BNB Chain Project Spotlight: StepN

In this episode of BNB Chain Project Spotlight, we'll introduce you to StepN, the move to earn health and fitness application that recently announced the milestone of reaching 300K Daily Active Users and launched a unique collection of NFT sneakers in partnership with sports brand ASICS on the Binance NFT marketplace.

Let’s welcome StepN team to our BNB community!

Spotlight on StepN

IMPORTANT: Please note the following content does not constitute an endorsement or approval of any of the products or services of the project, organization, or individual.

1. Some users might not be familiar with the concept of Move to Earn in StepN. Can you tell us more about that? How can players earn tokens and NFTs while walking/running?

StepN is a move-to-earn health and fitness application with game elements. Users equipped with sneaker NFTs can move outdoors to earn tokens and NFT rewards. StepN has a built-in wallet, swap, marketplace, and rental system that allow non-crypto users to onboard on StepN.

People earn tokens and NFTs in StepN. This is similar to how bitcoin mining works. Users have to prove (validated by our anti-cheating mechanics) that they physically worked out, which comes at a cost (time & energy). The tokens and NFTs are then minted from the people, not from the game developer. In this way, people can trade their tokens and NFTs 100% peer to peer and over time. We created an ecosystem and the value of tokens and NFTs are based on the demand and supply.

2. The community is excited about the launch of StepN in the BNB Chain! Why did StepN decide to build on BNB Chain?

We decided to build on BNB Chain for multiple reasons. The first reason is that BNB Chain has a vibrant ecosystem for web3 games, it would be beneficial to both us and the gamers. The second reason is that BNB Chain can enhance the overall user experience. On occasions when the Solana chain is congested, holding a BNB Chain StepN Sneaker will enable users to jump to BNB Chain to earn the BNB Chain version of GMT and GST, and vice versa. The third reason is that the BNB Chain integration allows us to work closely with Binance for NFT sales and the ASICS x StepN limited edition sneakers available on the Binance IGO platform is one recent example.

3. StepN just released limited-edition sneakers with ASICS design to be used in StepN. It is awesome that StepN crossovers with a sports brand. Will there be more crossover in the future?

Yes. This is just the beginning. One of the fastest ways to build a brand is through leveraging this kind of co-branding opportunity. We aim to be the leading Sneaker brand on the web3 and in the future, we will not only work with the Sneaker brands but also explore the possibilities to work with luxury brands and blue-chip NFT projects.

4. Having the ownership of gaming items created by players themselves is one of the values of NFT in GameFi. Would there be creator tools in StepN that allow players to create their own NFT shoes in the future?

We actually have a better idea. We want to use our social platform to encourage the content creators to submit their artworks, and in due process, we can use the artwork to create NFTs on StepN. The artist gets to share the royalty fees made on the NFT marketplace and it’s a win-win.

5. Can we talk about the duo tokenomic model (GMT and GST) in StepN? How can this model maintain a sustainable economy?

What we have learned from Axie Infinity is that we shouldn’t limit the governance token earning to a small group of people. We’ve planned tokenomics (with GST and GMT) to make our tokens broadly accessible and ensure balance in the mining of these two tokens.

Many people wonder if GST with its unlimited supply would go into a death spiral. The dual tokenomics model addresses this by making GST earning irrelevant at a higher level. As people approach the higher levels, they are presented with the option to choose what token to earn, and they would naturally want to earn the limited supply GMT. This will get amplified with time as more GMT are burned and more GMT use cases are released. This would reduce the GST token supply by a lot, hence balancing the token value. If too many people are mining GMT, they will earn less than what they can do with GST, so they will switch to earning GST, and this will reduce the competition in earning GMT, and in turn, makes GMT mining profitable again, so people will come back. This is a classic prisoner dilemma magnified on a bigger scale.

6. What is StepN’s strategy for securing users, funds, and data?

There are several stages of checks we have already gone through. We follow the guidelines of privacy from Apple and Google strictly. We would also move the encrypted user data on a decentralized storage protocol around next year.

As for the fund security, we use the decentralized wallet, so that users are managing their own funds, we will also implement the 2FA in the near future to add more security measurements to the app.

7. Is there any upcoming event for StepN?

We will start with in-app activities regularly, we plan to host one monthly event in the app to keep users engaged and entertained. As for the Marathon mode, it will be an entirely new playstyle in addition to the current solo mode. This feature is aimed to be released toward the end of this year and the background mode is when we feel the need to approach non-crypto users.

8. Can we talk about the SocialFi element that will be revealed in StepN?

As for Social-Fi, we currently are in the exploration phase. In the future, there could be some event that triggers the Social-Fi, it could be an infrastructure improvement or an innovative way to engage users. But for now, we will try to explore different ways to connect and engage both crypto and non-crypto users through various in-app activities and features. Once we see the opportunity to scale the Social-Fi elements in the future, we will move quickly to seal the deal.

9. There are very few GameFi today that combine sports elements. Do you think this is StepN’s advantage? How do you see the future of sports GameFi?

This is definitely one of our strengths and we see this is a moat to competition to a certain extent, as many crypto native builders do not have the experience in building a game or have the connections or knowledge to find or build GPS and Machine learning anti-cheating mechanics.

In the future, sports Game-Fi will become an independent industry as more traditional companies will start to venture into this new industry and contribute new ideas and features. In this new industry, balancing is the most important task, the game elements cannot be too rich and complex to stop non-gamers to enter. Equally, the sports elements cannot be too difficult to stop non-athletic people to enter. The tokenomics have to create value for both users and the platform.