Do you put on your Apple or Garmin watch to trace your steps and try to succeed in 10,000 on a regular basis? Now, you will get paid for it. Moonwalk Fitness, an app that incentivizes wholesome habits by rewarding customers with crypto, has raised $3.4 million in seed funding from lead investor Hack VC with contributions from Binance Labs, Reciprocal Ventures and co-founder of Solana Raj Gokal.
“I name it gamified accountability,” Caitlin Prepare dinner, head of progress and the face of MoonWalk Fitness, instructed Fortune, “Simply making an attempt to assist folks maintain themselves to the targets they set for themselves.”
The app “gamifies” health by permitting customers to problem associates, household or strangers to every day competitions. The person who units up the problem can specify parameters together with what number of days the competitors lasts, the every day step objective and the way a lot every participant should deposit to enter. Gamers can submit a deposit in USDC, Solana or Bonk— a Solana-based memecoin.
If you happen to fail to succeed in the every day step depend you lose your deposit and it’s pooled and evenly distributed amongst those that did obtain the objective. If you happen to efficiently full the every day challenges, you get your deposit again and win a portion of the pooled cash.
The app is constructed on the Solana blockchain and is well built-in into fashionable health trackers just like the FitBit, Apple Watch and Garmin. Whereas MoonWalk will ultimately be out there on cellular, it’s at present solely accessible by an internet browser. As soon as the cellular app is reside, customers will be capable to purchase credit with Apple Pay or a bank card along with a crypto pockets, Prepare dinner mentioned.
Crypto health apps have tried to seize a sustainable person base since way back to 2015. StepN is an analogous platform that requires customers to buy in-game NFTs to take part. MoonWalk differs from these different crypto health apps as a result of it pays customers with mainstream tokens reasonably than providing rewards with a brand new foreign money native to the platform, Prepare dinner mentioned.
“I believe MoonWalk is slightly bit completely different when it comes to recreation mechanics, the place it’s very clear the place any type of winnings are coming from, and it’s straight from different gamers,” Prepare dinner mentioned, “…It’s like probably the most liquid, extremely used on-chain belongings and shortly it’s going to be supported by fiat as effectively.”
MoonWalk strives to enchantment to a wider viewers of non-native customers by stripping away the complexities that include utilizing crypto. “The mission for the venture and who we’re going for could be very centered on the mainstream shopper and constructing a product that they’ll really need to use and never be too intimidated by, having the blockchain a part of it fall to the backdrop,” Prepare dinner mentioned.
The app faucets right into a broader pattern generally known as “shopper crypto” – the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain know-how by on a regular basis customers for actions like gaming, style, finance, music, and artwork.
“Moonwalk sits on the intersection of health and shopper crypto, unlocking a completely new class of customers. A slick cellular app will summary crypto components away from customers, fostering easy onboarding and excessive retention,” Hack VC accomplice Roshun Patel mentioned in a press release.
At present, the app solely helps steps tracking however, Prepare dinner mentioned, the corporate will use the funding raised on this seed spherical to broaden the app’s capabilities to assist all various kinds of health actions. The funding can even be used to proceed creating IOS and Android variations of the applying, she mentioned.