Moonwalk Fitness: Get fit, earn a bit

One of my favorite crypto apps right now is Moonwalk Fitness. The premise is extremely simple and compelling: wager crypto assets against other users that you will reach daily step targets.

• If you meet your daily step goal, you keep your wager.
• If you miss your daily goal, you transfer your daily wager to users who successfully met their daily step goal.

There’s abundant research from behavioral economists that financial incentives positively impact behavior change, and loss aversion is a particularly motivating concept that this app uses well by requiring users to lock money up front and only get it back after achieving your goals.

How I got into this

I was struggling to meet daily step targets since getting a Fitbit over Christmas in an effort to lose some weight. I especially struggled on the days when I was working in the office in my hybrid work schedule. On those days I leave early for work, commute 1 hour, work all day at a desk, commute 1 hour home, and then have parenting/spouse responsibilities for most of the evening tied to kid activities, dinner, putting kids to bed. It’s a full schedule from 6am to 9pm, and exercise was tough to fit in.

But once I started Moonwalk Fitness, I knew I had to make some adjustments to get my steps up for those days if I didn’t want to lose my wagers. I added some walks during the lunch hour. I drank more water so I would get up more to use the bathroom. I worked in a 2 mile run to pick up my son from daycare right when I got home rather than picking him up in the car. I encouraged my family to go on evening walks to the park/around the block.

The results have been awesome. I’ve lost 6 lbs towards my 15 lbs target and haven’t missed a 10,000 step target in over 6 weeks. And the financial incentives are pretty solid as well. Over that same amount of time I have wagered 7 $SOL + 31.8M $BONK on Moonwalk Fitness challenges and have reclaimed all wagered funds plus earned an additional 0.07 $SOL and 1.36 million $BONK in rewards from players who didn’t meet their goals. That’s $57 over the last month for being more active and healthy, at current prices. If $SOL and $BONK go up in value, it’s even more.

How to get started

I would encourage everyone to explore this app, and by everyone, I mean everyone. Unlike most other crypto experiences that have a fairly high degree of complexity and cater to more crypto-native audiences, Moonwalk Fitness is about as simple as it gets, even for a new person. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Get a Solana Wallet. Wallets are a requirement to interact with crypto assets. Fortunately, it’s not a complicated process, and Phantom is probably the most user-friendly option. You can read more details on this step (and how to add funds to this wallet) in sections 2 and 3 of my Intro to Solana Guide.
2. Set up your Moonwalk Fitness Account. This is as simple as connecting your Solana wallet and linking your fitness tracker of choice. Moonwalk Fitness currently allows tracking via Apple Health, Google Fit, and Fitbit. Please use my referral code: thesis
3. Browse games. The UX is pretty simple and works well on a laptop or mobile browser. Games clearly show the entry wager (usually in $SOL or $BONK), duration of the competition, step target, and number of players currently signed up.
4. Buy/swap crypto assets. If you’re new to this, you’ll need to acquire the necessary crypto coins to join a Moonwalk Fitness game. The best place to swap any crypto coin on Solana is via Jupiter (https://jup.ag). Most games right now on Moonwalk Fitness are priced in $SOL and $BONK.
5. Hit your step targets. The app syncs every time your fitness tracker syncs. There have been occasions where I needed to disconnect and reconnect my tracker, but the Moonwalk Fitness team has been very responsive to my questions whenever I’ve had them. The best place to reach them is via Discord: https://discord.gg/PXFCMmv9
6. Claim rewards. After your game concludes and finalizes, you are able to “Claim” rewards. Just click “Claim” and approve the transaction. If you hit your step targets every day, you’ll be able to reclaim your initial wager plus additional rewards from players who missed some of their step targets. If no player misses any targets, you just reclaim what you put in.

Looking ahead

Moonwalk Fitness is a really awesome app right now, but I think there is reason to believe Moonwalk could be so much more. The app launched in late February 2024, so it’s still an incredibly young platform. Some more speculative things I’m keeping my eye out for:

• Sponsored Games. Moonwalk has featured several sponsored games to date that have bonus prize funds. Not only is this a win for players who get additional rewards, but if the app continues to grow it could be a viable monetization route for the platform. I hope to see more of these as the platform grows.
• Referral bonuses. I’ve already onboarded a good IRL friend to Moonwalk, and I’m confident I could bring more new folks to Solana because of Moonwalk. If there’s some added incentive to do that, I think that would be awesome, and the site already has a space for entering a referral code on the profile page.
• Further gamification. One juicy nugget on the site shows a “Stats” section and a Rank with the value “SOON”. This could be a great way to incentivize users to enter more games and get more active in the ecosystem. I’m very curious to see how they leverage this to ramp up the fun and competition.

• Growth mindset. Moonwalk was founded by some high profile Solana community members, including NOM (BONK core contributor, MonkeDAO founder), kw (founded Quekz and Shoe On Ventures), swolsol (dev credits include Bonk, Moonwalk, Quekz, Golfn), and Marbius (also w/ Shoe on Ventures/Quekz), and just added Caitlin Cook to head up growth. It’s an objectively strong team behind some of the most recognizable projects in the ecosystem, so I’m excited to see where they choose to take this.
• BONK alignment. I think BONK is clearly THE community coin of Solana, so I think it’s smart to be involved in applications that are aligned with the BONK ecosystem. It just ensures a steady flow of users and interest into the app. And it Moonwalk usage impacts future BONK community allocations, all the better.
• Airdrop? It’s way too early to be speculating on this front, but projects that reach significant size in crypto tend to explore a token as a way to decentralize the application (and financial incentives to drive adoption) and reward early adopters (and VCs). Another nice cherry on top if this turns out to be a thing.

I hope it’s clear that Moonwalk Fitness is an app you should be using and enjoying. It’s an easy way to hold yourself more accountable to your activity goals and earn a bit if you achieve your fitness goals. It’s that simple. I hope to see you on there in the next game!