Author | Qin Xiaofeng
Edit | Hao Fangzhou
Produced by | Odaily Planet Daily
Title| In-depth Interpretation of "STEPN" How to Detonate the Chain Game Market?
In the past few months, the hottest chain game in the GameFi market has been "STEPN". The game is built on the Solana blockchain and claims to be the world's first Move To Earn NFT game.
In January, STEPN announced the completion of a $5 million seed round, led by Sequoia Capital India and Folius Ventures, and recently, Binance Launchpad announced the upcoming launch of the STEPN governance token GMT, rekindling the enthusiasm of on-chain gamers.
In a round of praise, "STEPN" has also been questioned as a "remake of FunBu". However, a careful analysis of the economic model and gameplay of the two shows that there are essential differences.
The core model of "FunBu" is a Ponzi scheme that pulls people's heads to pay dividends, and the tokens are constantly issued, there is no consumption scenario, and finally the price collapses and the project runs away. "STEPN" does not rely on the development of downline pulling new, developed a diversified sports gameplay, and designed a variety of token application scenarios, and finally achieved a dynamic balance between token casting and destruction.
"STEPN's goal is to move millions of people to live healthier lifestyles, bringing them into the Web 3.0 world while making a positive contribution to carbon neutrality." STEPN officially said.
Is the innovative gameplay of "Move To Earn" really reliable? Can "STEPN", a cutting-edge player in the chain game market, successfully go out of the circle like "Axie Infinity" and bring increments to the crypto market? Odaily Planet Daily experienced the game first-hand and will take an in-depth analysis of the project's economic model and development prospects below.
(1) The Web3 chain game "STEPN" is popular overseas
"It's great to witness the origins of Move to Earn, and I think in 2022, there will be more people obsessed with STEPN." Recently, Scott Dunlap, vice president of Adidas and CEO of Runtastic, posted on social media. This isn't the first time Scott Dunlap has praised STEPN, which has tweeted several times about the project and said "STEPN will be the industry's dark horse in 2022."
There are many more people like Scott Dunlap who are bullish on STEPN. In the past few months, many fund leaders and crypto KOLs have incarnated as the "tap water" of STEPN to recommend this chain tour to users inside and outside the circle. They either give affirmations on social media, or write articles about gameplay and analyze economic models:
"It's such a simple design. People equip up with NFT sneakers and then earn tokens for walking or running sports. The game has a complete decentralized wallet built in, with SWAP exchange, cross-chain conversion features, and a comprehensive anti-cheat mechanism to prevent exploitation. Mike Dudas, a former Google Wallet executive and partner at 6th Man Ventures, said.
"STEPN is the first game of its kind and is full of gamification and mobile earning mechanics. Soon, each runner will earn tokens and collect NFTs as they track their progress. This intersection of crypto incentives, NFT collections, and real-world utilities gives us a future approach to the convergence of the physical and digital worlds. Dan Patterson, a partner at the Sfermion Fund, said.
STEPN is a Move To Earn NFT game based on the Solana public chain, which previously won the fourth place in the Solana "Hackathon" chain game section and won the official Grant reward.
The Move To Earn game is a new form of GameFi where players can use their own motion data as a gamification input and then earn tokens and NFT rewards.
"StepN came up with the idea back in early August last year, and while it wasn't the first project to come up with the concept of M2E, STEPN was the quickest to 'cash in' on the idea, delivering the product in just 120 days." The STEPN team said.
According to the official website, in November last year, STEPN launched a beta version, the testing stage invited more than 1,000 players from 43 countries to participate, achieving a weekly player retention rate of more than 70%; last December launched the public beta version, less than a month later, STEPN in the Japanese app store downloads surpassed Nike, detonating overseas forums. Currently, STEPN has more than 30,000 daily active users and is known as the next Axie Infinity.
Diversify the gameplay and jump out of the homogeneous competition of the chain game
The basic gameplay of STEPN is very simple, players can equip NFT sneakers in the game app to participate in the game; by running in the real world, they can earn token income, which can be used to upgrade and repair sneakers to improve the efficiency of "earning coins", or they can be sold directly.
The specific operation steps are as follows, players first need to download the mobile application STEPN App on the STEPN official website, register a STEPN account via email, and after registration and login, players can create or import an existing Solana wallet in the game, and transfer SOL from the trading platform to the wallet address, so that they can purchase NFT sneakers and get game rewards in the game.
