STEPN Rejects Staff Layoff Accusations as STEPN (GMT) Dips 10% in a Day

The popular health & well-being app STEPN might be taking a step back, as the company reportedly laid off around 100 workers, including moderators and ambassadors. This was reported by South China Morning Post, even though representatives of the STEPN Web3 app claim the story was misleading, because the Web3 firm has only “parted ways with volunteer MODs.” Fundamentally, the recent staff layoff is seen as a “change of focus” rather than STEPN tightening its belts.

3/5 This month, we are focusing on the road ahead. We are running on! Our team must concentrate on ongoing projects full-time, so we will not be hosting an October Town Hall. In the meantime, we will be devoting all of our resources to progressing to the next stage of FSL.
— Yawn Rong (@yawn_rong) October 11, 2022

Why Users Are Stepping Away from STEPN

The significance of the recent layoff is debatable. However, there’s no denying that the app’s monthly active user count has drastically declined. According to the stats provided by Dune Analytics, STEPN had reached the highest point of popularity in May, when over 700,000 monthly users used the step-counting crypto app. Ever since then, the monthly active user count has been steadily decreasing, in some months even by half.

One of the reasons behind the big slump is the volatile crypto market conditions, as well as intensified competition from Sweatcoin, which also launched its own cryptocurrency that’s using the same mechanism of walk-to-mint. Besides, a big chunk of STEPN (GMT) investor funds in relation to the cryptocurrency are locked up until March 2023.

It began to focus on promoting its parent company Find Satoshi Lab, and mainly focused on new projects to be released such as the NFT exchange market. In addition, the large amount of GMT's investor saft will be unlocked in March next year.
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) October 12, 2022

Battle of the Fitness Cryptos: STEPN Vs. Sweatcoin

Launched on September 13th, 2022, Sweat Economy (SWEAT) has surpassed STEPN in monthly active users and total users, and became the most downloaded health & well-being app in over 66 countries.

However, STEPN (GMT), which stands for Green Metaverse Token, still has a total market capitalization 7 times the size of Sweat Economy (SWEAT). At the time of publication, STEPN (GMT) has a total market capitalization of $351,626,867, according to CoinGecko. In contrast, the more popular walk for crypto token, Sweat Economy (SWEAT), only has a market cap of $52,594,436 and has already dropped 80.5% from its short-lived ATH at $0.09 one day after launch.

On the other hand, the health & well-being Web3 app’s native cryptocurrency, STEPN (GMT), has tumbled by double digits in a single day. At press time, the #109 ranked walk-for-crypto STEPN (GMT) is priced at $0.567403, according to CoinGecko. That marks a 10.9% daily deficit, as well as 21.4% in the red for the past 30 days.

The step-counter crypto might be heading towards a full retrace of its all-time high. The pinnacle of $4.11 was reached half a year ago. However, the relatively new cryptocurrency traded for around $0.10 on launch 7 months ago, making the current market price of STEPN (GMT) still 500% up from its all-time low.

On the Flipside

The company switched their focus to Find Satoshi Labs.
A lot of users spend more money on in-app purchases than they earn from using it.
Despite delaying upgrades, STEPN claims they are “shifting gears as we evolve our vision.”