their sports , and posted screenshots of their daily sports and profits on their personal social media one after another, triggering a series of word-of-mouth communication effects.
From left to right, many Crypto OG, sports enthusiasts, and STEPN users from Japan, South Korea, Russia and other countries posted screenshots of their experiences
Whether it is for encrypted users or ordinary users, it has been a long time since we have seen an application that has received so much attention and discussion and is popular all over the world, which makes us excited endlessly. In December last year, STEPN officially launched the public beta, and we participated as the first batch of users. And what did STEPN do right to achieve such success? Next, Rhythm BlockBeats will analyze the reasons behind it for everyone.
Project Introduction and Background
STEPN is a Web3 that combines GameFi and SocialFi elements The lifestyle application has attracted many users inside and outside the encryption circle through the "Move to Earn" model. In the coming months, the team will release more features, including social elements, NFT achievement system, NFT sneaker rental system, etc.
About the specific gameplay modes and tutorials of STEPN, two months ago, Rhythm BlockBeats wrote an article 《How to deliver food in the Web3 world? Use STEPN to "Move to Earn"》< For a detailed introduction of /a>, readers can click on the link to view it.
As for the team, STEPN was founded by Find Satoshi Lab. The two founders, Yawn and Jerry, met in Australia and both have years of continuous successful entrepreneurial experience. Among them, Jerry has started his business in game development since 2008, and has a deep understanding of the game industry. The style of the team is known for its high efficiency and vigorous action. From the establishment of the STEPN project to the present, after about half a year, a mature application integrating Wallet, Swap, and Marketplace has been delivered to users.
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On the underlying architecture , Compared with the high gas and slow speed that Ethereum has been criticized for a long time, STEPN runs on the Solana network, which will be more friendly to the user's on-chain experience. It is worth mentioning that in Solana's "Ignition Hackathon", STEPN also won the fourth place, and shortly after the open beta, it became the top three game applications in Solana's market value.
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At the same time in technology On the other hand, STEPN also has certain advantages. It has designed an anti-cheating system that uses GPS tracking, motion sensors and machine learning for data simulation to prevent players from cheating.
Anti-cheating is divided into 5 levels:
1) Use GPS to determine whether the user is moving outdoors;
2) Use the motion sensor in the mobile phone to determine whether the motion matches the GPS data;
3) Use the artificial intelligence on the server side to determine whether the motion data is fake, such as whether it is tied to a dog, etc.;
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4) Use more biometric data to prove it through wearable devices;
5) Add supervision functions to social functions, and rewards for reporting cheating.
At present, the first three anti-cheating judgments have been realized, and the latter two will be gradually delivered in the near future.
In terms of financing, STEPN disclosed last month that it completed a $5 million seed round of financing led by Sequoia and Folius Ventures, including Solana Ventures, Alameda Research , Spark Digital Capital, 6th Man Ventures, Sfermion and many other well-known institutions participated in the investment, while individual investors included former ParaFi Capital partner Santiago Santos and Republic Asia Pacific partner Zhen Cao, etc.
In terms of project progress, after half a year of steady progress, STEPN's long-standing energy has recently begun to be ignited. Binance announced that the STEPN governance token (GMT) will be listed on Binance Launchpad as the 28th project. For a while, community runners were running around telling each other, as if the NFT shoes in the app had also stepped out of the "devil's pace" and became a symbol of fashion that everyone considered.
In terms of business cooperation, STEPN may start cooperation with the well-known sports brand Adidas in the near future, such as releasing joint physical running shoes. After being recognized by the encryption circle, STEPN has also conquered many traditional sports enthusiasts, and Scott Dunlap, vice president of Adidas Group and head of mobile business, is one of the loyal users. Thumbs up for this app.
Web3 era Lifestyle application
STEPN is a lifestyle application defined as the Web3 era, which combines real-world scenarios with NFT games based on encrypted asset ownership , which is a good combination of gameplay and sociality. In addition, through the "Move to Earn" model, STEPN has fully mobilized the user's enthusiasm for sports, providing them with passive income while also exercising their bodies.
Nowadays, whether it is Crypto OG or athletes, when they want to run, the first thing they think of is neither to open Keep, nor to run circle, but STEPN, This is really interesting. STEPN began to create a recognized new way of movement, and derived a new scene recognition in the hearts of users, which may lead another trend paradigm in Web3 like CryptoPunks and Boring Apes to NFT.
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So, for, for What are the specific aspects of the gameplay and sociality of STEPN?
Gameplay
For "gameplay", Yawn, the co-founder of STEPN, once Multicoin Capital Partner Mable's 《Wu Shi It was explained in the podcast of One Talk. Yawn said that when he entered the encryption field to start a business, he found that it was too late, so he chose Move 2 Earn, a relatively blue ocean track, and walking or running is basically one of the biggest consensuses among people from different backgrounds. In addition, they hope to make a product with rich "gameplay", and it may not be a game. The game may not be a very good direction, but the "gameplay" is worth investing in.
