The Fi suffix in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has already joined with gaming to create GameFi, and social media to produce SocialFi. Could fitness be next, with FitFi emerging as the next new frontier in tokenized earning?
While the fruits of DeFi are reaped by farming, FitFi employs a basic move-to-earn model, incentivizing users to get out of the house and earn tokens by becoming more active.
The frontrunner of the FitFi trend is StepN, “a web 3 lifestyle app with social-fi and game-fi elements.” StepN players can make “handsome earnings” for simply walking, jogging, or running outdoors.
With the benefit of its first-mover advantage, StepN has already captured a significant user base. In an interview, StepN revealed it has around 100,000 daily active users, and around 500,000 monthly active users. Its social media channels are popular too, with around 260,000 followers on Twitter.
The native token of StepN, GMT, is demonstrating strong growth. Currently, on Solana only, StepN has plans to take GMT to BNB Smart Chain (BSC) in the near future and ETH in the longer term.
GMT has a $1.3 billion market cap with a token price of $2.27, up 2,000% in a little over a month.
The FitFi hype train has started to roll and imitators are already running to hitch a ride.
Ready runner two?
Most DeFi market segments are endless imitations of each other with the occasional incremental innovations to push the sector forwards. StepN has now gained significant momentum, but now faces a contender in the form of Step.app.
Stepp.app is currently seeking to raise $3.3 million on DAO Maker to help them tackle StepN’s lead. With a Telegram community of over 30,000 followers, Stepp.app appears capable of fulfilling that ambition.
Still, the obvious similarity of Step.app’s logo to StepN suggests the project may fall closer to the imitator rather than the innovator side of the scale.
One FitFi project, which employs a wholly different approach to StepN and Step.app, is Genopets, a non-fungible token-based move-to-earn RPG featuring monster-like pets not a million miles away from Pokemon.
Players can level up their characters through movement and then enjoy the in-game benefits of playing with their stronger pet.
Genopets has also built a strong community of users, who regularly post videos of themselves exercising, eating carrots, exercising while eating carrots, or even exercising with carrots.
Where next, FitFi?
FitFi certainly has all the necessary ingredients to capture the public imagination and could prove to be the next big thing in incentivized earning, but sustaining user interest in the longer term is always the far greater challenge.
As proved in the play-to-earn market, finding users is one thing, but holding on to them is another. If FitFi follows the GameFi model which preceded it, then early adopters will do well from this latest trend.
Those joining later may find themselves joining the race just as it runs out of steam.
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