How STEPN works: earning, sneakers, and strategies.

How can walking earn you money? Let us explain.

How does earning work in STEPN?

To make money with STEPN currently there are a few steps:

1. Download the STEPN app on iOS or Android

2. Get an invite code to access the beta (learn how to get a STEPN invite code)

3. Purchase a sneaker in the app (read this guide to buying the best STEPN sneaker)

4. Earn by walking, jogging, running with your new sneaker

5. Repair your sneaker using a portion of your earned “GST”

6. Level up your sneaker and improve your daily earnings by improving your shoe

7. Wait for your energy to restore, and repeat the process in 24 hours

That’s a very basic explanation of how STEPN works in April 2022, and it’s safe to say that this core mechanic won’t be changed anytime soon. What confuses most newcomers is the repair and level up mechanics in STEPN. As long as you had more than 0 energy, you will earn GST (“Green Satoshi Coin”) while you do your walk/jog/run. Your shoe however also has a “health bar” (called durability) which gets degraded slightly every time you earn with it, so you have to repair your sneaker in STEPN by spending a small amount of the GST you earned.

• At 50/100 durability, your sneaker’s ability to earn GST will drop to 90%.

• At 20/100 durability, your sneaker’s ability to earn GST will drop to 10%.

If your shoe is a low level (for example, level zero) then you will also want to spend some of the GST you earned by levelling up your STEPN sneaker. Every level you increase your sneaker gives you points which you can use in increasing your STEPN sneaker’s four main attributes (efficiency, resilience, luck, and comfort). At lower levels you will spend most of your points levelling up efficiency and resilience, as these are the two which affect your earnings the most:

• Efficiency: increases amount of GST earned

• Resilience: slows the rate at which your shoe’s resilience is reduced thus reducing the repair cost

You can stop levelling up your shoe at anytime, and convert GST to USDC within the app (check the latest price of GST to USD here). USDC is almost exactly equivalent to the value of 1 US dollar, and can be easily sold on any crypto exchange and converted into your local currency. Converting GST to USDC how you’d likely take profit from STEPN, but there are long-term advantages to continuing to level up your shoe, or even saving up your GST and purchasing another sneaker to increase your daily energy. We will have a more detailed post explaining “energy” in STEPN soon (signup to the mailing list at the bottom of the page).

How much can I earn with STEPN?

STEPN sneakers can be expensive, and currently sell for over 12 Solana (over $1200 USD), so you want to have a good understanding of the profitability of STEPN before purchasing one. Below is a graph (accurate as of April 2022) which reflects how the efficiency of a shoe impacts its earnings:

If we use the level 5 sneaker’s attributes from above, an efficiency of 23.8 will be earning roughly 4.5 GST per energy spent, and given that owning one STEPN sneaker gives you 2 energy, you will earn approximately 9 GST per day with this level 5 walker shoe.

• ~9 GST x 4.5 USD (the market price of GST on 20/04/22) = 40.5 USD a day (before repair cost)

Level 5 is quite a low level though, and you can dramatically increase your efficiency at higher levels, meaning that what you earn is highly dependent upon how much you have invested in levelling up your shoe, and how much energy you have (this is based on how many sneakers you own, and if you own any “uncommon” or rarer sneakers).

Keep in mind though, GST earnings are impacted by a variety of circumstances:

• Cellular reception

• GPS signal

• Mild Randomness

So the chart above is only useful for rough estimation. You can also use stepn.guide for a more detailed estimate of repair costs, and also figure out the most efficient way to allocate your points in efficiency/resilience for any given level.

How long will it take to pay off a STEPN shoe?

As you can probably guess, it depends. What did your sneaker cost? How long will you level it up for, how much does it cost to repair (what is its base resilience), what’s the price of GST, what’s the price of Solana? Generally, for a common sneaker which is at the floor price (cheapest price) you will likely be able to pay it off in under 2 months, and almost definitely within 3 months in the current market (April 2022). After that time, it’s pure profit.

It might be comforting to know that STEPN sneakers have increased in value significantly, and there is a very healthy market for them, so if you feel like STEPN is too much of a commitment, it won’t be hard to sell your shoe for the same price you bought it for, or even higher (depending upon its level, attributes and the market rate).