What Is STEPN and Why Is GMT Going Parabolic?

STEPN touts itself as a Web3 life-style app with inbuilt Recreation-Fi and Social-Fi components. The app lets customers earn tokens by strolling, jogging, or operating open air and hopes to nudge gamers towards a more healthy life-style.

Stepping Into STEPN

Transfer-to-earn mania is hitting the crypto house.

STEPN, a “Web3 life-style app” that lets customers earn tokens by strolling, jogging, or operating open air, has seen its GMT governance token soar in worth over the previous week, climbing 138%. 

Though STEPN continues to be in public beta, it has already amassed over 100,000 downloads on the Google Play retailer and over 139,000 followers on Twitter. The sport at present runs on Solana however says it plans to develop its decentralized pockets to supply multi-chain asset deposits and withdrawals sooner or later. 

To start out incomes tokens, gamers want to purchase or lease a pair of sneakers from the in-app market utilizing Solana’s native asset, SOL. When beginning out, gamers can solely earn the limitless provide GST token. Nonetheless, as gamers degree up their sneakers by shifting, they’ll begin to earn the restricted provide GMT governance token, offered they personal their sneakers and usually are not renting them. 

STEPN’s tokenomics mannequin is much like that of the play-to-earn recreation Axie Infinity. In STEPN, GMT performs the same function to AXS; it has a finite provide and is required to degree up and mint new pairs of sneakers. GST is extra like Axie’s SLP; it has an infinite provide, it may be used to restore sneakers after use, and it additionally will get consumed when sneakers are leveled up or minted. 

Nonetheless, STEPN deviates from Axie’s mannequin by offering extra use circumstances for the earnable GST token. In Axie Infinity, the SLP token was initially solely consumed by breeding new Axies. As extra folks began enjoying the sport to revenue from the SLP rewards, provide outstripped demand, and the token’s worth crashed. STEPN tries to deal with this concern by making its sneakers degradable. That’s why gamers want GST to restore them and proceed enjoying. 

As STEPN’s public beta solely opened in December, its pioneering token mannequin continues to be comparatively unproven. Nonetheless, this hasn’t stopped a number of prime enterprise capital corporations from making sizeable investments in STEPN. The app raised $5 million by promoting over 16% of its token provide in January. Sequoia Capital India and Folius Ventures co-led the increase, and the likes of Solana Ventures and Alameda Analysis additionally participated. 

Why Has STEPN’s Token Soared? 

Whereas STEPN has steadily gained traction since its beta launch, a number of further components are probably fueling the current surge. In a current interview with Photo voltaic Eco Fund, a STEPN spokesperson hinted at a potential partnership with a significant sports activities model. When requested if STEPN noticed corporations like Nike and Adidas as future opponents, the spokesperson dropped an unsubtle trace in regards to the undertaking’s plans. “You will note we’ve an announcement about this very quickly,” they stated. 

Hypothesis about STEPN’s upcoming partnership has been widespread throughout social media, with many customers in search of clues in current Twitter posts. In a Mar. 29 tweet commenting on the current Ronin Community hack, STEPN shared a chunk of paintings containing a number of hidden model logos. 

The logos for sportswear corporations like Head, Nike, Adidas, and Asics are seen within the paintings alongside what seems to be a Binance brand. Since STEPN used Binance’s token launchpad to promote 7% of its GMT token provide firstly of March, some speculate {that a} extra substantial partnership with Binance can be on the horizon. 

Pleasure for STEPN’s partnership announcement is palpable, however whether or not its current worth surge is sustainable will not be but clear. Whereas some onlookers are already calling STEPN the “subsequent Axie Infinity,” others are skeptical as a result of giant variety of GMT tokens offered to institutional buyers throughout its seed spherical. Future token unlocks for early patrons may additionally trigger issues for these shopping for GMT tokens at present costs. 

Disclosure: On the time of scripting this piece, the writer owned SOL and several other different cryptocurrencies.