STEPN, a web app powered by the Solana blockchain and rewarded for walking through space, released some notable statistics on Thursday, marking a year of success.
Users have traveled over 67 million miles (108,017,738 kilometers) on the app, reaching an all-time high of 1 million on June 2, 2022, and a total of 4.72 million registered users at the time of writing.
It was reported that STEPN made over $26.8 million and $122 million in the first and second quarters of 2022, respectively.
While generating significant income this year, STEPN struggled to find the right tokenomic balance at specific points. As Erina Azmi of The Block Research wrote in April, users who have gone over level 30 have lost key ways to burn their tokens, which could lead to an inflation of GST, one of the app’s in-game tokens, if left uncorrected.
Distribution of in-game currency STEPN.
The stakes were high as previous giants in the play-to-earn sector, such as Axie Infinity (AXS), experienced a sharp decline in user numbers after its in-game token dropped in value due to inflation. Azmi writes that the number of STEPN users declined in April when the price of GMT, the game’s second in-game currency, fell by 80%, dropping the game’s monthly user count from 700,000 to less than 100,000. GMT and GST were critical.
However, over the year, STEPN implemented supply throttling, such as buybacks and token burns, which reduced the amount of GMT in July, helping to make its gaming ecosystem more resilient.