The gameplay of STEPN mainly comes from two aspects: one is its game mechanism design, in which the NFT assets are designed with multiple attributes, plus Various gameplay modes such as casting new shoes and renting NFT shoes greatly enrich the fun of the game.
On the other hand, compared with general GameFi projects, STEPN also has a stronger realistic scene drive. Because achievements in real life are generally difficult to achieve, once achieved, it will bring great attraction to users and build stronger stickiness. For example, STEPN allows users to develop the habit of exercising every day in real-life scenarios through sustainable economic incentives.
In addition, STEPN is also very friendly to users outside the encryption circle. As long as users who have used the application to record their sports, after contacting STEPN, they will not Will feel too strange, and willing to try to enter the world of Web3.
Sociality
STEPN aims to lead the way of life in the Web3 era, in order to achieve this It is not enough to spread the word within the crypto community, it needs to gain more attention from millions of public. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate a social soil in STEPN, and through the social network effect, it will continue to fission, so as to reach more users.
At the same time, STEPN also naturally includes social elements. The rarity of NFT shoes a user owns, whether the shoes look good, how high their level is, and how many Tokens they get every day during operation, these can be used as social capital to share with friends. Before STEPN's internal social system is online, there are currently many users who share their sports and profitable screenshots on other platforms for interactive communication.
As far as the entire internal system of STEPN is concerned, it has integrated multiple functions including Wallet, Swap, and Marketplace, which is the daily life of GameFi players. The experience provides a complete closed loop, thus locking in more traffic of encrypted users and improving the retention rate of its users.
Out of blue, born in GameFi games
At the beginning, STEPN was just a " The GameFi game in the "Move to Earn" mode was introduced to everyone, but now, instead of being criticized by GameFi users, it has been unanimously sought after by the first batch of players. As can be seen from STEPN’s update log, its high-frequency iterations and rapid growth are also amazing. Basically, there will be two small upgrades every week, and a major update every two weeks.
The latest version of STEPN, once released in the community, has triggered extensive discussions
Compared with other GameFi games, what are the differences between STEPN and why is it recognized by many users?
In 2021, in addition to NFT in the encryption field, when it comes to GameFi, many players will be excited. In the wave of Pay to Earn last fall, "GameFi Autumn", which is comparable to the "DeFi Summer" that detonated the bull market in 2020, was born. This is a paradigm shift in game types.
Among them, GameFi's leading project Axie Infinity is on par with traditional video game giants in terms of market value. However, after several months of prosperity, a large number of homogeneous GameFi projects have appeared on the market, mainly attracting players to enter the market through high ROI (return on investment). With the collapse of some projects, the entire track began to suffer, and even these blockchain games were ridiculed by players as short-lived "mining games". At this time, practitioners in the GameFi field are gradually caught in a dilemma.
Because the business model of GameFi games may be just the opposite of traditional games, which often need to grow at an exponential rate to acquire a large number of users to occupy the market first, and then start as soon as possible profit. And in the fast-growing GameFi field, if there is no explosive ROI, players will not bother to play in the first place.
However, the method of attracting players through monetary incentives has limited effects, and it will be counterproductive. A game will not always maintain such a high ROI, but there will always be a game with a higher ROI, which leads GameFi players to have a narrow view of ROI, and in the "mines" of each game. migration" instead of enjoying the game. And when "play" becomes "work", it will also damage the player's health.
And STEPN found the crux of the problem. They figured that if a GameFi project garnered too much attention before it launched, it could do more harm than good. If you grow too fast at the beginning, the pressure on the game's economic management, community management, and player expectation management will skyrocket. When a GameFi project already exceeds high expectations and falls short of the crowd, the community it builds is in jeopardy.
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Therefore Monetary gain as an incentive to improve player retention short-term solutions is superficial and ineffective, and STEPN is starting to gradually break this dilemma that GameFi games face today.
It does not need to be made into a game like a mining game or a fast-moving consumer product. On the contrary, what STEPN needs to deliver to users is a Web3 application that can earn money, entertain, and socialize in the next few years. To achieve this, it will also rely on unique product design and continuous focus on community building and governance.
Product design and economic mechanism
In terms of product design, STEPN shows enough differences sex. Compared with GameFi games, it is not only driven by economic incentives, players’ motivation to run is also driven by sports and health needs; compared with ordinary sports applications, in addition to running, you can also Move to Earn, getting rid of the boring experience .
In addition, the interesting point of STEPN lies in its gradual use mechanism and internal economic design. The former represents the "should" of getting started. Users know that it is used for sports and running, and they can get started easily without understanding too many complicated rules; while the latter is the key driving factor for users to use the product. It means whether you can continue to run.
