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During ETHCC, an important event for the Ethereum community that was held in Paris in July 2023, The Cryptonomist interviewed Shiti Rastogi Manghani of the NFT company STEPN.
Manghani is an award-winning business leader with 14 years of experience across 11 countries managing multi-million-dollar projects.
Currently, Manghani serves Find Satoshi Lab as its Chief Operating Officer where she oversees all marketing and communications growth initiatives for Find Satoshi Lab, as well as the brands it oversees. Manghani is an Electronics Engineer and holds an MBA in Marketing.
She founded her own computer vision-based AI start-up, which is among the Top 50 well-being start-ups in the UK (At no. 14) and in the Top 100 health companies in the UK.
Previously, she has worked towards launching Wall Street Journal’s digital arm in India and building power brands at PepsiCo US.
Here our chat with Manghani about STEPN and their NFT company and next steps.
NFT: how FSL’s STEPN company works and what are the recent highlights?
STEPN is the world’s leading move-and-earn application that gets people moving. The app uses crypto-fueled rewards to encourage users to exercise, whereby users buy a non-fungible token (NFT) of a virtual sneaker, sync their phones, and receive rewards when they walk, jog or run. It has rapidly become one of the most popular Web3 apps since inception, with a thriving community. Our app launched in 2021 amidst the tail end of the bull market.
Where users of other play-to-earn Web3 apps dropped off during the bear market, STEPN’s popularity managed to surge, attracting two to three million active users each month. The market is large but STEPN is by far the leading player in the space, and easily one of the largest apps in Web3.
STEPN’s recent milestone partnership with Apple Pay, can you talk more about this?
We also recently achieved a milestone integration with Apple Pay, making STEPN the first Web3 app to do so. It was a huge step for us, but also for the entire Web3 space. Through this new integration, all transactions are able to be processed without leaving the app. This brings with it enhanced safety protections, as users’ card details are not stored in any one app.
What are your next steps and goals?
Find Satoshi Lab, the creator of STEPN, is a product-led studio that consistently releases new and interesting products targeted to address infrastructure issues and consumer needs.
We have launched three very robust solid products; STEPN, DOOAR, and MOOAR, and recently announced web3’s first social game: GAS HERO. We have some exciting contests ongoing for GAS HERO including a prize pool of 2mn GMT details of which can be found here.
How is it going with DOOAR and MOOAR?
Find Satoshi Labs (FSL) is parent studio for STEPN, DOOAR (multichain DEX), MOOAR (multichain NFT marketplace and launchpad) and GAS HERO (Web3’s first social game).
MOOAR has recently launched an AI enabled idea to NFT product called (GNT – Generative NFT tool) as well as one of the biggest collaborations with DriP where our first collection was dropped to over 450K wallets.
Both DOOAR and MOOAR are multi chain products and intricately tied into our FSL ecosystem. They are integral to our vision to onboard the next wave of 100mn users onto web3 that will use our fun and enjoyable apps & games from FSL Studio.
How do you think the NFT market will reach mass adoption? When?
We have only scratched the surface of NFTs’ utility. So what are the key characteristics that ripen them for utility? They are: transparency, indivisibility, transferability and interoperability. And their use cases can be broadly A) Secular – limited to ecosystem NFT projects or B) Broad – which have applications for humanity at large.
Examples of secular use cases would be staking, exclusive benefits, redeemability, breeding, memberships etc. This is phase one. As we move into the next phase of broad utility, we unlock their true potential with authentication, IP, Real Estate, Ticketing, Voting, Insurance, Music etc.
As the tech matures, we will discover more use cases. As the utility grows, so will the adoption. It’s an inevitability. After all, if blockchain lays the foundation of web3, NFTs are the bricks in its walls.