Sweatcoin - many of you already know this app, the walking step counter which pays you in crypto tokens for your walk. Actually, the statistics from the Google Play market tell us that the app has more than 50 million downloads and more than 1 million reviews.
While the basic idea is very simple - you walk and get paid it. You don't need to invest anything (like with Stepn), you don't need to study a lot about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. So I think the simplicity and good usability made this app popular. In this article, I would like to focus on some other economic aspects of this project.
Sweatcoin and Sweat Wallet testing
Many interesting startups in general and crypto startups in particular failed and didn't deliver their promises. In the crypto world, we can speak about hundreds of projects which not only failed to deliver MVP, but sometimes even failed to issue their token or their toke was worth 0.
Sweatcoin firstly promised to issue SWEAT (its currency) in the summer, but then the date was moved to September 2022. Fortunately, everything works fine now. I did the basic simple testing: staking ("Grow" section, where you can put your coins into a jar, and you get %, i.e. for 1 year the rate is 12%), sending SWEAT to my Kucoin account, and sending my SWEAT to my NEAR account (on the picture - where I sent to my NEAR account cryptotexty.near)
For new users, we need to tell you that now there are 2 apps - Sweatcoin, which tracks your steps and allocates you coins, and Sweat wallet, which you can synchronize with Sweatcoin and you will receive your rewards there and it's the wallet which you will use for transactions.
Mass adoption of Crypto
Sweatcoin is a good example of how to bring mass adoption of crypto. The vast majority of users probably don't know the fact that SWEAT is a token based on NEAR blockchain, but they already can earn it and use it. Even in my personal communications, I met people who knew nothing about crypto, but they used Sweatcoin. Actually, for people (myself included) who didn't have other apps which track the number of steps - it was first of all helpful to see how much I walk every day.
Sweat wallet has now over 1 million users. We can assume, that some Sweatcoin users for different reasons won't install the wallet. I know the cases when people uninstalled the Sweatcoin app to free some space on the phone. Some people didn't value the app, didn't care, or forget due to the lack of information about SWEAT future price. Here we also need to remember that this period, be it a bear market or not, is highly volatile, so that's good that Sweatcoin team was brave enough to launch a coin and not to wait longer. For example on the day of coin launch, September 13, 2022 the price of 1 SWEAT was $0.05, then it jumped to $0.07 in the next few days, and currently, it's $0.028 (on October 2, 2022).
That's also very good when crypto newcomers study the volatility, and the aspects of the cryptocurrency industry, without having the big risks of financial loss. There are ways to invest more in Sweatcoin - to buy a premium account, people can buy more SWEAT on exchanges, but the vast majority of Sweatcoin users invested only with their steps.
And when the app and wallet have a big user base - people can transact with each other. For example, to send money to me, you can use my NEAR account (which was on the photo, but I registered it a year ago, for other reasons) - you can use just my nickname "cryptotexty" or the nickname of your friends who use the app. Each new Sweat wallet user has now a NEAR account, even if they don't know this fact. The ones who might be interested more in cryptocurrencies - can study the NEAR blockchain and cryptocurrency topics. But most of the people just need to transact, earn money and spend money and Sweat wallet gives such possibilities.
Interesting and fair emission
Thinking about the economy in the general and the crypto economy, the emission is one of the major factors. The early adopter of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies might enjoy their assets now and how the price rose. People discuss pros and cons of Proof-of-work and Proof-of-stake consensus differences and emission of new coins which happen. But we think about the general world population, when still billions of people don't have cryptocurrencies - which type of emission would be fairer?
In the example of Sweatcoin emission - people get more or less fair ways to get Sweatcoins. Every day up to 10,000 steps would bring you rewards (now this cap is 5000, and the difficulty of earning by steps increases gradually). I.e. before September 13, 1000 steps would give you 1 SWEAT, now at the moment I'm writing this 1063 steps would give your 1 SWEAT, and such difficulty increases every day. S o in 1 year 2663 steps will give 1 SWEAT (but we only can guess what the price on SWEAT will be in dollar equivalent).
In the case of Sweatcoin emission, people get relatively equal opportunities. Like always, equality doesn't exist - some people will walk more, some people will walk less, and others are still not aware of this app and will join only later. But this type of emission is interesting as geography doesn't matter, your income and capital don't matter, and even your knowledge doesn't matter.
Sweat economy - what else is interesting
So Sweatcoin with its waling emission created a huge userbase, and now the users, even those who still don't know about crypto can become investors. They can stake SWEAT and get 12% APR, they can transact with each other and there are additional directions in Sweat economy.
For example, every day in Sweatcoin app, each user can watch up to 3 ads and get an additional SWEAT reward. This gives a thought, maybe Sweat economy will become also advertising platform in the future, and the income from advertisers could bring funds for the users (in a similar way how Brave browser did it with BAT token and as a browser achieved significant market share).
In SWEAT economy there are additional rewards. For example, if you stake (grow) 135 SWEAT, you can participate in the draw of Apple Airpods pro. Such giveaways are both physical and digital (NFTs, discounts, etc.)
Sweat Wallet also has NFT section, so we can assume NFTs will be an important part of SWEAT economy. Non-fungible tokens are still a trending topic, and NFTs work very well on the NEAR blockchain.
By inviting new people with your link - you will get 5 SWEAT - one more way to earn additional crypto. If you don't use Sweatcoin yet - I advise you to try this app.
In conclusion, Sweat economy is an interesting project, which I will continue to obsevrve both as a user and as a crypto-enthusiast.