Yawn Rong
Yawn Rong is one of the co-founders of Find Satoshi Labs (FSL), a Web3 product development studio, and STEPN, a Web3 lifestyle dApp. [1][2]
Education
Rong earned his Master’s in Advertising, Public Relations, and E-Marketing from Unisa. [3]
Career
Rong worked as a marketing director for Teamazing Beverages from January 2018 to August 2021. He also co-founded Crypto SA and Crypto SA Labs, a blockchain consulting company that facilitates Web3 start-ups to grow their tokenomics, where he worked until January 2023. In February 2019, he was an industrial representative at the South Australian Blockchain Association and an SA representative for Blockchain Australia. He was the managing director for Tiles On Bradman Drive until May 2023. Since March 2019, he’s served as a business ambassador for Algorand, a high-performance L1 blockchain. [4][5]
STEPN
In August 2021, Rong co-founded FSL and STEPN. In an interview with Morningstar Ventures, he discussed how the FSL team developed STEPN, their collaborations, and his hopes for the product’s future. He started with where the idea for STEPN came from: [6]
“We had this idea back in early August 2021. The initial idea was to build a Web3 Monopoly game, but after watching various similar games with characters running on the game board, it gave us the idea that we should utilize motion with token incentives. And started a project toward the end of the bull run, and we decided to make it light and simple on the mobile end, it appears to be the right decision for many graphics-heavy Game-Fi started before us, they completely missed out.”
He then explained why they chose a Move-to-Earn model: [6]
“As we started to design tokenomic in Sep 2021, we realized the correlation between moving outdoors and curbing global warming — as people start to walk to commute or buy groceries, the fewer motor vehicles they use. So we made fighting against global warming via carbon offsetting one of our key objectives.”
“Another reason we pick the Move-to-Earn concept is that the World has over 400 million running app users, and over 1 billion people use walking, jogging, or running as a form of exercise. The market potential is immense. COVID also successfully raised people’s awareness of personal physical and mental health, and in 2021, the online fitness industry has experienced an unprecedented 33% annual growth. Capturing this non-crypto market means Move-to-Earn games can nudge millions of people into Web3.”
When asked about the collaboration with Asics and future partnerships with other companies, Rong responded: [6]
“We hope to build a Web3 lifestyle application with gamified and social components. ASICS is a well-known Japanese multinational corporation that produces sportswear. ASICS is the first attempt for us to bring ecosystem partnership to the STEPN-verse, and we will continue to work with them to release new campaigns. For the upcoming external partnerships that will be launched in the second half of this year, we will prioritize launching them in the existing realms. Some of them are signed and some of them are in the final stages but all are under NDAs so we cannot disclose much. These names include some renowned sports clubs, film IPs, social media conglomerates, and more.”
Toward the end of the interview, he shared STEPN’s roadmap and his hopes for the product: [6]
“We will release a range of ecosystem partnership collaborations soon, along with building our Web2 presence such as giving away STEPN-branded water and appeals at offline events such as marathons, music festivals and conferences we sponsored and hosted. Toward Q4 this year, we will work toward releasing the concept of our social feature. For this industry, I think at best we can only give 6 months' prediction of what will happen, in the next year, we will focus on sustainable growth and user acquisition, and optimize the game, infrastructure, and social platforms we built.”
Interviews
STEPN AMA
On the Lab of Crypto YouTube channel, Rong participated in a STEPN AMA where he answered various questions about STEPN’s progress and plans, starting with why he thinks the project had been successful: [7]
“I think one thing is that this is my first startup, and it's Jared's fifth or sixth. Before this, I ran a multi-brand franchise business that we started from the ground up, and then I had my crypto investment firm, the Incubator. I managed around 375 people, and Jared had a company of similar size—his game studio had about 350 people before he sold it. After selling it, he only retained a core tech team. We have business acumen and experience from doing various startups, and we've been working really hard. The whole team averages over 100 hours of work each week, and we've been doing this since last September without taking weekends off. We don't sleep until we drop. I think that focus on the product, the user experience, problem-solving, and being community-oriented helps us move fast in this space.”
He also commented on GMT, one of the tokens available in STEPN, being down in the market: [7]
“Not really. The app has generated a tremendous amount of traction, and we're still growing at a very fast pace on a daily basis. If you look at any aspect of the app, user retention is excellent—over 95%. User growth is also strong, around 100% every two to three weeks, even as we limit users' access to the app. With an active marketplace, the app's profitability is also very good. A portion of the quarterly profit will always go back to the GMT. Nothing has really changed; we're being hit by this volatile market, and token prices have taken a big blow. However, we believe that once we roll out the GMT use cases within this quarter, we'll pretty much get back on track.”
When asked about community feedback on STEPN, Rong responded: [7]
“I think people sometimes have issues with transactions, like drop-offs, and recently we've had taxation issues from the Japanese community and security issues when people's emails got hacked, allowing the hacker to access their STEPN accounts. We responded to this very quickly. We're going to install two-factor authentication in the next update to ensure that nobody can hack anything. We've identified all the hackers and listened to advisors. For example, we installed colorblind options for our users and added a taxation record feature. Security concerns have been addressed. For anything that we think will help make the app more user-friendly, we will listen. We have an advice section, and Jerry and I check it every couple of days to see if there are any new suggestions we could take.”
