Few people know that STEPN is not precisely the first move-to-earn game. Of course, if you delve into the concept of M2E, then the primacy of the most famous NFT sneakers is undeniable. But players could earn currency for simple steps long before the advent of STEPN. The Sweatcoin application provided this opportunity.
History
Sweatcoin appeared back in 2015. Four people founded the application in Britain: Oleg Formenko, Anton Derlyatka, Egor Khmelev, and Henry Child. The game was conceived as a fitness application, but with the ability to receive rewards that can later be exchanged for various goods and services of partners directly in the application. With this concept, Sweatcoin was able to attract over 120 million users.
The creators have long planned to introduce cryptocurrencies into their projects, but they needed time to prepare. Even when STEPN appeared, they didn’t start to launch urgently in the hope of catching the same hype. And only in April 2022 did the creators announce that this year the long-awaited release of the Sweatcoin game into the light of the blockchain would take place. But more on that a little later.
This year, Sweatcoin has become the #1 downloaded app in the Health & Fitness category.
How to play?
The way Sweatcoin plays seems to be the simplest of all M2E projects. To earn – you just need to walk. No need to buy NFT sneakers, no need to search for the coveted activation code, and no need to even go outside. You can even walk around your room back and forth if you wish. Dream? Wait, it’s not that simple.
Earnings in Sweatcoin are formed as follows. For every 1000 steps, you get 1 in-game Sweatcoin (SWC), which can later be exchanged for SWEAT 10:1 cryptocurrency. Your steps are displayed on the built-in tracker.
More than 10,000 steps per day will not bring you profit unless you want to purchase Premium. However, in the game and without it, there are several ways to increase earnings:
- Daily double boost. Every day for 20 minutes, you can earn 2 times more Sweatcoin than usual; just use the bonus.
- 3 rewards per day. For viewing ads, you can get an additional random amount of SWC from 0.1 to 100.
- 5 SWC for each invited friend.
Even before the blockchain release, play money could be exchanged directly for various goods and services in the application. Sweatcoin has a broad base of partners, which cannot but please the audience. For example, you can exchange 800 SWC for a $40 Amazon gift card.
The bar chart below shows the official data on the total cost of services for which SWEAT coins were exchanged within 8 months.
SWEAT on the blockchain
The game’s creators kept their promise in the spring and released the SWEAT token on the blockchain. SWEAT is based on the Ethereum and Near Protocol blockchains. The listing took place on September 12, and today the token can be bought on almost all popular crypto exchanges, including Huobi, OKX, FTX, and ByBit. Only Binance is not on this list.
After the release of SWEAT, two currencies were formed in the game. Directly the SWEAT token on the blockchain and the in-game currency Sweatcoin or SWC, which can be used for the old purpose if there is no desire to integrate into web 3.0.
A separate Sweat Wallet application was created for SWEAT, which allows you to exchange Sweatcoin tokens. How to withdraw tokens to a wallet, you ask? Each user can simply connect the game to the wallet and exchange it for SWEAT at a ratio of 10 to 1. For 10 SWC tokens, you will receive 1 SWEAT token. And in the Sweat Wallet, the possibility of staking at 12% per annum is available.
Interestingly, SWEAT is deflationary due to the ever-increasing difficulty of mining. Today, 1 token can be earned in 1290 steps, and this number will grow a little tomorrow. By 2028, 1 SWEAT will already cost you almost 19,000 steps! Good news for long-term price formation.
So, a month has passed since the listing. Let’s take a look at the SWEAT token chart.
At the start, SWEAT ranged from $0.05 to $0.08. It should be noted that no one expected a higher price. After all, the project has existed for a very long time, and millions of users have received vast amounts in the equivalent of game currency during this time. Accordingly, it would be foolish to imagine that all of them will now become rich in an instant. But back to the chart.
Less than a week after the listing, the token took a downtrend and continues to decline. At press time, SWEAT is trading at $0.01979. This, by the way, is almost equal to the price of GST in the Solana network, which was listed long before the competitor.
Thus, the token’s price fell by 61% over the month. Of course, this is not surprising when a bear market reigns and a new project emerges. But it is essential to understand: if the game can get through this challenging period and if the developers release competent updates and develop their brainchild in a quality manner. A significant take-off can await us in the bull market.
Development Prospects
In general, the project has enormous plans for the future, and this is good news. At least until today, the creators kept their promises, and we hope this will continue. Sweatcoin has a rather impressive Litepaper, but let’s focus on the most critical points.
The project already has its own Sweat Wallet crypto wallet.
So far, you cannot buy SWEAT for fiat in it; that is, you can get tokens only by withdrawing to your wallet from the game itself. However, this feature is planned to be introduced in the future, and according to the creators, it will appear before the end of this year. So far, the ability to buy crypto for fiat is available only using the MoonPay service.
In 2023-24, the project wants to launch its NFT marketplace. What is going to be there? I think it’s easy to guess – probably NFT sneakers. But Sweatcoin has been around for a long time and has acquired so many partners that it will have something to surprise us with.
It is also planned that SWEAT will be available for exchange on various decentralized exchanges and maybe even on our own. And control over the cryptocurrency will be transferred to the DAO, achieving maximum decentralization.
The project even has plans for 2025. Yes, in the current realities, when few can plan even tomorrow, Sweatcoin continues to think about the distant future. So after 3 years, other opportunities for earning SWEAT should appear in the game besides walking or running. For example, cycling or swimming.
So, Sweatcoin is a pioneer in the “move and earn” genre, even though it was released on the blockchain much later than its famous competitors. In any case, the game has quite visible and large-scale development prospects. And most importantly, they have a massive audience that trusts the project and has been using the application for a long time. We wish Sweatcoin good luck and will follow the project’s further development together.
