The move-to-earn industry vertical is a rather exciting one on paper. . Being able to earn crypto by moving around is appealing, yet the overall industry sentiment isn’t too promising. Nearly all assets in this category continue to lose value, indicating the initial hype has worn off.
Move-To-Earn Runs Out Of Steam
There is some fierce competition in the move-to-earn industry vertical these days. Projects like STEPN, Sweatcoin, Step App, Genopets, Dotmoovs, DOSE, and Digital Fitness compete for traction. Moreover, they all compete for a piece of the fitness-to-earn pie, even though it remains a fringe market. Getting people to exercise more is never hard, but creating a sustainable economy is.
The past week has been fierce for move-to-earn tokens. Virtually all assets in this category lost value, with some going down by nearly 30%. The overarching crypto market conditions are equally bearish, suppressing any good momentum. However, move-to-earn is different, as its native rewards suffer the same issue as play-to-earn games.
With M2E titles, users often need to invest first before they can earn. That means buying an NFT – shoes, avatars, etc. – that enable them to “earn” by completing healthy activities. For example, going for a walk, jogging, or running can earn you tokens. It is a simple concept and one that has many people curious. But unfortunately, the NFTs one needs to buy often lose value quickly, and the rewards are not too valuable either.
That issue is very similar to play-to-earn games. Users have a “must earn to recuperate investment” mentality. That is unfortunate, as these move-to-earn dApps aim to help people lead healthy lives first and foremost. Rewards should always be secondary, but they aren’t. Additionally, these solutions primarily attract crypto users – who get bored of things relatively quickly, in general – rather than mainstream consumers.
Stagnating User Growth
STEPN Remains the leading move-to-earn title in this industry segment. But, unfortunately, its MAU has been on a steady decline for some time now. The peak of over 700,00 MAU is well behind STEPN, and September saw less than 100,000 MAU. So it is not a promising outlook for the project, especially with GST and GMT rewards further declining in value.
Sweatcoin is the second-largest healthy and fitness app with blockchain rewards. Its current MAU is unclear, although the platform claims to have over 120 million users. Unfortunately, most users are intent on dumping their token rewards as quickly as possible, as there is little reason to use them for anything else. It may be a bump in the road, but it remains a disturbing trend today.
Step App is another project with initial traction that has evaporated. The dApp peaked at over 208,000 MAU in May 2022 but suffered a steep decline in June and July. No data has been available since then, yet the website claims over 50 million users have pre-signed. Again, these are promising statistics, but turning them into real users who value long-term rewards is something else.
Move-to-earn Tokens Collapse
Declining MAU makes move-to-earn dApps less appealing to those on the cusp of improving their lifestyle. Moreover, the ongoing decline of token values isn’t helping either. All M2E tokens have lost significant value since their initial launch. Moreover, they continued to bleed value this past week:
- STEPN (GMT) is down by 16.7%
- Sweatcoin (SWEAT) lost 29.5% of its value
- Step App (FITFI) dropped by 13%
- Genopets (GENE) lost 11.6% in value
It will be tricky for these currencies and projects to bounce back from setback after setback. Attracting mainstream users remains critical, but it is challenging. Moreover, some projects may need to rethink their reward emissions and bring more utility to native assets. As a result, move-to-earn will remain a very niche market on life support until things change.
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