Move-to-earn is the controversial concept behind fitness in the metaverse.
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For 7,400 Binance stablecoins, an aspiring metaverse athlete can buy a pair of Asics sneakers. That’s about $7,400 in fiat, making the multicolor low-tops some extremely expensive shoes, even for the most dedicated sneakerhead. The Asics are NFTs that grant access to an invitation-only digital exercise space, StepN. Cofounder Yawn Rong recommends that users get started with three pairs. (Yes, that’s more than $20,000 worth of NFT sneakers.) Thousands of dollars on digital shoes might sound excessive, but it’s a steal compared to the NFT Nikes someone bought in April 2021 for $134,000. But unlike the Takashi Murakami-designed Nikes, the Asics promise the buyer a chance to earn back the money—by exercising.
StepN is one of the many fitness-focused metaverse companies that are broadly called move-to-earn. It’s a simple concept: Users exercise IRL and generate in-game currency that can be used to edit their in-game avatars, upgrade their in-game equipment, and in some cases, convert that currency into cash. The value of the in-game currency fluctuates, meaning a grueling run today might be worth the same amount as a sluggish walk to the mailbox tomorrow. To a mix of applause and groans, move-to-earn is here. Some critics, and even some fans, are calling it a Ponzi scheme. Those who are building move-to-earn universes say it’s the future of fitness. Either way, it’s a logical next step for the metaverse, where the name of the game seems to be financializing everything, including your morning walk.
Move-to-earn, the underlying concept of the fitness metaverse, has connections to both the wider metaverse and the regular meatspace. Nintendo’s Wii Fit, launched in the United States in 2008, encouraged users to gamercise, though it didn’t offer any monetary reward. (In fact, the games could cost the user their TV screen if they lost grip on the remote.) And in 2012, an app called GymPact allowed users to earn monetary rewards for meeting their weekly gym visit goals, paid for by users who missed theirs. But none of these efforts could quite match the intensity of a traditional gym, plus they didn’t come with the potential to get absolutely shredded while earning cash.
Only 23% of Americans meet the CDC’s guidelines for leisure-time physical activity, according to a 2018 survey, so there’s a market to financialize the simple act of moving around. Metaverse companies are hoping to capitalize on that market, not just through earning tokens but through rethinking the relationship between gaming and exercise. OliveX, a Hong Kong-based company that’s focused on different types of gamified fitness, introduced a jogging app called Dustland Runner where users follow an audio storyline about a dystopian world infested with pirates. Runners complete missions by, well, running, and earn DOSE tokens (short for “dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins”) for their efforts. There’s also an app called 22 Pushups, an extremely utilitarian push-up counter that tracks reps via your phone’s camera. Users generate DOSE tokens in several OliveX games, except for those in the US, where OliveX does not issue the tokens where regulations prohibit it. Instead, users earn “completion tickets,” which the company hopes can be converted to DOSE tokens later on. OliveX also invested in Genopets, a move-to-earn game in which users care for a “digital spirit animal” by moving around and completing cognitively stimulating puzzles for GENE tokens, said Marisa Lam, head of marketing and communications at OliveX.
“Everyone is talking about move-to-earn,” Lam said. “But we would like to give that a twist: It’s move and earn. [For us,] it has always been about making exercise fun, long before blockchain.”
