The "making money by walking" method seems to be a scam, but the vice president of Adidas said it is "obsessive"?

Recently, Scott Dunlap, Vice President of adidas and CEO of Runtastic, posted on social media, "I'm very happy to witness the origin of Move to Earn. I think in 2022, more people will be obsessed with "STEPN ".

The so-called Move to Earn, or “making money by walking”, has caused quite a stir in the crypto space. However, when it comes to making money by walking, the first thing that comes to mind is a Ponzi scheme called “Qubu”.

What exactly is Move to Earn? Is STEPN, the initiator of this concept, the "Qubu" of the blockchain world ?

01
What is Move to Earn?

The comments of the vice president of Adidas on the M2E project caused a huge stir, and the craze surrounding Move to Earn was instantly triggered. So what exactly does Move to Earn mean?

Literally, XX to Earn means a way to realize value, while Move to Earn binds the virtual data of the blockchain with certain behaviors of players in the real world, using movement and motion as a way to contribute data and earn income . A similar concept is "Play to Earn". The difference is that "Play to Earn" uses blockchain games as a carrier, and players participate in the game and influence the ecology as part of the ecology, thereby having a positive impact on the blockchain game itself. While the value of the blockchain game continues to rise, it generates actual income for themselves.

02
Adidas Vice President's M2E "Origin" STEPN

STEPN was created by the Find Satoshi Lab team in September 2021, and officially launched its public beta on December 20. It is deployed on the Solana chain's GameFi, an NFT chain game. On January 12, 2022, the official Twitter account announced the launch of the first mobile version of the APP (iOS/Android). Players will be able to purchase NFTs such as sneakers, gems, badges, etc. in one stop on the NFT market within its APP.

According to the official white paper, this game aims to promote a healthier lifestyle for millions of people, bring them into the Web3.0 world, and make a positive contribution to carbon neutrality . Players need to first obtain NFT sneakers as an entry ticket to open the "Move to Earn" play and earn mode. After that, they can earn reward tokens by walking, jogging or running outdoors.

In short, players can activate Move to Earn as long as they purchase sneakers NFTs, and subsequent earnings depend on the attributes, levels, gem bonuses, and personal athletic ability of the sneakers you obtain.

So far, 10,000 NFT running shoes have been distributed for free. All tokens need to be activated through exercise in the "Healthy Exercise Program" on the mobile phone and linked to the APP data for synchronization and identification before they can take effect.

Then the logic of STEPN seems to be that 10,000 free NFT running shoes serve as the basis for market operation, and then drive users to exercise to obtain tokens and further consume them. All players other than the 10,000 users who participate in the airdrop for free need to pledge or purchase governance tokens to obtain running shoe NFTs.

At this point, we can think of STEPN's consensus method as a POW mechanism similar to proof of work, but unlike Bitcoin's POW consensus which requires encryption operations and hash parsing, STEPN's consensus is the "healthy exercise program" in your own mobile phone.

On January 20, the Solana chain Move-to-Earn game STEPN announced the completion of a US$5 million seed round of financing, led by Sequoia Capital India and Folius Ventures, with participation from Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, 6th Man Ventures, Sfermion and other institutions, as well as former ParaFi Capital partner Santiago Santos and Republic Asia Pacific partner Zhen Cao.

The financing was completed through SAFT and will be used for team expansion and product optimization. STEPN is an NFT game based on Solana's Move to Earn. The game production team previously won the Solana Ignition Hackathon Gaming Track. Players can equip NFT sneakers in the game and earn tokens by walking or running outdoors . STEPN completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Sequoia Capital and Folius Ventures.

With the new financing, STEPN plans to develop and release new features in the coming months, including social elements, NFT achievement system, NFT sneaker rental system , etc. The team is also constantly accepting feedback from the community and carefully designing its economic model.

As a comparison, let’s take a look at STEPN’s “predecessor”, which may be the real origin of making money by walking, QBU, which has been identified as a “Ponzi scheme”, and see what the differences are.

03
"Walking to Make Money" Ponzi Scheme

"QuBu", an APP that allows people to make money by walking, has become popular on the entire Internet since its launch at the end of 2018. It even ranked first in the lifestyle category of the APP market.

The software claims to have 30 million users. Users only need to install the Qubu app and record their steps every day to get "Qubu candy". The promotional advertisement claims that as long as you carry your phone and use the app to walk 4,000 steps every day, you can earn a guaranteed 200 yuan a month, and there is no upper limit, and it is said that the maximum monthly income can be 20,000 yuan.

However, after being attracted by the high so-called "rewards", users discovered that this mobile app, which uses the slogan "make your hard work worthwhile", actually uses a "pyramid scheme" model where you can get rewards by "inviting people to join". The reason why Qubu attracted so many users in a short period of time is mainly because of its low cost, and each person can participate by paying 1 yuan (is it similar to the free airdrop of STEPN?).

"Qubu's model is 'sports mining'. It pulls people in, but it needs a lot of new people to come in to support it. It has a pyramid structure. The further you go, the more people are needed at the bottom. Only when new people come in, the people above will benefit."

However, as Qubu developed, more and more people used "technology" to "exercise", and the price of Qubu candy was frequently reduced, with an average daily inflation rate of 0.3 yuan . In just half a month, the value of Qubu candy quickly depreciated to the point where no one recognized it, and a large number of sell orders in the market caused panic. By mid-September, the value of Qubu candy was almost zero, and the candy in the hands of a large number of users became a string of numbers.

On October 12, 2019, Sichuan News Television reported on the "QuBu" scam, saying that the "QuBu" APP that makes money by walking is actually suspected of pyramid selling and illegal fund-raising, and has been investigated by relevant departments in Changsha. As of mid-January 2022, the relevant case is still under further trial, and the investments of some victims cannot be recovered.

04
What is the difference between STEPN and QBU?

After understanding STEPN and QBus, we can compare the two in the following indicators:

1. Is it decentralized?
Qubu obviously does not have the characteristics of decentralization, while STEPN does.

2. Is there a high threshold?
Both Qubu and the current STEPN attract users with "ultra-low thresholds", with Qubu using "1 yuan registration" and STEPN using "free airdrops". One has a low threshold, while the other has no threshold. If you compare STEPN with the more popular blockchain games in the market ( the thresholds for blockchain games with good operations are generally around 100U~1000U ), STEPN's no threshold may be the basis for it to attract a large number of players.

3. Does the asset have inflation risk?
The models of QUBU and STEPN have different inflation risks due to their different levels of decentralization . STEPN's in-game token GST needs to consider more inflation risks due to its unlimited issuance, while STEPN's limited-edition GMT has better anti-inflation capabilities. The degree of inflation needs to take into account the number of players and the state of economic operation.

05
Conclusion

The times determine the correctness of behavior and market methods. Similarly, people who are limited to the times can only see the market limited by their own cognition . Xiaolingtong and Jobs almost simultaneously focused on the functional diversity and development of greater functions of mobile phones, but Xiaolingtong only developed regional communication technology. The low cost and poor signal made it quickly abandoned by the times after a period of popularity. Apple's almost pathological "perfectionism" in the early days of its products created today's communication equipment giant. The novel M2E model seems "incredible", but it does have its value. Let's wait and see what the future holds.