Guest: STEPN founder Yawn Rong
Move to earn game
**Now 700K DAUs, will break 1M DAUs in June
Yawn is based in Australia
Lifestyle app with game + social elements
Walking or running to earn tokens
Download Android or iOS app, setup wallet (biggest user hurdle), deposit crypto (currently support SOL or BNB)
Buy sneakers to start earning
Sneakers have different qualities, types, and attributes
Want it to be like RPG, level up your sneakers
Get healthier body thru the process
Entry price now is $600-800 for floor price common sneaker
Considered free to play, but having no barrier to entry has its own troubles
**Rather have higher barrier to entry, then reduce it (eg, thru a rental market)
Revenue comes from buying / minting NFT sneakers
Users refer friends
Move to earn / health & fitness is a broader audience than play to earn / current NFT gaming
Thus can grow for a very long time
**Need external energy to inject into system – like the sun providing energy to Earth
Saw Bored Apes’ success – importance of social value – people willing to show off, community
Partner with sneaker brands
Two tokens
GST – in-game token, infinite supply – minting to create new sneakers, onboard new users
GMT – governance, platform token for future things they’ll build, finite supply
Trying to discourage speculation – people hoarding GST to pump price
Implementing dynamic pricing for GST to reduce speculation, because retail users get burned, and don’t want sneaker mint costs to be too high
Started as gameFi – but saw that it’s speculative, death spiral – so pivoted away
**Lifestyle app has more social element – want a vibrant running community
Doing 5-10 offline events in Japan, Australia, Spain, US
Web3 wallet interaction is weak, but bringing people together offline is powerful
Then they’re willing to pay for social features in-app, impress friends & community
Now they’re making money
As app grows, they’ll make less – but they’ll have exercise habit, and have community / social connections
People new to crypto will be impressed with earning $10-50/day
Today that money is provided by STEPN, but in future more and more of the earnings will be provided by ecosystem partners (sneaker brands, health & lifestyle brands)
FTX auction – Taiwan buyer bot sneaker for 2500 SOL – donated to charity
**Sneaker is an advertising billboard
Can make celebrity sneakers, branded sneakers
**Use sneaker as social identity
Will release Panda Skin sneaker design
Will work like NFT PFP images (profile photos)
Most gamefi having trouble bootstrapping new users – because it’s still limited to just crypto natives
Games are difficult because you must create your own narrative and world
Axie design is difficult to change, lots of dependencies
Focused on product – hands-on with all bugs, user feedback, iterate quickly
**Simple lightweight frontend to move fast, focus on robust backend
Product & community orientation
Spent a lot of time to refine ideas, cut clutter, focus on system design — haven’t made significant changes since launch
Have experienced game producers on team
Still building according to their roadmap – have lots of modules they plan to add – new badge system, additional items
“Walk for an hour, make $500” – very simple message, don’t want that to change
Moat is user-based
For new app, who’s paying that “earn” part of play to earn? It’s from other users. So you need users who want to hold the token, want to purchase tokens
Initial need is financial returns, but will stay for the community
How you kick off the “earn” is very important, initial missteps can cause a lot of problems
**Strongest advocates for STEPN are those who never exercised before – see the changes to body, energy, diet
GPS track to prevent just using a treadmill
Temporarily allow multiple phones
But anti-cheating is very important – otherwise hackers / bots can print money
Working continuously to improve
Chose walking and running because it’s the most broad accessible exercise
Even bicycle requires having access to a bike
Biggest milestone is getting 10s of millions of web2 users to web3, using STEPN app + STEPN wallet
STEPN as their first web3 experience, then provide more complex / deeper web3 experiences
Want to be web2>web3 gateway