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(This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home4/scienrds/scienceandnerds/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2022\/05\/22\/play-move-to-earn-solana-stepn-gamefi\/<\/a><\/br> Since its launch<\/span> in December, StepN, an app that lets users walk and run to earn tokens, has quickly become a household name in the play-to-earn blockchain gaming, or GameFi, world. Two to three million users worldwide are now active on the app every month, StepN\u2019s co-founder Jerry Huang recently told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n That number is nowhere close to the hundred-million player size enjoyed by popular Web 2.0 titles, but in the world of crypto, it\u2019s a meaningful breakthrough for a five-month-old app. As of May 22, the market cap<\/a> of StepN\u2019s native token GMT stood at around $860 million.<\/p>\n Founded by Huang and his co-founder Yawn Rong in Adelaide, Australia, StepN debuted at a Solana hackathon in October<\/a>. After coming in fourth, its exposure at the event helped land its first batch of beta users. When it officially launched two months later, words about the app that let one earn by staying fit had already spread within the blockchain community. Without any splashy ad campaign, scores of users signed up.<\/p>\n In weeks, StepN was growing so fast that the team needed to cap the number of daily registrations. Now, tens of thousands of new users are joining the app per day, according to Huang.<\/p>\n Huang, a serial entrepreneur, and Rong, a blockchain venture capitalist, were self-funding the project at first for the pair were \u201cfinancially stable.\u201d But in September, they decided that fundraising could bring in other meaningful resources such as partnerships and publicity. The founders spoke to over 100 investors and revised their pitch deck over 40 times before closing a $5 million seed round<\/a> from Sequoia Capital and others in November.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a product at the time, and many investors couldn\u2019t understand what we were doing. Sequoia did. The process of addressing investor questions also helped us refine the product to where it was later,\u201d said Huang.<\/p>\n Indeed, the fast-growing app appears to be self-sustainable for now. It\u2019s generating $3 million-$5 million in net profit from trading fees a day and earning up to $100 million every month. In April, it picked up another round of strategic investment<\/a> from Binance.<\/p>\n Some argue what makes StepN \u2014 and other play-to-earn blockchain games like Axie Infinity<\/a> \u2014 successful is the fact that they are essentially financial products with a gamified twist.<\/p>\n To start earning tokens and logging one\u2019s mileage on StepN, users need to first spend at least 12 sol or around $600 on a pair of virtual shoes at the current market rate. The digital shoes are in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) that runs on the Solana network and Binance\u2019s smart chain so can be resold later, but the entry fee is still not <\/span>a trivial amount for any casual player.<\/span><\/p>\n Over time, StepN users will need to accumulate new kicks to level up. The usual return on investment requires about a month, upon which people can start generating income of up to several thousand dollars per day depending on their level, activeness and the current price of StepN tokens. In other words, the game can be quite lucrative.<\/span><\/p>\n In the eyes of some gaming veterans, the gameplay of most existing GameFi apps is \u201ceasy and mindless.\u201d Axie Infinity, for instance, features cute blob-like creatures that fight in simple battles. As such, Web 2.0 gaming incumbents are entering GameFi in droves, pledging to bring quality back to the industry.<\/p>\n Huang begged to differ. \u201cA lot of the triple-A games overemphasize aesthetics and big budgets, but they aren\u2019t really that innovative when it comes to gameplay, whereas some simple-looking games like Plants vs. Zombies come with brilliant gameplay that makes them last,\u201d said Huang, who ran his own gaming studio in China before moving to Australia a decade ago.<\/p>\n \u201cMany newcomers to GameFi are blindly pursuing triple-A productions,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut if they weren\u2019t already successful in web2, why would they be in web3? Some simple-looking games aren\u2019t that simple behind the scene; for instance, how we design the economics of our app.\u201d<\/p>\n Other critics question the financial sustainability of play-to-earn. Maintaining such a business model means the gameplay needs to be either so addictive that users continue to play without cashing out their coins, or that the app continues to attract new users who buy in only to replace those who cash out. Critics have even drawn parallels between play-to-earn to pyramid schemes.