Appear 2 Earn, Play 2 Earn, Move 2 Earn, Learn 2 Earn. What does it all mean?
For the TL/DR: Read my twitter thread for this article here.
Traditional economies are typically driven by the work to earn model. The crypto space on the other hand is opening entirely new doors for monetisation, providing opportunities for people to be more fairly incentivised for their efforts.
Example of this include:
- Appear 2 Earn
- Play 2 Earn
- Move 2 Earn
- Learn 2 Earn
Let’s dive into these in a bit more detail. In this article we’ll explore how these models work and also provide a few great examples to get you started.
Appear 2 Earn (A2E)
The Tim: The Invisible Man collection consists of a series of animated NFTs that will be made into a short film on the Terra blockchain. The creators behind Tim are pioneering the Appear 2 Earn concept, where holders of the PFPs can earn 400 UST each time their PFP appears in future animated scenes of Tim’s journey.
As with almost any film, you need a scene or setting, along with a number of different characters. Without the scene or characters, there wouldn’t really be a whole lot for you to watch. Similarly, the Tim NFT collection can be split into two main types of NFTs:
- Scenes — Tim’s journey will be documented across four episodes containing a series of animated scenes.
- Invisible People PFP characters — The Invisible People PFPs will launch on May 10th on OnePlanet.
These Invisible People PFPs will play a pivotal role in the Appear 2 Earn concept developed by the NFWorks team.
In a sense, your Invisible People PFP is the actor and you are the manager that gets to reap all the rewards! And that’s without ripping anyone off, unlike what is seen with some high profile cases in the music industry (take N.W.A’s ex-manager; Jerry Heller).
So how does Appear 2 Earn work?
- Join the whitelist to mint an Invisible People PFP. Check the Tim: The Invisible Man Twitter for Whitelist giveaways here.
- Mint your PFP character for 201 UST.
- If your PFP appears in a future scene of Tim’s journey, buy one NFT scene your PFP appears in.
- Earn 400 UST each time your PFP appears in future scenes!
See the infographic below for more detail:
Each of the 201 PFP characters in the Tim NFT collection will have different rarities.
The rarities of each character correspond to how close their relationship is to Tim, which will influence the likelihood of each character appearing in Tim’s journey — which in turn determines how likely you are to earn 400 UST upon your PFP appearing!
But bear in mind, rarity isn’t the only thing that determines how likely your PFP is to appear. Tim animated NFTs follow a community led storyline, where holders of Tim NFTs will have access to an exclusive channel on the Tim discord, in which they can vote on the next steps in Tim’s journey — thereby giving holders of Tim NFTs the opportunity to influence the likelihood of their NFT appearing.
Play 2 Earn (P2E)
The global gaming industry value now exceeds $300 billion. Currently, much of the gaming space utilises a Pay to Play model, where users will hand over their hard earned cash for map packs, player and weapon upgrades, and even skins for customising player aesthetics.
Play 2 Earn (P2E) on the other hand helps to give users a cut of the staggering revenues generated by the gaming industry, where users are rewarded with cryptocurrencies while gaming. After all, it is the gamers who spend all hours of the day honing their skills and promoting the game, so why shouldn’t they be rewarded?
The Play 2 Earn space has seen an explosion of activity over the past year. Axie Infinity is perhaps the most well known P2E game, in which players collect and battle digital pets. This game alone has attracted an eye watering total sales volume of $2 billion. And there are many more P2E games out there, practically too many to count!
So for this article we’ll just give a high level introduction to a range of Play to Earn games that we’re excited about on the Terra Blockchain, including
- Derby Stars
- Playible
- Department 77
Derby Stars
Derby Stars is a highly anticipated horse racing metaverse game on the Terra blockchain. Players will be able to train, level-up, breed and trade horses, while also being able to admire Derby Star’s seriously impressive cartoon rendering graphics.
To learn more about Derby Stars, I highly recommend reading this fantastic overview by Speicherx here.
Playible
Playible is a play to earn fantasy sport game where athletes are represented as NFTs. Players enter their fantasy teams into perpetually free-to-enter contests where they can earn passive income in the form of $UST. The Playible platform is currently focussed on MLB as their first fantasy league, but plan to also set up leagues for NBA, NFL and NHL in the not so distant future.
Considering that Terra Labs have partnered with the Washington Nationals MLB, Playible is nicely positioned to achieve some major adoption.
To learn more about Playible, have a read through this great overview by OnePlanet here.
Department 77
Department 77 is a web3 Sci-Fi strategy game on the Terra blockchain. Based in the year 2322, players will be immersed in a story driven universe where humanity is fighting for control over Iridium deposits scattered around the solar system.
Players can mint Bounty Hunter NFTs from one of six collections, which can be trained to boost their stats and then sent out on bounty missions which may involve sabotage, hacking, surveying, assassinations and more.
By sending Bounty Hunter NFTs on missions, players will be able to earn Department 77’s native in-game token $KILO. To increase the likelihood of successfully completing missions and earning $KILO, players are able to train or modify their bounty hunters with accessory parts to make them better equipped for the job — and if your bounty hunter isn’t up for the task, you won’t be getting your hands on any $KILO.
The beauty of the P2E design with Department 77 is that players can be as hands on or hands off as they want — and still earn $KILO. Players may choose to take a relatively “set and forget” approach, where they can train their Bounty Hunter or send it out on missions at the click of a button — in this case, training may take a little longer and missions may have reduced success.