Players can purchase NFT sneakers in the App Marketplace, which are available in four different types: Walker, Jogger, Runner, and Trainer. Different types of shoes have certain restrictions on the player's movement speed, for example, the Walker speed limit is 1-6 km/h, beyond the corresponding range, the movement will not generate token income. Different types of shoes also have different prices, with the Trainer being the highest, as it has the widest speed limit range, from 1 to 20 km/h.
Each type of sneaker is divided into 5 qualities, divided into: Common (Normal, Gray), Uncommon (Rare, Green), Rare (Rare, Blue), Epic (Epic, Purple) and Legendary (Legendary, Orange). Different quality shoes, with different attributes, generate different token returns.
After purchasing NFT sneakers, players can officially participate in the game. Gameplay includes:
· Single-player mode: Players can start running by clicking "Start" on the game page to earn tokens; under the same NFT sneaker conditions, the longer they move, the more tokens they will receive. Of course, there is a certain limit to the daily exercise time ("energy"), once used up, it will stop earning tokens, which will be highlighted later in the analysis of the economic model.
· Casting new shoes: Players can use two pairs of level 5 sneakers to cast new shoes, each sneaker has 7 chances to cast new shoes; each time the casting is a shoe box, the player can directly put into the NFT market for sale, or you can open it yourself to continue to upgrade and cast new shoes.
Interestingly, when new shoes are cast, they "mutate", and even two pairs of ordinary shoes can be cast to produce high-quality, other types of shoes. Some players in the community said that they used two pairs of Common shoes to cast a pair of Uncommon shoes and sold them directly, making thousands of dollars.
· Rental sneakers: If you have a very large number of sneakers in hand, of which level 10 shoes can be rented out; during the rental process, no deposit is required, but the NFT cannot be transferred out of the account; when the final account is divided, STEPN will charge a tax rate of 8%, and the income distribution ratio of the tenant and the lessor is 3/7. Rental gameplay can be cooperated with future gold studios, revenue sharing, bringing A lot of revenue to NFT players.
In addition to the above three ways of playing, STEPN will also open a marathon mode, players can choose to participate, and ultimately get a lot of money based on the ranking. In addition, in the future, there will be support for background mode, players can earn GST without opening the STEPN App, and the App background will directly obtain the number of steps from the health data of the player's mobile device. (Note: For specific gameplay and rule introduction, you can click to read related articles)
Some issues still need to be improved
"STEPN game design is really good, but it is a bit of a "hand", sometimes walking without swinging the arm, carrying the mobile phone in the pocket, there will be some gaps in the data, resulting in a decrease in the amount of coins earned." Player A reacts to Odaily Planet Daily.
In fact, the root cause of the above problems is the anti-cheat mechanism design of STEPN games. To prevent players from falsifying movements for undue gain, STEPN uses gravity sensors to obtain player movements. In different states of motion, the "wavelength" of human motion is significantly different, thus proving the authenticity of the player's movement.
Of course, this mechanism may occasionally have "accidental injuries". For example, in the cold north, the player only wants to put the mobile phone in the pocket to walk, and then the system determines that it is not in motion, which also requires the project side to further optimize the system algorithm to achieve a more accurate state of motion.
In addition to the above problems, there are also player reactions, STEPN in some underground passages or office buildings, often can not remember steps or data is inaccurate. STEPN said that these problems are mainly caused by unstable GPS signals, and there is no ready-made solution, but they have studied a new set of algorithms - in the latest beta test, its GPS accuracy is improved by 70 times compared to traditional running applications and GPS devices.
In the game, players need to transfer the SOL from their wallet address to the Spending Account in the game system so that they can purchase NFT sneakers in the game and receive in-game rewards. However, sometimes the wallet transfer period is long, and the two accounts are inconvenient to operate, the built-in wallet transactions are occasionally not smooth, and the existing NFT market is more chaotic and the history cannot be viewed. In response to these problems, the recent official forecast will be in the next version of the upgrade, the consumption account and wallet will be merged, and the NFT market will be upgraded to facilitate user transactions.
Finally, some players reported that the NFT flooring price rose from the initial 1~2 SOL to the current 8-10 SOL, and the token GST price increased, resulting in an increase in the cost of new player games and an extension of the payback cycle. Of course, this problem reflects the increase in the popularity of the game to some extent, which is also a common problem faced by all chain games in the rising period, and it is difficult to effectively solve it at present.
(2) Is Stepn a replica of "Fun Step"?