Toward the end of the AMA, Rong shared plans for future collaborations and networks for STEPN: [7]
“We are actually planning an entirely new system for how to do 'move to earn.' Basically, we're trying to set industry standards here, and we are definitely expanding to other dimensions. I think in another three to four months, we'll be able to release some more exciting news on this. But for now, we are still growing on the BNB chain. It's less than a month old, so we want to remain focused on getting people to migrate to the BNB chain and expanding the ecosystem a bit more before we move forward.”
Move2Earn
In May 2022, White Crypto’s Anna Tutova interviewed Rong about his background in crypto and the STEPN project, starting with how he got into crypto: [8]
“I got into crypto around mid-2017, which was a very good time. I missed the BNB ICO, but there were many other projects, so I rode the wave from mid-2017 all the way to February 2018. Then we entered the bear market and the crypto winter, which lasted for two years. During that time, I did a lot of Bitcoin mining in 2019 and rode the DeFi wave and a bit of the NFT wave. In the meantime, I became a representative of the blockchain industry in Australia and started my crypto VC and crypto incubator. In 2019, I became the Algorand ambassador, focusing more on the investing and trading side. Last year, we got into OTC trading in Australia, but I had never done any crypto project until STEPN, which is my first.”
He then shared how STEPN got started: [8]
“The idea of starting STEPN came about one day when I went to my neighbor Jerry's house. We had a beer or two, started a conversation, and somehow landed on Axie Infinity, leading us to do a product analysis on it. We think there are so many improvements we can make. Jerry is in the game industry, making mobile games, and he said, 'Hold on a second, you're in crypto, and I'm in games. If we merge our teams together, we can actually build something,' which we did. We merged our two companies in September last year, bringing together around 18 people, and that's when the idea started. Initially, it was a very game-heavy concept, with a narrative and lots of game elements, but as we built it, we realized we couldn't make it a full game because that would limit onboarding. So, we removed as many game elements as possible to create a game-like app, and now we have STEPN.”
When asked about STEPN’s Sneaker NFTs and data sharing compliance, Rong responded: [8]
“There are four types of sneakers and five qualities, which might sound like a lot, but we effectively break it down into two categories: walker and runner. We have walker, jogger, runner, and trainer. Walker is mainly for people who just want to stroll outdoors; you're only required to move about one kilometer per hour. For the runner, you basically have to run. Each sneaker has these optimal speed intervals—you need to move within these intervals to maximize earnings. If you fall below or go above this speed limit, you won't earn many tokens. This is especially challenging for runners because they have to run fast, and as a result, runners will always earn more than joggers and trainers. The slower the speed, the less you earn, and the higher the speed, the more you earn. The trainer is like an all-terrain type of sneaker, allowing movement at any speed between one to 20 kilometers per hour, with earnings fluctuating randomly. The trainer is more like a wildcard, where you either earn a lot or not as much, with earnings varying daily.”
“The data sharing law is basically tied to the Apple and Google developer agreements. There are very limited documents we have to go through to comply with the app on Google and also with data collection and access to user support data. We had to register through a particular certificate to access that. If we aren't compliant with data location and collection requirements, we simply can't be on the app store. So, we have to comply with that, and when Google and Apple do code reviews, they also check on that.”
Towards the end of the interview, he discussed how STEPN supported the GMT tokenomics: [8]
“We are spending a lot of time on the ND shootings, and the reason is that we need to ensure the token is produced through a workout—it's more of a proof-of-work type of token. People physically go outdoors, spend their time and energy, and then earn their tokens. When something comes with a cost, it has strong support because people won't sell the token below what they believe it's worth. Versus people botting, hacking, or using scripts to run other types of projects, for us, we need to make sure there's a cost associated with it. That’s number one. Number two, the token must have an actual use in the app. Now, the GMT token has a lot of use cases. For example, minting sneakers now requires GMT, and in the next patch update, we're going to increase the GST earning cap, so burning the GMT. The constant consumption of the GMT will also create a constant purchase of GMT. To give context, over 50 million GMT has already been burned in the last month, which is almost 8-10% of the circulating supply of the GMT token. The demand for sneakers creates a huge demand for GMT, and by removing GMT through burning, it creates strong support along with the actual cost of the token.”
Web2 Integration
On the Empire Podcast, Rong discussed STEPN's evolution from a Web3 fitness app that rewards users for physical activity to a broader vision encompassing Web2 integrations. STEPN initially gained rapid success with over 1.7 million monthly active users but faced challenges during the crypto bear market, prompting a pivot towards creating a more sustainable ecosystem. This pivot included launching physical products like clothing and beverages, integrating dual token models (GST and GMT), and combating issues like cheating. Rong emphasized the importance of creating real-world value and a healthy lifestyle for users, aiming to differentiate STEPN from other crypto projects. [9]
