The M2E sphere remains small relative to the total market capitalization. However, it is actively developing and attracting investments from major players such as Binance.On April 6, Binance Venture Capital announced an investment in the Move-to-Earn project STEPN. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
“We believe physical activity gamification can bring more people into the industry, accelerating the mass adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrencies,” said Bill Qian, CEO of Binance Labs.
What a big day… 😍 Celebrating the new joiner of Binance Labs Family @Stepnofficial – THE BEST of its kind web3 move-and-earn app. Let's Step up N up!https://t.co/evNkFxrQgx
— Binance Labs Fund (@BinanceLabs) April 6, 2022
In addition to Binance Labs, the investors were Sequoia Capital, Alameda Research, Folius Ventures, Solana Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Sfermion and others.
STEPN is a healthy lifestyle app that incorporates both Game-Fi and Social-Fi elements. The entire gameplay is built around digital sneakers in the form of NFTs. NFT data allows users to earn in-game currency GST through running or walking. Sneakers have four main characteristics:
- attribute;
- type;
- rarity;
- level.
Together with the Energy system, which introduces a daily income limit, these characteristics affect the amount of GST a user can earn.
The application requires stable operation of the GPS system. Because of this, a limitation has been introduced: if the quality of GPS is low, the earning rate may drop to 0. Earnings for players can also be regulated by developers.
The GST token has risen in price by 56% over the past two weeks, as of April 7, the value of the asset is $5.34.
The birth of the Move-to-Earn trend
The trend for Move-to-Earn appeared not so long ago, but gradually draws interest from Play-to-Earn projects to itself. Physical activity underwent gamification (the introduction of an element of the game) a few years ago. Nintendo popularized motion-based games with the release of Pokemon GO in 2016. Players from all over the world caught Pokémon by tracking them on a GPS map in real time.
Market share of M2E projects
According to the website coingecko, the entire M2E industry has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion. At the same time, the total valuation of digital assets reaches $2.09 trillion.
$1.3 billion of capitalization of M2E projects is the share of STEPN. The second largest is Genopets with a capitalization of $49 million. Like STEPN, Genopets is built on the Solana blockchain. Genopets is a little more complex than STEPN, there are also pets and lands on which they will live. Another feature is that your steps are not converted directly into an asset, but into experience for your genopet, an analogue of Tamagotchi. The more active you are, the more development your pet will receive. The main source of income in Genopets is the sale of developed pets.
In the wake of STEPN’s success, there are more and more projects using the Move-to-Earn model. SkateX will encourage skateboarding, WIRTUAL provides the opportunity to compete with other players in sports such as running, cycling and swimming.
Sweatcoin: Walk, earn, spend, repeat. It pays to walk
How to evaluate the success of a project?
Traditionally, the number of active users is a measure of the success of an application. But in tokenized ecosystems, most users come for financial rewards. Plenty of P2E games grew quickly and then fell just as quickly when the inflation of their game currency became unsustainable.
M2E games are still at a very early stage of development, but of all the M2E projects, STEPN is the closest to a full game. Earnings happen in real time and his tokens are really useful in the game. And projects such as Genopets and WIRTUAL have not yet launched the full use of tokens.
M2E took into account the mistakes of many P2E projects and introduced mechanisms for using tokens, burning tokens to support the economy. STEPN introduced an efficient system of repairing and improving sneakers for a token from the very beginning. Genopets will only allow land owners to earn KI directly, limiting inflation. WIRTUAL will also offer several options for storing and using WIR.
OliveX, an Australian-listed company, is already building the Fitness Metaverse. Part of this metaverse includes a set of planned fitness games based on their future DOSE token. One such game is Dustland Rider, an MMORPG-based bike game that pairs with a real bike and Bluetooth sensors. Augmented and virtual reality technologies may also be used for M2E games in the future.
**STEPN token (GMT) has risen in price by 20% and updated the historical maximum