For sports-loving people, the "Move To Earn" model does generate a lot of revenue for this group. This also made STEPN a hit, quickly out of the circle, and became a new favorite in the chain game market.
However, the mode of STEPN has also been interpreted by some users as "movement is mining", which is reminiscent of the game "FunBu" that was a fire in previous years. There are also some doubts that STEPN is a copy of the fun step, and will inevitably lead to a collapse in the end. But is this really the case? Will STEPN repeat the mistakes of the past?
STEPN believes that the root cause of the failure of projects such as Kidbu and other similar projects is that the project side has not found a mechanism to balance token minting and burning, and the emergence of GameFi has solved this problem. To this end, STEPN has designed a more complete economic model, adopting a dual-currency model.
First, let's analyze the economic model of FunBu. The game is that players need to invest in the reels, through the reels, activity to generate candy tokens; if new users are invited to buy the reels, they can get higher activity, resulting in higher returns. The end result was that the game became a head-pulling relay race, against the original purpose of the sport. In addition, Qubu's candy tokens continue to increase, there is no consumption scene, the price falls sharply, and finally stampede collapses. In two years, the number of qubu victims has increased to 120 million, and qubu has also been investigated by the police in many places for suspected pyramid schemes, illegal fundraising, financial fraud and other reasons.
The most essential difference between the STEPN mode and Qubu is that players do not need to pull people's heads to develop offline, nor do they issue rewards for inviting users; STEPN sets multiple application scenarios through the dual-currency mode, increases token consumption, and constantly sets "obstacles" to reduce output, so that additional issuance and consumption form a dynamic balance.
Specifically, there are two tokens in STEPN: GST and GMT, and the functions and functions of the two overlap and differ. The supply of GST is unlimited, mainly generated when the player is exercising in single-player mode or background mode, while GMT is limited (6 billion pieces) and will be available to players after the sneaker reaches the highest level (level 30).
In terms of output, STEPN sets a daily output cap, players earn A daily GST and GMT are limited, initially starting the game with a maximum of 5 GST per day, and then by upgrading their sneakers, they can increase the daily GST cap to 150; while the daily earning limit of GMT is 5.
In terms of usage scenarios, the main uses of GST and GMT are as follows:
1. Upgrade your shoe level. Players can upgrade their sneakers from Lv1 to Lv 28 by burning in-game GST, but the number of tokens required to upgrade will increase exponentially with the increase in sneaker level; upgrading from Lv28 to Lv30 requires burning GMT in addition to burning GST. The tokens required for each phase of the upgrade are as follows:
2. Accelerate the upgrade time. Each upgrade takes time, for example, it takes 30 hours to upgrade from level 29 to level 30, some users can choose to accelerate the upgrade, at this time GST is also required as a token, and the cost of each level of acceleration is different, showing exponential growth.
3. Sneaker repair. After every NFT run, the shoes will wear out (out of 100 points, it will continue to decline), once the wear is higher than 50%, the efficiency of token generation will also drop significantly, which also means that the player has to constantly maintain the sneakers, GST is the basic token for maintaining the shoes, with a strong demand.
4. Synthetic new shoes (Mint). Normal, green and blue shoes consume GMT when minting, while purple and orange shoes require GMT, and as the number of Mints increases, the number of tokens required increases linearly. For example, two pairs of regular shoes for 0 Mint, the first Mint, cost 200 GST, which is currently around $700. The specific data is as follows:
In addition to the several features mentioned above, GST can also unlock gem slots (gems add skill points to shoe attributes) as well as upgrade gems and wash sneakers.
GMT can be used for high-end in-game activities such as renaming sneakers and advanced upgrades; more importantly, GMT can be used for game governance. The profits in the game are voted on in the form of a DAO, and the GMT holders will decide how much of the game's profits are used for carbon neutrality and paid to them as a reward. At the same time, by locking in GMT in the profit pool, players will also receive higher voting rights.
Many people may compare GST and GMT in STEPN to SLP and AXS in Axie Infinity, but there are still big differences between the two.
SLP is uniformly minted, there is no continuous burning of tokens, only in specific application scenarios will be burned (babybirth), which will make tokens generation faster than consumption lead to inflation, and when game developers interfere too much in the game economy, it will irreversibly change the market's expectations for external intervention to cause external intervention to become more and more useless. STEPN iterates on the basis of predecessors, designing various "token application scenarios" for paying players, allowing "kryptonite" players to fully burn their tokens; it also takes care of players without NFTs and provides them with a window into the game (rental system).
