Boosting physical fitness with an economy based on the value of movement

Boosting physical fitness with an economy based on the value of movement

One of the biggest fitness challenges is that humans are very impatient creatures, unable to motivate themselves long enough to reap the long-term benefits of being active. Stay fit and you’ll probably end up living a lot longer, but there’s no immediate, noticeable benefit to working out, although it’s obviously beneficial. For this reason, many people lack the motivation to try.

Seeking to change that is Sweat Economy, creator of the Sweatcoin fitness app, which aims to make society more active by making travel profitable.

The idea that “movement” itself has value might seem odd at first, but it actually makes sense when you consider the impacts it has on our health.

“Sweat Economy believes that your physical activity – namely your steps – has tangible value, to yourself, your family, your doctor, your health insurer, your employer and ultimately even the country in which you live,” said the co-founder of Sweat Economy and CEO Anton Derliatka.

The fact is that being active has long-term health benefits, which means physical benefits for the individual concerned. This translates to improvements in your mood, work productivity and reduced work absenteeism, Derlyatka said, which ultimately benefits society as a whole. In other words, moving has value because it allows people to live longer, more productive lives, he said, and it is this value that the Sweatcoin app taps into, rewarding its users with cryptocurrency tokens based on the number of daily steps. they take.

“By getting people to be more physically active, we increase human productivity, ease the burden on the social healthcare system, and create a healthier planet,”

said Derliatka. So it makes sense that movement has value because it brings tangible benefits. Sweat Economy’s mission is to turn that value into something that is immediately beneficial, to motivate the world to create even more value by moving more.

The Sweatcoin app wasn’t always all about crypto. When it launched in 2015, the sweatcoins that users earned as rewards for taking at least 1,000 steps a day were originally just reward points that could be redeemed for sweepstakes and discounts on certain products sold by its partners. However, crypto was the plan all along, it’s just that the founders of Sweatcoin came up with their idea a bit too early, before the infrastructure was in place to bring the concept to life.

“We wanted to make the world more physically active by providing incentives,” Derlyatka recounted. “We were considering forking Bitcoin in 2015, and in 2016 we met with Vitalik Buterin to see if we should create movement currency on Ethereum, but he told us the blockchains weren’t ready yet. So we chose to start centrally, fix the user base and business model, and go from there.

Thus, Sweatcoin was born as a Web2 fitness app, although it was always intended to make the transition at the right time. With the launch of the Near blockchain mainnet in 2022, Sweatcoin finally decided it was ready to make the leap to Web3, exchanging its in-app reward points for a new cryptocurrency token, SWEAT.

The biggest Web3 integration event in history

For an application that already had more than 120 million users, the decision to suddenly switch from Web2 to Web3 could be considered risky. While crypto has its proponents, there are just as many – if not more – detractors, who fear it is a scam, has no value, is too difficult to understand, risky, etc.

Realizing the need to allay these fears, Sweat Economy took several steps to ensure the onboarding process was as smooth as possible. For one thing, there is no upfront investment required by users, Derlyatka explained. Both the original Sweatcoin app and the new Sweat Wallet app are free to download and use. Additionally, there is no KYC process or complicated user interface as is often the case with most other digital wallet apps.

“We created a simple and seamless UX on Sweat Wallet to onboard our users from Sweatcoin,” Derlyatka said. “So the user just logs in with their Sweatcoin account, the wallet is created for them without any hurdles like needing to know what a seed phrase is or how to store it securely.”

The other aspect of onboarding existing users with Sweat Wallet and the idea of ​​earning SWEAT tokens was to eliminate all the crypto and Web3 jargon that is more or less exclusive to cryptocurrency enthusiasts. So instead of “staking” your SWEAT tokens to earn interest, users have the opportunity to “grow” their holdings. It’s a language that ordinary people understand and allows Sweat Economy to literally “walk” people into the world of crypto, in more ways than one.

It’s a strategy that has paid off. Of Sweatcoin’s 120 million global users, more than 13 million of them have created a Sweat Wallet by the time of SWEAT’s token generation event in September 2022, making it the largest event in Web3 integration of history.

“Not just the biggest, but the biggest by a factor of ten!” said Derliatka.

Since then, Sweat Economy has gone from strength to strength, growing organically at around 10,000 new Sweat Wallet signups per day, with the app itself consistently ranking in DappRadar’s top 10 Blockchain Dapps since its launch. launch in September.

Derlyatka said the success of Sweat Wallet shows the world is ready for low-barrier entry into Web3, and he foresees even faster growth when the company launches a more aggressive marketing strategy that encourages users to purchase NFTs for upgrade their SWEAT token rewards.

A sustainable economy based on movement

The second major challenge for Sweat Economy was to ensure that SWEAT is able to truly represent the value of movement. What is stopping millions of people from earning SWEAT every day and flooding the world with SWEAT tokens and diluting its value? This is where its unique and enduring “tokenomics” come in, along with several different forms of utility.

The first aspect is that SWEAT is designed to be anti-inflationary, with an ever decreasing rate of inflation. Derlyatka explained that as more users sign up for the Sweat Wallet, it becomes increasingly difficult to earn every SWEAT coin. Already, just six months after its launch, SWEAT is now three times harder to hit, he said.

Additionally, Derlyatka explained that Sweat Economy Treasury has pledged to use at least 50% of its profits, derived from its web2 revenue streams, to purchase SWEAT tokens on the open market. These tokens are then either burned – taken out of circulation – or distributed as “staking” rewards, depending on what the democratic, decentralized sweat economy community decides to do with them. The result is that even as more users join and start earning SWEAT, the number of tokens in circulation will remain fairly constant.

SWEAT also has tons of utilities that encourage users to use their rewards. Users are encouraged to deposit their winnings into so-called “growth pots”, allowing them to receive an attractive return on these deposits. Essentially, it’s like playing in other types of cryptocurrency, only in addition to returns users also have the chance to win amazing prizes including iPhones, fitness equipment and a Tesla Model 3, For example. Alternatively, Sweatcoin users can simply take their earnings and exchange them for Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency on a third-party crypto exchange, essentially cashing out their rewards.

However, users who want to be able to influence the Sweat Economy community better keep their rewards. Derlyatka said Sweat Economy’s decentralization strategy envisions a much bigger role for SWEAT in the future, providing governance rights to users.

“Token holders will have the power when it comes to key decisions regarding the sweat economy, starting with token burning,” Derlyatka said. Thus, Sweatcoin users themselves will have a say in ensuring that the business model remains sustainable and continues to bring value to the movement.

According to Derlyatka, Sweat Economy’s ultimate ambition is to build a global economy where millions of people can experience the value of movement.

“When someone asks one of our users, ‘what makes SWEAT valuable?’, they won’t have to go through a list of jargon, utilities, and use cases. “Derlyatka said. “They can just say, it represents the value of their physical activity.”

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