STEPN CO-AMA with CRYPTO BANTER
Q: Hello Yawn, can you tell us a bit more about you and about your project?
A: STEPN is a Web3 running app with fun social elements and gamification design. Users equipped with NFT Sneakers — walk, jog or run outdoors to earn game token — GST, which can be used to level up and mint new Sneakers.
Users can choose to lease or sell their NFT Sneakers on the in-app Marketplace; users’ GST earnings are stored in the in-app Wallet, which has a built-in Swap function.
I’m a serial entrepreneur. I have built two quite successful brands in Australia before I ventured into the crypto industry in 2017. I funded Crypto SA and merged the business with my neighbor Jerry’s game development studio in late 2021 to develop STEPN.
Q: What exactly is STEPN? Explain us as good as you can
A: First, users need to have a NFT Sneaker to move and earn in STEPN; STEPN aims to be the biggest health and fitness app on Web3, with tokenomic, gamification, musical and social elements.
We spent 5 months building STEPN, currently it has a SOL wallet, swap and marketplace, all built in one app; users can simply deposit SOL to the STEPN wallet and buy a Sneaker on the marketplace, transfer it to the inventory and earn GST tokens by walking, jogging or running. The GST earning can be swapped to SOL or USDC in the users’ wallet and if the user has a Crypto dot com banking card, they can transfer the USDC to the card and start spending it in real life.
Currently, the app is live and under Public Beta phase, what I said above is all achievable and I urge people to give it a try. Currently I earn about 110 GST per day, which is about $220 USDC.
Q: I see there are different game modes, can you tell which ones there are?
A: Currently we only have the SOLO mode available, but we have planned many game modes such as background mode, Marathon mode, and in the future we will continue to introduce new modes.
Background mode is when users do not need to actively use the STEPN, instead, STEPN will count the steps in the background and reward users tokens.
Marathon mode will be released next along with the Leaderboard function; basically it is the PvP of STEPN, users compete for Leaderboard Prize every week, based on their sneaker quality, fit to owner and time taken to finish the 2, 5, or 10 km marathon.
Q: So to play the game you need a pair of NFT sneakers, where can people go to buy a pair of Sneakers?
A: Sneaker is available on the in-app Marketplace.
Q: When you have a pair of sneakers, are you able to share / loan it with others?
A: People can do a lot of things with their Sneaker, for now, they can mint an extra Sneaker by burning GST tokens, sell it on the marketplace, send it as a gift to friends and family.
Burning GST to level up Sneakers allow users to make more tokens per day, the app allows users to customize the Sneaker by spending their attribute points per level up.
Next month, we will release the rental function, where users can lease their Sneaker on the marketplace and split the earning with the renter that is doing the walking or running. You can consider the Rental function as an automatic guild function.
Q: I see that there are two types of tokens the GMT and GST, what does this ticker stand for and what is the utility of the tokens?
A: GST is burned when level up Sneaker, level up Gems (also NFT), and possible NFT achievement badge in the future.
GST is also burned for repair; Leaderboard participation fee and Shoe-minting
GMT is the governance token, staked users can receive quarterly treasury dividend; it is also burned in the app for high level Sneaker level up and Gem level up.
We will introduce Sneaker customization in the future and also need to burn GMT, we are partnering up with Sneaker brands to bring their brands to the Web3. So far we have three top 20 Sneakers brands working with us.
Q: So STEPN wants to combat climate change, can you explain how?
A: STEPN take taxes in app such as from trade, rental and minting; the profit goes to the treasury and the governance token holder decide how much % of the profit goes to carbon offsetting, if the vote is in favor of carbon neutrality (donate majority of earning), then the governance token holder will receive GMT reward; otherwise, they will receive Treasury profit as dividend, but portion of their staked GMT will be burned.
We are currently working with Nori, a carbon removal provider on the blockchain as our main carbon credit provider.
Q: When will the project have its IDO? And when can people start earning?
A: We are currently working with several top tiered exchanges, we are currently looking at IEO around March.
Q: Everyone asks why you are different but I want to ask what real world problem your team intends to solve with this fun endeavor?
A: There are several layers, the Carbon neutrality level, we have seen people use less motor vehicles when they can walk or run, for example pick up their takeaway.
Also we will actively donate to carbon neutrality through our blockchain carbon removal provider.
We found that families will take a walk after dinner together, fostering a healthier relationship. We have been told people have created stronger bonds with their step children (pun intended)…
People are losing weight and getting more energy, through they are constantly energy starved in app.
I think make some cool earnings is good but that is never the intention for the app.
Q:I am asking so many time what is the supply for sneaker … if it is unlimited than why so expensive…
A: The short answer is Sneaker will be unlimited supply, but do not freak out, because the floor price of the Sneaker is tied with the GST token price, when GST price drop, people will start to buy to mint Sneakers to profit, when GST price up, people will start selling GST to bring it price down to where minting is profitable again.
In the future, the Sneaker will be used as “fuel” for more in-app functions, so the Sneaker will eventually become consumable.
Sneaker is expensive because people are making hundred a day and they are in high demand. Once we open rental, there will be a lot of people buy Sneakers to lease it out.
Q:What was the biggest challenge that you ran into when you were building STEPN? What sets STEPN apart from the rest of the game-Fi projects building on Solana?
A: GPS and anti-cheating are the two most difficult parts, we have advisor from Strava and Keep engineering background, they said even for giants like these two companies, GPS issue will take years to optimize, it is a constant evolving thing and there is no short cut, we have managed to do a OK job to start with and it will take us at least 1 year to fully optimize the GPS function.
Anti-cheating is another part will take a long time to fine tune, now the system sometime make mistake as we use motion sensor, GPS and machine learning to verify users’ data. We are feeding the machine learning data still and we designed a two layer of AI anti-cheating mechanics and currently we are working on the layer 2.
I think what set STEPN apart is the speed of shipping, we have built this app within 5 months’ time including planning, fundraising and coding. A lot of time was spent on planning and trial and error, we will be able to build even faster once we hire more developers and get them trained up. There are many new exciting features we cannot wait to release.
