The authors of the application indicate that now receiving tokens is just another way of psychological motivation for many users. However, they intend to add a full-fledged blockchain, which will allow you to exchange coins, sell and buy them, like other cryptocurrencies. Anton Derlyatka, the Russian IT engineer and the author of the app, says he would be happy if Sweatcoin could be used in the future, for example, to pay taxes.
Sweatcoin raised $5.7 million from venture funds from Goodwater Capital, Discovery Fund, Seedcamp and a number of individual investors in the first round of investment. So many of them believed in this concept and trusted it. But how does Sweatcoin work and why you should or should not download it?
This app transforms the steps into a kind of bitcoins. This is practically a video game where the main character is you, and you can buy real things for game points.
Sweatcoin is a fitness application based in the UK by a team of immigrants from Russia. Its co-founders are Oleg Fomenko, Anton Derlyatka, Danil Perushev, and Yegor Khmelev. The idea of Sweatcoin involves paying for the distance traveled by the user with a special cryptocurrency, sweatcoins. 1000 steps generate one sweatcoin on the wallet, and you can buy various things and services in the application after accumulating a sufficient amount. The developers expect that in the future, sweatcoins can be exchanged for real money.
The application is notable for its interface using augmented reality. An unusual UX solution was developed by Vladimir Shreyder, a former art director of the project who left it six months ago (this post is currently held by Dmitry Chernyshev).
The application was launched by Anton Derlyatka and Oleg Fomenko, one of them was also the author of the idea of converting steps into currency. Oleg used to have a music startup Bloom.fm in London, where he has been living for many years. And Sweatcoin is his second project. Anton Derlyatka acted as an investor but then became a co-author. They met in the summer of 2015. They have already had the first beta version, a team, and some kind of office in London. They met, talked, realized that they had to work together. Decided on the direction, assembled a mood board with different projects, which, on the one hand, are super-technological, and on the other – really down-to-earth.
This is a high-tech startup, there is a very complex system in building a new economy. In order for this to be a full-fledged currency, like bitcoin, and not just some virtual points, it should be based on mathematical models. Very large resources are invested in developing a system that cannot be fooled. So that you can’t tie the smartphone to the dog, make it run and earn money on the wallet. The algorithm is called the term walkchain - similar to blockchain - and it is occupied by very serious mathematicians. So, it seems that the developers are pretty serious, and there shouldn’t appear any Sweatcoin scam stories.
Sweatcoin has a lot of arrangements with shops and cafes in London where you can buy something for the earned currency. Different goods and services included. At least the application now works like this. There are two types of offers. There are four of them now. These are the things that you are guaranteed to be able to buy on sweatcoins. Others are proposals that are being voted on. Not only commercial organizations but also ordinary people who provide individual services, such as training, can participate in it. That is, this is a full-fledged market place. After a person creates a card of their proposal, they get to a general vote. If their card goes to the top, it will be made an official offer.
That is, if, for example, you are a massage therapist or an English teacher, you can promote yourself through the application and offer your services in exchange for sweatcoins. The user determines the value of sweatcoins. Then it goes through moderation and after that it gets to the vote.
At the current stage, almost $ 900 thousand of investments have been attracted, which so far allows the app to simply engage in the project and develop it. But in general, there are a lot of maneuvers for monetization. So, there are no ways to cash out sweatcoins into real money, unfortunately.
“So far, it works only in London.”
The version that was restarted has been available since May 2016. The app immediately came first in the App Store in the Finance category in the UK. Actually, it attracted attention and began to be widely consecrated in the press already at the start.
“It doesn’t count the steps properly.”
The majority of the negative review says that the app miscalculates the number of steps and also puts Apple users in the priority. We don’t know whether this is a system bug or an example of violating user equality, but the app works better on iPhones than on Android devices.
“The goods presented by the app are useless.”
As the app currently has not developed the ways to cash out the sweatcoins into real money, users can only buy the services and products available on the platform itself. While some of them are glad to receive at least small presents for the sole fact they walk a few thousand steps a day, others claim that it is a kind of deception. But no Sweatcoin review has stated that the app is useless in general. This app has a good reputation so far, similarly to some dating apps, for instance, Romancecompass scams have never been a thing.
Thanks to the accelerometer, the application understands the current position of the phone: when you rotate around yourself, the picture on the screen changes. The virtual landscape is mountains, and there are abstract geometric objects in the background and in front of you, among which the road which you have to walk winds along just as in real life. If you lower the phone, you see the earth, you lift it up - you see the sky. The landscape is randomly generated and never repeats. You can watch 360-degree panoramas - just like in races or simulators.
This motivates a person to get out of the couch and take a few steps around the room. Well, it causes, as they say, the wow effect, even when the landscape simply reacts to the movement of the hand.
Also, the color scheme of the interface is tied to the time of day. Fresh colors in the morning, warm in the afternoon, already red in the afternoon, pink in the evening. The app founders took the real colors of the sky and simplified them to a gradient of two tones. It seems that everyone wants to teach the millennials to walk the streets again instead of sitting at home and dating online. By the way, if you are looking for a tried and true dating app, there has never been any Romancecompass scam, we think you should try it.
So, nowadays people have a daily routine, and it's nice to fill it with something entertaining - as in the case with Pokémon Go. And Sweatcoin can make it even financially profitable. The usual road to the metro turns not only into entertainment but also into a certain income. This is not just some kind of meaningless pastime.