Every new year millions of people make aspirations to work out and exercise more, but these good intentions are rarely fulfilled. People understand the health benefits of exercising, but according to the National Center for Health Statistics, less than half of the U.S. adult population gets the amount of physical activity needed to see the health benefits.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO)  global physical activity guidelines, all adults should engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise or 75 min of vigorous aerobic exercise per week. Following this simple recommendation has shown to have massive health benefits such as weight loss, prevention of diabetes, and reduced risk of chronic diseases. Despite these health benefits, few adhere to WHO’s guidelines.

For decades, several health experts have tried to get people to exercise regularly. The majority of fitness startups and apps have spent millions to develop incentives to help people stick to their fitness resolutions but to no avail. Well, till the merging of fitness and crypto rewards.

In an interview with Healthline, Eric Finkelstein, Ph.D., lead study author, and professor of the Health Services and Systems Research Program at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore said,

“It’s basic economics that if you increase the benefits of walking, people will walk more.”

Psychology of motivation in move-to-earn apps

The concept of financial incentives lies in behavioral economic principles. Simply, financial incentives capitalize on decision-making errors, helping a person increase time spent on physical activities. In the past few years, move-to-earn apps, platforms that reward users with cryptocurrency for engaging in physical activity, have been on the rise, motivating people to increase their participation in physical activity at multiple levels.

According to experts in exercise psychology, individuals exhibit a present bias when they weigh between the immediate financial and opportunity costs of physical activity (getting muscle sores or giving up leisure time) and the potential long-term benefits of exercising (better health or prevention of chronic diseases). To solve this issue, the experts recommend a shift in this dilemma by creating a belief in the person that there are more benefits to exercising than barriers to overcome.

This can be done by creating better social communities that motivate the person to exercise, creating relatable exercise schedules, bolstering their appraisals of self-efficacy, or exploring a straightforward idea: handing them cash or rewards.

Immediate rewards have been shown to be the most effective and efficient way to increase physical activity. These rewards come in the form of financial incentives such as cash, crypto, point-based systems, vouchers or even NFTs.

How move-to-earn apps have changed the exercising industry

The first global prototype of move-to-earn apps is Pokémon Go, an augmented reality (AR) mobile game developed in 2016. The gaming app uses the GPS in mobile devices to find, capture, attract and combat Pokémon characters. Players needed to walk around their neighbourhood to find these characters and complete levels in the game.

The success of Pokémon Go welcomed a new age of gaming with several move-to-earn apps springing up since its launch. Simply, move-to-earn apps combine the basic features of mobile AR and play-to-earn technology to reward users using crypto whenever they complete a physical task.

One of the leading move-to-earn apps, Sweatcoin, an application with over 120 million active users worldwide, has been offering users rewards in ‘sweat coins’ for the past five years. The ‘sweat coins’ allows users to pay for goods and services within the application, but the rewards cannot be used outside the app. To solve this, Sweatcoin introduced crypto rewards in the form of $SWEAT tokens, These tokens can be traded in the open market for other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, giving them real-world value.

“The reason why we all do not exercise enough is not lack of motivation, discipline, time or money. The reason is that nature did not build us to be active. It built us to survive. And this means that we optimize for preserving calories rather than spending them. There is only one way to “trick” nature into making us more active – instant gratification – and this is precisely what move-2-earn does for us. By turning steps into currency, we help you subconsciously change your routines and become 20% more active”. – Oleg Fomenko, co-founder of Sweat Economy.

The app has created a winning model to encourage millions of people to exercise and gain the discipline to do it every day. Critical to its success is creating value through the combination of instant rewards, a strong community, built-in competitions and rewards, and a marketplace that allows users to spend their $SWEAT tokens.

STEPN, an M2E app that gained massive adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic, adds NFTs as rewards for users. Just like other move-to-earn apps, STEPN allows users to earn while exercising by rewarding them with its native $GST token. The caveat lies in that STEPN requires the user to purchase a digital sneaker that matches their planned activity level. The user can select to walk (1-6 kph), jog (4-10 kph), or run (8-20 kph) but if the speed exceeds or falls below the set levels, there will be no rewards.

Is there a future for move-to-earn apps?

While the value of the rewards has dropped in line with the current crypto bear market, move-to-earn apps are still popular. The goal is to motivate users to get healthier and fitter (at least in theory) while enjoying and earning from physical activity is an exciting prospect.

With the world population way below the recommended physical activity guidelines, the need for incentivized exercises will only grow. However, these apps still come with a few risks tied to this unique factor, principally the sustainability risk as these projects grow.

One major problem could be as an app grows in popularity, the rewards per user will inevitably decrease or the selling pressure increase – decimating the price of the rewards. As users exert more selling pressure, the value of the rewards may become so low that the user finally abandons the app. To solve this issue, some apps such as Sweatcoin have introduced DAO-governed token burns that reduce the supply of circulating tokens in the market, burning 16% of its total supply, which could stabilize the price of the rewards.