SALT LAKE CITY — It was around dinner time, drinking jungle juice, when the bad news hit me. I emailed his boss and said, “If he doesn't walk another 4,400 steps, he will lose $333.''
That's the economics lesson you get when you bait the daily steps of a group building a crypto-based fitness game called Moonwalk.
The assumptions are: People are more likely to meet their fitness goals (e.g., the number of steps they take each day) when they are held accountable externally. Perhaps it could be a friend or a monetary reward. Moonwalk offers both.
On a chilly Wednesday in Utah, someone from an 8-month-old startup visited me and three other mtnDAO (mtnDAO) developers for a month in Salt Lake City building apps for the Solana blockchain. Working Space) participants were essentially persuaded to bet on themselves. A game that counts steps. We want players to pool their assets, commit to achieving their daily step goal, and hope that no other player can reach their goal.
The buy-in for our 3-day challenge was $1,000 USDC stablecoin. Each of us had to walk 10,000 steps a day. For every day you miss your goal, you'll contribute $333 to the prize pool. At the end of the challenge, those who hit their daily goals will split the pool. Each of us has full control over our original deposit. As long as you walk 10,000 steps a day, you'll get that money back.
Marvius, a pseudonymous product manager working on mtnDAO's Moonwalk, told potential players “you'll get tricked and healthy so you don't lose money.” Another player, pseudonym Grove Street, summarized it this way: “I like making money. I've been making money so far.”
We send deposits to Moonwalk's omnibus deposit address and link on-chain accounts with health profiles sourced from step counting data from iPhones and Androids. The app retrieves step count data from Google Fit every 10 minutes and updates the game's leaderboard.
I got a taste of life as an early stage tester, but after sending money to that address, it didn't immediately appear on the leaderboard. Mr. Marvius assured us that this is a “known bug” that occurs when players reload his web page during a deposit transfer. Sure enough, it showed up right away.
I felt I had to start walking right away. Now it was costing me money. I went for a short walk in the winter sky. It will be pitch black in a few hours. The sooner you step in, the better.
Moonwalk's ambitions extend beyond step counting and into many other areas of fitness, founder KW said. He plans to “create more games that encourage positive behavior change.”
However, for now it is limited to steps. Over the course of three days, my girlfriend and six other players logged tens of thousands of steps in a hurry to avoid losing any stablecoins. Only one player failed. He missed his 10,000 step goal twice and lost $666, split among the rest of us.
It was the same for me. When all was said and done, I went home with a winnings of $111.
“I think the moonwalk makes simple things more fun and engaging,” said Anders, an intern at Mrgn Research. “It makes it more competitive and more fun.” He estimated that he earned about $800 a week.
“I plan to continue playing games in the open for a while.”
Meanwhile, I'm behind on my steps today.