"By carefully analyzing the Axie Infinity native token SLP economic model, we have figured out where the challenges of game token design lie – if there is no upper limit to the supply of game tokens, how do we balance supply and demand? From Keynes to Hayek, from token circulation to network effects, we have research. "We found that the uniform minting of game tokens must be managed through the uniform burning of game tokens to convert them into different forms of assets, which can be voluntary, mandatory or structural." The temporary minting of game tokens must be managed through the consumption of game tokens to create value outside of money. ”
The final result is also as the team envisioned, after the GST is launched, the price is running smoothly, there is no sharp rise and fall. Recently, due to market sentiment, some new users have begun to hoard GST, resulting in a price rise to $3.50.
To sum up, STEPN sets up a dual-token economic model: on the one hand, it creates diversified scenarios for GST and GMT to improve ease of use; at the same time, it controls GST and GMT output, and reduces sell-off pressure. It is difficult for players to simply seek rent by digging and selling, and the return on assets is implicitly limited and diversified. To a certain extent, this solves the previous problems of chain games, and helps to avoid the game from falling into a death spiral in a bear market, which is the biggest hidden danger faced by most chain games.
Paradigm shift from P2E to M2E
In 2021, "Axie Infinity" became popular in Southeast Asia, extending "playing and earning" P2E beyond the crypto community, allowing more people to understand GameFi chain games. The emergence of "Stepn" has also set off a wave of change in the chain game industry: the paradigm shift from P2E to M2E.
From the perspective of gameplay, in the past, the chain game had higher professional requirements for players, players needed to learn relevant skills, and some gold studios would even specially train players. The STEPN mainly focuses on a more detailed "M2E" concept, with a wide mass base and a low operating threshold, players do not need a large number of operations, just need to click on the home page to start, exercise, you can participate in the game.
Blockchain for users outside the circle, the learning cost is high, if the chain game adds a lot of cumbersome operations, it is bound to further hinder traditional users from entering the blockchain world. In this regard, STEPN is undoubtedly more user-friendly to users outside the circle.
In STEPN's view, "M2E" has a broad market space, the project's official website has mentioned a survey data shows that in 2017 alone in the United States alone, 55.9 million people will participate in running, 111 million people will participate in walking fitness; in 2021, the online fitness industry has achieved an annual growth rate of 33%, if it can expand in this field, it means that M2E games can drive millions of people into the Web 3 market. Therefore, to further promote the concept, STEPN has previously sponsored two charity runs in Australia.
In addition, taking sports health as the entry point further enhances the social value of STEPN. In the previous chain game, the player needed to stare at the screen for a long time and perform manual operations; STEPN liberated the player's hands and eyes, and the player only needed to harvest health and economic benefits through exercise.
"Unlike the Play to Earn games we've seen, the Move to Earn project creates a system that more closely connects the on-chain world to the real world, and it's no longer a simple game of decentralized finance, nor is it to motivate players to earn revenue, but to boringly click on pages with almost similar mechanics, but to fully mobilize their enthusiasm for sports, providing passive benefits while exercising." The STEPN team said.
More critically, stepn has also made its own contribution to the global carbon neutrality cause, adhering to the values of low carbon and health.
According to the official plan, GMT holders will decide through a community referendum how STEPN will allocate the proceeds of the project's treasury to purchase the on-chain Carbon Removal Credit to support the global carbon neutrality cause more openly and transparently. In addition, users can voluntarily choose to donate their GST – these GPTs will be exchanged for USDC/fiat currency to purchase carbon neutral credits or be destroyed.
(4) Summary
Every game has its own life cycle, and it is very difficult to keep a game alive for a long time. In order to solve this dilemma, the vast majority of games continue to introduce new and diversified gameplay in an attempt to retain old players. But iteration after iteration of the version has also gradually pushed up the learning cost of new players.
STEPN has learned this lesson and insisted on the simplest way to play sports, so that more users outside the circle can easily enter the world of chain travel and participate in the wave of blockchain in a healthy way. At the same time, through the two-token economic model, a balance between token minting and consumption helps to avoid the game from falling into a death spiral in a bear market.
The concept of STEPN has also gained the favor of capital. In January, STEPN announced the completion of a $5 million seed round, led by Sequoia Capital India and Folius Ventures, with solana Ventures, Alameda Research, 6th Man Ventures, Sfermion and others, former ParaFi Capital partner Santiago Santos and Republic Asia Pacific partner Zhen Cao participating.
The new paradigm of M2E is changing the future of chain games.