STEPN: A Recap of 2022

As the year comes to an end, it’s good to reflect on everything that’s happened. We’ve truly come a long way since January. And it’s been an absolute whirlwind these past twelve months. Here’s a roundup of STEPN’s milestones of 2022!

January 2022: STEPN’S Seed Funding Round

It feels like it’s been ages, but believe it or not, our first-ever funding round was earlier this year! On January 20th, we announced our $5 million seed in a round with Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital, 6th Man Ventures, DeFi Alliance, M13, Corner Ventures, Sfermion, Zee Prime Capital, and other Web3 investors, the start of the Move and Earn revolution.

February 2022: Setting the Pace

Our organic, grassroots growth began to pick up momentum in early February. We were approved to launch on iOS in less than 24 hours and, shortly after, rocketed to the top of the app stores — top five in overall apps in Japan and top 3 in health and fitness in the US! Soon, Daily Active Users (DAU) and our social following began to grow at exponential rates, exploding 1000% to 21,000 DAU and 66,000 Monthly Active Users (MAU), as well as reaching 50,000 Twitter followers.

March 2022: Hitting our Stride

Bearing testimony to our team’s efforts and our community’s passion, we launched our IEO on Binance to a tremendous response. And in tandem, we did a Giveaway Event distributing 45 million GMT to our Trailblazers to express our appreciation. We truly began to hit our stride this month, crossing 100,000 Twitter followers and reaching a 1 million KM total distance run mark.

April 2022: Unicorn Status

A big month. Within less than a month of our IEO on Binance, STEPN closed out Q1 2022 in style — by becoming a unicorn! In addition, we crossed a whopping 1 million in total downloads while our daily NFT trading volumes also exceeded $10 million.

We also crossed 300,000 Twitter followers and over 1.7 million monthly active users. We also launched new partnerships, partnering with ASICS on a unique collection of NFTs with over 180,000 participants and over 90,000+ BNB staked. And, we closed our Q1 profits at $26 million.

May 2022: Staying the Course in a Bear Market

In May, as many of you know, the crypto bear market reared its head. But despite the rockiness of the times, we continued to build and grow, crossing 600,000 Twitter followers, 3+ million monthly users, and 800,000 daily users. In the meantime, we doubled down on our mission, partnering with Nori to combat climate change and achieve carbon-neutrality by buying 5,797.1 Carbon Removal Tonnes (NRTs).

June 2022: Buttressing our Defences

It was a wild ride in June — and we really discovered what it was like to explore uncharted territory as a pioneer in the Move and Earn industry. We fought off DDOS attacks, cracked down on cheating, and worked hard to combat volatility in our new BSC realm.

At the same time, we never stopped building — in line with our mission of continually creating value for our community members, we also launched DOOAR, our very own decentralised exchange.

July 2022: To Ape Realm and Beyond

Within less than a month of launching, DOOAR secured over 77,000 daily active users and surpassed Solana-based DEX Orca to become the largest DEX on Solana. Meanwhile, we unveiled our third APE Realm with free mints for BAYC holders and saw over 1000 claims within 24 hours of the minting launch. We also held our first ever #STEPNrun contest and announced our Q2 numbers ($122.5 million in profits).

August 2022: A Rainbow of Opportunities

In August, we announced GMT Earning Plans to offer users new types of gameplay, along with a new type of sneaker — Rainbow Sneakers. We also conducted community giveaways to reward our active users and even partnered with Atlético Madrid to launch our very first co-branded sneakers with real world perks.

September 2022: STEPNEMBER

We turned one! And launched a brand new campaign to celebrate STEPNEMBER and define this era, called “It’s a Movement,” with a host of challenges and the chance for users to take part in with a prize pool of 100,000 GMT. And we notched some incredible milestones from our community: 104 billion miles ran together, 6.90 million KG of C02 offset, and 6 billion kCAL burned!

October 2022: Keep It Up

In October, we kept the good times rolling from STEPNEMBER. We partnered with The Giving Block , a notable philanthropic platform, on a campaign called Caring with Crypto to empower our users to donate their GMT to thousands of nonprofits on the Giving Block’s platform. We also launched our much-anticipated GMT earning mode, our #STEPNLevel30 Sneaker Challenge, and our Breaking Boundaries series.

November 2022: ASICS, Footie and MOOAR

Pioneering a new era of Web3 fitness, we teamed up with ASICS and Solana Pay on a new limited collection of physical sneakers to incredible success. Responding community suggestions we created an in-app event to celebrate the football tournament of the year with the STEPN Sneaker Enhancement Special. We also unveiled MOOAR, a dedicated NFT marketplace and launchpad — a monument product pillar on our roadmap to becoming a Web3 super app built around $GMT.

December 2022: Holiday Event and MOOAR Launchpad

We launched a highly anticipated holiday event with double GST earning, Special Christmas Socks and New Years Sneakers, where users are rewarded with gifts such as airdrops and STEPN merch for acquiring these sneakers. December was a special month for $GMT our ecosystem token, we created new utilities for the token by switching the STEPN marketplace currency to GMT. Moreover, we also hosted MOOAR Launchpad Season 1 where community members voted on their favourite PFP projects with $GMT for a chance to raffle NFTs. We had a massive 5.3+ Million $GMT locked into tickets supporting MOOAR’s mission to empower creators. A big congratulations to MOOAR S1 Winner, HypeSaints! S2 coming soon…

To 2023 and beyond…

We can’t believe it’s already the end of 2022 and we’re so excited to see what the road ahead has in store for us. This year we truly pushed the Move and Earn movement mainstream and along the way experienced a lot of incredible moments but also a lot of learnings that we take with us into 2023 to continue building STEPN and the entire FSL ecosystem. Despite the turbulence of the crypto bear market we have stuck true to our word that we are builders at heart and the future is bright. Upwards and onwards!