On the other hand, players who wish to take a more strategic approach will be able to modify their Bounty Hunter so it can be trained faster, perform better on missions and earn more $KILO — but this obviously will require a bit more work and research to optimise.
If you’d be keen on learning more about Department 77, their documentation has everything you need here and is well worth checking out!
Move 2 Earn (M2E)
As the name suggests, Move 2 Earn enables users to earn money while doing exercise. Currently, Stepn and Sweatcoin are leading the way in the Move to Earn space.
Sweatcoin
Sweatcoin is the OG in the Move 2 Earn space, founded in 2018 with the goal to make the planet a healthier place by motivating people to walk more.
They do this by converting steps recorded on a smartphone or smartwatch into a currency that can be spent on products from participating partners within Sweatcoin’s marketplace, which currently contains a range of products such as Amazon Vouchers, Apple Airtags and more.
At this stage, currency earned from walking with Sweatcoin can only be used within the in-app marketplace, meaning it cannot be withdrawn to an external crypto wallet or redeemed for cash. However, this is set to change in the very near future as Sweatcoin has recently announced a partnership with Near Foundation, where they will be releasing their $SWEAT token on the Near blockchain.
Stepn
When it comes to Move to Earn, Stepn has taken the market by storm — especially when some users are reportedly earning greater than $300 USD per day, simply for walking, jogging or running!
Stepn is a Move to Earn game on the Solana network. At a high level, to start earning on Stepn, users must purchase virtual sneaker NFTs, which currently cost approximately 15.15 SOL ($1,512 USD). While the cost of the sneakers may be a barrier to entry for many users, Stepn plans to give users the ability to rent their sneakers to others who wish to test the Move to Earn experience without the high upfront cost.
Once equipped with a sneaker, users can then start recording their exercise using the Stepn app, which records distance, speed and a map of the users activity, much like other well known apps in the space such as Strava. Upon recording their exercise on the Stepn app, users are rewarded with $GST, which is a highly inflationary token that can be traded on centralized exchanges like Huobi, or decentralized exchanges on Solana, such as Raydium.
Each sneaker is tailored to different exercise speed levels, where users will only earn tokens within the specified speed range for their chosen sneaker. Trainers provide the most flexible speed range of 1–20km/h, but if you’re only looking to do a light stroll around the block with the dog you could probably go with a Walker shoe, which has a speed range of 1–6 km/h.
Each sneaker has a range of different properties and can be levelled up to earn you more $GST. However, there’s quite a bit more to it that is already incredibly well explained in a number of great articles.
To learn more about Stepn, start off by reading this short Twitter thread by Route2Fi.
And for a more detailed deep dive, Nat Eliason provides a fantastic overview of Stepn here, so grab a coffee and get stuck in!
Learn 2 Earn (L2E)
Education alone is one of the most powerful tools for breaking down barriers and creating opportunities. But education in combination with the right incentives is an unstoppable force, where the potential for individual and societal success is practically limitless.
The rise of free or low cost educational content on platforms such as Youtube, Khan Academy, Coursera has revolutionized the way people learn in the 21st century. A number of ivy league universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Cambridge quickly jumped on this trend, offering short online courses. Through Covid, many other traditional educational institutions have also been forced to transition online. As a result, the global online learning market reached a whopping $269.87 billion in 2021.
But when incentives to complete online learning aren’t high enough, it can be difficult for learners to maintain the motivation needed to complete the course. Life gets in the way and suddenly there simply isn’t enough time to complete that Learn to Code course, or to finish learning Spanish on Duolingo. That’s where Learn to Earn comes in!
Loop Learn is a pioneer in the Learn to Earn space on the Terra blockchain. With Loop Learn, users will be rewarded with cryptocurrency for simply watching videos and engaging with learning content on their platform.
Educational topics on Loop Learn will range from cryptocurrency basics to advanced decentralized finance concepts. In order to attract more users and break down barriers to entering the crypto-space, Loop Learn is focussed on making learning fun by presenting content in short, animated video format — which is super easy to watch!
Check out the Loop Learn platform here to find out more!
Conclusion
The future of work will not be centred around a traditional work to earn model. Many companies are already moving away from rigid 9 to 5 fixed hours and 40 hour weeks. To the surprise of many, the increased flexibility has actually helped to increase productivity.
With this in mind, just think of how much more productive society could be as a whole when any individual can be rewarded in cryptocurrency for everyday things, such as learning and exercising. And after that, when people kick back to watch TV or play some video games, they can start earning some more!
Obviously, this raises some philosophical questions around how individuals will respond to such monetary incentivization. Additionally, “X to Earn” models will require a bit of tweaking for them to be financially sustainable — but we’re making steps in the right direction.
The ability to earn money for your efforts not only helps set us on the right path towards financial freedom, but also provides a healthy dose of gamification — and a whole lot of fun!
References:
https://www.positivefitnessblog.com/post/sweatcoin-review/
https://timtheinvisibleman.medium.com/our-pfp-characters-how-do-they-work-427f4c15bab
https://twitter.com/h_bitcoiner/status/1516860642858209282
https://latsan04.medium.com/sweatcoin-partners-with-near-protocol-b1caae3f31cf
https://medium.com/blind-boxes/top-play-to-earn-games-to-get-you-through-lockdown-88be767d11a7
https://medium.com/@galacticpunksdigest/derby-stars-mania-9ae1f7d51a25
https://medium.com/@oneplanet.nft/inside-look-at-department-77-d92477e7724c
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/
Disclaimer: Nothing in this article is financial advice. Always DYOR.
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