<\/p>\n Axie Infinity hasn\u2019t been able to sustain its meteoric rise. Sky Mavis, the Vietnamese gaming studio behind the game, was valued at $3 billion<\/a> in a $150 million financing round last October. But its token has lost over 80% of its value<\/a> since peaking in November at $160, and its sales volume has nosedived<\/a> from $754 million to just $5 million.<\/p>\n Losing a few thousand dollars isn\u2019t the end of the world for most of StepN\u2019s users, who are 20-40-year-olds from affluent countries like the U.S., Japan and Europe. China, where crypto trading is banned, accounts for less than 5% of its user base, Huang said. But Axie Infinity\u2019s players are concentrated in developing countries like the Philippines and Venezuela, many of whom are betting a significant amount of their savings on the game, a major source of their income during the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n StepN proposes a twofold solution to sustainability. For one, it\u2019s working on a price stabilization mechanism to ensure the cost of its coins is always at a rate that the shoes are affordable for new users but also not so cheap that existing users lack the incentives to mint new shoes; that is, create new shoes on the blockchain and sell.<\/p>\n Price manipulation is achieved through its dual-token system. When the price of its \u201cutility coin\u201d GST is too high and shoes get pricey, StepN will ask players to burn its \u201cgovernance coin\u201d GMT to mint new shoes. The supply of GST increases as a result, leading to a sell-off and bringing its cost down.<\/p>\n Huang also argued StepN\u2019s fitness component makes it fundamentally different from Axie Infinity. \u201cYes, users can make money from StepN in the early stage, but over time they will also grow accustomed to staying active, so they will continue to walk or run regardless of financial rewards.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMany people don\u2019t see StepN as a real game. Nor do they consider it a running app because users can make money from it,\u201d said Curt Shi, founding partner at Welinder & Shi Capital and an early investor in StepN. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to define what it is right now, but time will tell.\u201d<\/p>\n Huang\u2019s other defense is the role StepN could play in evangelizing blockchain to the world. An estimate of 30% of the app\u2019s users have never used any blockchain services before.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people might have used centralized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase to trade, but few know what a DEX [decentralized exchange] is, nor have they traded NFTs on a marketplace or owned a self-custodial wallet. We have the potential to onboard tens of millions of web3 users and I think this is something very meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think people are paying too much attention to the [sustainability] issue,\u201d the founder continued. \u201cROI might slow over time, but all games have life cycles. You also need to look at what value an app creates.\u201d<\/p>\n Momentum might slow down sooner than expected for the app amid crashing crypto values. Venture capital firms<\/a> are warning startups to brace for a \u201ccrypto winter\u201d and industry giants like Coinbase are applying the brakes on hiring<\/a>. As consumers lose confidence in the market and become less willing to spend on tokens or NFTs, blockchain apps that rely on attracting new users to drive up their economies might face more roadblocks.<\/p>\n But Huang finds a silver lining in the current downturn. \u201cThere was a lot of froth in the market. Now the bubble is bursting, our shoes will become more affordable, and only the [blockchain] apps with real use case will survive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe market was clearly frothy, so it\u2019s a good thing that [StepN\u2019s market cap] has shrunk over the past few days,\u201d said Shi. \u201cTo maintain an ultra-high market cap can be stressful for the team, and now the team will be focusing more on the product itself and we believe StepN will outperform in bear and will be a winner in the next bull market.\u201d<\/p>\n Operating with a rapidly expanding team of 70 people across countries including Australia, the U.K., the U.S. and Singapore, StepN\u2019s next step is to build a social product around its token holder community. The challenge now is to prove that it can continue to draw in a constant stream of new runners.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/br><\/br><\/br><\/p>\n
\n\u2018Move-to-earn\u2019 Solana app StepN is latest crypto gaming craze<\/br>
\n2023-01-20 22:43:45<\/br><\/p>\nIs it a game?<\/h2>\n
Is it sustainable?<\/h2>\n
Killer app?<\/h2>\n
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