What is Move to Earn? Crypto Joins the Fitness World

What is Move to Earn? Move to Earn - or M2E - consists of earning crypto tokens by literally moving your body. Mostly related to fitness exercises, these projects surfaced to encourage crypto investors to engage in fitness activities.

Top Move to Earn Crypto Projects

• STEPN - NFT-based application where users buy virtual sneaker NFT and run in real life to earn crypto tokens.
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• Genopets - Similar to Pokemon Go, users create NFT characters for free and upgrade them through virtual battles and challenges with other players in real life.
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• Dotmoovs - A mixture of fitness, crypto and social media, Dotmoovs provides a TikTok-like structure for users to share their physical skills, join competitions and share their performance for ratings that can be converted into tokens.

The past year witnessed the rise of Play to Earn games across the crypto ecosystem. Based on blockchain technology, crypto assets and NFTs, Play to Earn games rose in popularity as they allowed users to earn in-game tokens that are also used as cryptocurrencies and can therefore be traded and exchanged like any other asset.

Projects like Axie Infinity, DeFi Kingdoms, Sandbox and more broke the barriers of what was once considered possible in crypto, showing investors that they can earn actual money by contributing their time and entertainment on their platforms.

Since there is no limit as to how Play to Earn frameworks can be applied to its users, new ways of exploiting this category rapidly began to surface. The second most popular method currently, behind crypto online gaming, is Move to Earn (M2E).

In this article, we explain what the Move to Earn crypto category is along with a breakdown of its top projects.

What is Move to Earn?

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As the category title suggests, Move to Earn - or M2E - consists of earning crypto tokens by literally moving your body. Mostly related to fitness exercises, Move to Earn projects surfaced as means to encourage crypto investors to engage in fitness activities. Often referenced as “FitnessFi” in Web3 applications, it utilizes GPS features in smartphones, smartwatches and other daily hardware to locate the users and identify how they’ve progressed in their goals.

Although the concept of Move to Earn applications is fairly recent, the gamification of exercise isn’t. After all, games like Wii Sports and Pokemon Go are based on players moving and receiving rewards for it. What makes Move to Earn apps special is the fact that users can actually exchange and trade their tokens for other virtual values just like any other crypto asset. It also incorporates NFT technology to exchange in-app items and features to better aid the users in their challenges, much like Axie Infinity’s characters.

Imagine going for a jog five times a week and, at the end of the month, having enough crypto tokens saved up to pay the rent? Although that’s a real possibility, rewards for M2E cryptos are not as easy as they may seem.

Top Move To Earn Crypto Projects

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Although Move to Earn is a very new trend and category in the crypto markets, it’s already making waves when it comes to market cap and popularity. In fact, its biggest project recently struck a two billion dollar valuation and became the fourth largest gaming-related crypto! With that said, here are the top 5 Move to Earn projects currently available to sign up and start earning right away:

STEPN (GMT and GST)

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By far the biggest project in the Move to Earn category, STEPN currently holds a market cap of nearly 2 billion dollars - growing over 3000% just in the past month (yes, three thousand percent). STEPN’s proposition is simple: users install the app, activate their GPS and start running to earn STEPN’s in-game token GST - which can be burned or traded for the main token GMT, USDC and other crypto assets.

But as previously mentioned in this article, things are easier said than done. Like most Play to Earn games, STEPN requires players to first invest in a particular NFT to be able to start using the application and earning tokens. In STEPN’s case, that NFT is a virtual sneaker. Each sneaker comes with different styles, features and abilities - including how easy it is for each item to earn tokens based on the owner’s movement. STEPN is a Solana-based project, so the sneaker prices are calculated in SOL and can range from 1 up to 20, even 30 SOLs. That’s quite the hefty investment but players can always upgrade their cheapest sneakers as they play, with the option to sell them at the STEPN marketplace or trade for other sneakers and products.

Given that STEPN is merely two months old and already accounts for a $2 billion valuation at the time of writing, it’s safe to say that users are very happy with this framework!

Genopets (GENE)

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Although STEPN is the biggest Move to Earn game by market cap, it was not the first - that title belongs to Genopets. Created in 2021, Genopets holds a similar experience proposal of games like Pokemon Go. In Genopets, players own NFT-based creatures of the same name and go around exploring the world and battling other creatures to level up the characters. As you upgrade your creature and battle other animals, you receive in-game KI tokens which can be exchanged for GENE or any GENE-accessible exchange.

What makes Genopets unique is the fact that it’s also Free to Play. Unlike STEPN, Axie Infinity and others, players don’t have to pay to create their NFT Genopets - they can be accessed right away by signing up to the platform and “encoding” their first creature.

Dotmoovs (MOOV)

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Although the whole concept of Move to Earn is already pretty unique, Dotmoovs might be the most uniquely-ambitious project of them all. Think sports, fitness and crypto meet social media and play to earn format - mix it in a bowl and you’ll have Dotmoovs.

Created in 2021, this project utilizes a platform similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels where users are motivated to share sports and fitness-related content in exchange for likes and ratings on your performance - which can then be traded for tokens. The application, available for download on iOS and Android like the other crypto projects on this list, also allows users to compete with each other and set up custom reward systems for the challenges.



Author: Gate.io Researcher Victor Bastos
* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
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