Move To Earn: A Temporary Fud Or Here To Stay? Move-to-earn is simply a spin-off of play-to-earn where users are rewarded in crypto currencies for playing certain games

The NFT economy has launched a variety of altcoin sector bull runs. Such bull runs have marked the dominance of GameFi and metaverse products for much of 2021. The greatest performing assets of last year fit into these sectors.

FitFi, also known as Move-to-Earn, represents a culmination of a very physical experience (fitness) within the metaverse, by using NFTs and geo-location technology. Move-to-earn is a market economy in which participants earn from the value generated by a $100 billion fitness industry. Move-to-earn is simply a spin-off of play-to-earn where users are rewarded in crypto currencies for playing certain games such as Axie Infinity.

Here at NFT Tech (recently listed on the stock market under ticker "NFT'), we invest in some of the most promising trend setters in Move-to-Earn. Below are some of the names which have transformed move-to-earn from a niche innovation within the crypto ecosystem to a global pop-culture phenomena:

Stepn

Stepn is a Web3 lifestyle app with Game-Fi and Social-Fi elements built around the activity of moving around. It has been awarding users with GST tokens worth around $20-$300 per day to complete short, daily walks. A virtual assistant from Bangalore India claims he receives up to $70 daily for completing two running sessions of thirty minutes each. In some parts of the world this amount represents a persons' weekly wage.

Stepn was the first project to effectively bring to life a functioning Move-to-Earn concept, finishing 4th out of 500+ projects at the Solana Ignition Hackathon 2021. Users purchase NFT sneakers and by jogging, walking, or running outdoors, they'd earn some of the game currency.

Stepn has grown to more than 300,000 daily active users in a few months. The GMT token is currently changing hands at around $121, roughly eight times where it started trading in March, although it has retreated from its all-time high of about $4.11 in April.

WIrtual

Wirtual introduces a new way to mine for cryptocurrency that is affordable and easily accessible to anyone. By simply tracking your running, walking, swimming, cycling, dancing, or working out activities on your usual fitness device (Strava, Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Health and Huawei Health), you are able to earn WIRTUAL Coins.

Updating character features can unlock special "powers" or privileges along with limited edition clothes that will only be available to you. You can then sell the unique character you have created to other users.

Genopets

Genopets is the world's first Free-to-Play and Move-to-Earn NFT game on Solana. As players explore the Genoverse and battle their Genopet, Genopets combines user's step data from their mobile device with blockchain Play-to-Earn economics. Genopets blends the nurture and evolution of Tamagotchi, the training and battling of Pokemon, and the fitness and social incentives of Strava while rewarding players with crypto for staying active in their daily lives. It integrates gaming elements of nurturing, training and battling, while rewarding players with the incentive of crypto for staying active in their daily lives. NFT Tech is one of the investors in Genopets

Is Move-to-Earn here to stay?

If Stepn ultimately succeeds it may open a slew of apps monetizing other aspects of a person's daily life such as Ride-to-Earn, Music-to-Earn, etc. Just imagine being paid for the music you listen to. Move-to-Earn could spearhead a whole new set of business models and innovation and NFT Tech will stand ready to back founding teams combining bear market frugality with ability to move fast.

Move-to-Earn's current design is far from flawless. In fact, its current risks are significant. For open game economies such as Move-to-Earn to be sustainable there must be 1) pure demand for the game's entertainment component from players and external stakeholders which is not tied solely to earning expectations, and 2) the game must be able to monetize this demand in the form of in-game spending on deflationary burning mechanisms (sinks) that retain value in the ecosystem and remove assets from the economy.

Stepn itself has no traditional gameplay mechanism. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Stepn, in its current form, has pure player demand for any game utility other than ROI.

Luckily, history can present us with numerous examples of hyperinflated game disasters we can learn from. In-game sinks are one possible way to solve the hyperinflation problem of more in-game currency being created than being spent. Two most common ways to introduce sinks in Move-to-earn are Seed mods and forks, as well as community-based Burn mechanisms. Another common way is Crafting where players use lower-level items to create higher tier items/consumables/cosmetics which consume component items and at times in-game currency.

A general rule of thumb is that sustainable economies cannot pay out (mint) more rewards to players than the value that is brought into the game from players via in-game spending. Axie Infinity, which saw the price of SLP, its in-game currency plunge over 90% in the past several months, is also forced to battle this glaring fact. For the NFT gaming space to succeed, it needs to evolve from schemes without gameplay to exciting games which attract pure players to sustainable economies and in-game entertainment spending.