In terms of economic mechanism, STEPN adopts a dual Token model, Game Token (GST) and Governance Token (GMT). GST is currently the only native Token available in the game. It is similar to SLP in Axie Infinity. It is mainly used for various in-game activities, such as the user's Move to Earn reward, as well as casting new shoes, upgrading shoes, accelerating upgrades, and maintenance Consumption of shoes and upgrade gems etc., its supply is infinite.
After two After many months of continuous experience, Rhythm BlockBeats observed that since the public beta, the prices of NFT shoes and GST have been rising steadily, and there has been no sharp rise or fall, and this is also due to the economic design of the balance between supply and demand in the game. After entering the market, new users first need to buy a pair of NFT shoes. The GST rewards generated after daily exercise will basically be used to upgrade shoes and repairs. This will drive some users to buy GST from Swap, bringing Come the deflation of the latter.
And when the user holds two pairs of NFT shoes and both are upgraded to level 5, they can cast new shoes, which will also consume a large amount of money GST continues to bring deflation. In the early days of the game, although some users would sell the newly minted shoes, as new users bought when they entered the market, it did not cause selling pressure on the NFT market.
Maybe in the future, it will be close to a critical value, that is, there is an upper limit for the players that STEPN can attract, and no new users will enter the market to buy NFT shoes , with the output of shoes, its price will also usher in a callback and continue to weaken after inflation. In this regard, the project party set up a limit mechanism, each pair of NFT shoes can only be cast 7 times when producing new shoes, in order to effectively alleviate inflation.
In addition, when the NFT shoes held by most users in the venue close to the critical value are upgraded to the full level 30, and the casting times are used up, the players will The GST rewards obtained by Move to Earn will gradually form selling pressure and bring about inflation. However, this critical value is an ideal assumption. STEPN, which is positioned as a Web3 lifestyle application and integrates elements such as GameFi, SocialFi, and sports, has a huge room for imagination as to how many users it can attract.
At the same time, another NFT asset—Gems (gem) is designed in STEPN, which will bring corresponding benefits to NFT shoes; and NFTs that will be launched in the future In the shoe rental system, some users will also enter the venue in the form of renting shoes. In general, STEPN has a variety of gameplay. The output and consumption of internal encrypted assets are mutually restricted. It is difficult for players to destroy the internal economic balance through simple mining and selling.
, the GMT of Binance Launchpad will be launched soon, and the total amount is set to 6 billion. After holding it, users will have certain voting rights to determine the profit distribution of the game; at the same time, through pledge, the weight of voting rights will be increased. In addition, GMT holders will also be able to carry out some higher-end activities in the game, such as sneaker renaming and advanced upgrades. After reaching level 28, users need to consume GMT to continue upgrading NFT shoes, and after reaching level 30, users will be able to earn GMT rewards by moving to Earn.
Focus on community building and DAO governance
STEPN has publicly stated that once a game After players get started, they gradually get on the right track, and the project party should focus more on community building. Because for an application built on a decentralized network, a strong community is integral to its long-term health and will be the foundation of good governance.
As the community grows, it becomes more diverse and the faster a project innovates. This is especially evident in Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have benefited a lot from community contributions related to some technical iterations and initiatives.
The success of STEPN is undoubtedly not only inseparable from the team's efficient implementation of the roadmap, but also includes its firm choice to always stand with users, Continuously improve user experience. In the STEPN community, after receiving player experience feedback, the official will actively make a series of responses, and exchange some gameplay and mechanism designs.
At present, in the STEPN community, in addition to a group of loyal users, there are also many STEPN builders. They spontaneously share their experience and insights about STEPN in the form of text, podcasts, videos, etc., and these seed users will also have an immeasurable impact on attracting more players to STEPN.
In addition, ST EPN DAO governance will also be adopted. Next, the holders of the governance token GMT can vote through DAO to determine the profit distribution of the game. And this will further enhance the cohesion of the STEPN community, and will stimulate the enthusiasm of the participants to a greater extent. Everyone will be more willing to give full play to their personal advantages, thus bringing about a powerful synergy.
Looking vertically at a single individual, human beings are born with a yearning for freedom and democracy. The world is progressing with each passing day, and the decentralized governance model combined with STEPN and DAO will also be a paradigm shift in the organizational form of traditional fields, which is extremely transformative.
Summary
In the field of encryption, STEPN has found an undiscovered The application scene has created a recognized new sports method, which has generated a strong scene identity in the hearts of users and has been widely supported by them. And this also provides some reference and thinking for other on-chain applications to break through the bear market: Whether it is GameFi, SocialFi, or applications that allow more people to enter the encrypted world, it may also be necessary to find more undiscovered on-chain applications. Application scenarios, and proposed solutions to real-world problems.
In addition, with global warming and the impact of the new crown epidemic, people's awareness of low-carbon lifestyles and personal health has been continuously improved. As a lifestyle application that integrates multiple elements such as GameFi, SocialFi and sports, STEPN's vision of bringing users into the Web3 world and making positive contributions to carbon neutrality is worth looking forward to.
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