STEPN Earning Strategies, #2: The Mechanic

Strategy overview

This strategy is called “The Mechanic” because it involves improving sneaker attributes, enhancing your NFT to increase its price. It’s based partially on game mechanics and partially on NFT trading.

Here’s an overview of “The Mechanic” strategy:

• Profile: Moderate

• Risk: Medium

• Complexity: Medium

• Intensity: Variable (according to your preference)

• Initial investment: 13.5 SOL, or approx. $1.2K

• Approx. ROI: 10 days

• Time required: About 20 minutes a day

Getting started with “The Mechanic”

This strategy is a variant of “The Walker” and pretty similar for the first part. At this point, I’ll asume you already have a STEPN account and wallet, or at least know how to set it up.

At the time of writing this article, SOL is worth $81.24 and floor prices for sneaker NFTs are around 13.1 SOL. Let’s round that up to $85 and 13.5 respectively.

As a result, your initial investment would be around $1,147. Again, let’s bring that up to $1,200; just in case.

Finding a sneaker

Just like in the Walker strategy, you’ll need a sneaker optimized for GST earning. For those of you who are new, let’s go over the different aspects of sneakers once more.

If you have already read “The Walker” and remember what kind of sneaker you need, you can skip this part, as there are just a few, minor differences.


Sneaker type

For “The Mechanic,” you can go for whatever sneaker type you want. It’s up to you and your training style. The most important part is you have to commit.

If you pick a runner, you’ll have to be consistent and go out for a run every day. Otherwise, this strategy won’t work.

That said, here are your options:

• Walker: Lowest earning ratio but lowest effort required as well. Choose this if you’re unsure or don’t want to commit.

• Jogger: Intermediate stance between walker and runner. Ideal for low-effort runners or beginners. Choose this if you come from a walker and want to step it up, or if you are a runner just getting started to try out the speed.

• Runner: Highest earning rate and effort required. Choose this if you’re ready to go all-in and commit to training every day.

• Trainer: I wouldn’t recommend going for a trainer since it’s a flexible sneaker that allows users to earn at all speed ranges. This advantage is priced in, however, which is why trainer NFTs go for much higher than other classes. For maximum earning efficiency, it’s better to know yourself and go for a particular sneaker type.

Keep in mind that, for this strategy, you won’t stick with your first sneaker for a very long time. You’ll have the chance to change types every 10 days or so. That said, if you’re between two types, better go for the sneaker with the less effort requirement and, if it turns out to be too slow, switch later.


Sneaker attributes

Just like in “The Walker,” you’ll have to focus on efficiency and resilience. If you are a STEPN connoisseur, you can skip this part.

Efficiency directly impacts your earning rate, which means that a higher value on this attribute will yield higher rewards for moving. Resilience, on the other hand, determines how fast a sneaker wears out. As a result, this stat affects your earnings indirectly — the slower your sneaker decays, the less you have to spend repairing it.




That said, you should try to find NFTs that have at least 5 or more base points in these two attributes, or a total of 10 adding the two — 7 efficiency, 3 resilience, for example.

Mints

In the previous article, I explained that the Walker strategy didn’t involve minting. Thus, it didn’t matter how many mints a sneaker had. In fact, I encouraged you to buy a sneaker with more mints for lower prices.

The Mechanic strategy doesn’t involve any minting either. Nevertheless, it does involve reselling your sneakers on the marketplace. As such, a high-mint sneaker may be harder to sell than others. Remember, sneakers that have already been used to mint more than 2 NFTs tend to be less valuable than those with less mints.

That said, I would recommend trying to find a sneaker with 2 mints.

Why particularly 2? 0–2 mints sneakers have lower minting costs and, as a consequence, higher prices. Acquiring these sneakers for this strategy would increase your initial investment unnecessarily.



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Sneaker minting costs. Credits to @Thebalnave on Twitter!

I know what you’re thinking. If you don’t mint with it, you could resell it for a higher price too. However, minters don’t really care about leveled up sneakers, so even if that were true, you’d putting extra time and effort for the virtually the same results. Not only that, you’d also be assuming a higher risk.

On the other hand, 3+ mints sneakers are less expensive, but their minting return is basically negative (minting costs more than the actual value of the sneaker minted). That makes them hard to resell and lowers their price.

Remember: 2 mints, perfect balance.

Level

“The Mechanic” is all about leveling up your sneaker and enhancing it to sell it for a higher price later. That said, buying an already leveled up sneaker wouldn’t make any sense.

Make sure you pick some good, high base-stats, level 5 sneaker to get started.

Gems and quality

Quality is irrelevant, since anything over common sneakers would tremendously raise your initial investment.

On the other hand, many STEPN users look at gem sockets when acquiring a sneaker. The most demanded sockets are for efficiency gems. If there’s a sneaker with 3 efficiency sockets out of the 4, that’s a catch.

Just remember, gem sockets are a second priority to attributes and mints.




Were you paying attention? Take a look at the picture below.

These are two real sneakers of virtually the same price, taken from the marketplace. One of them is good for this strategy. The other one, not so much. If you look at the stats marked in red, you’ll be able to tell them apart. Which one would you choose?




Don’t be deceived by the price! The runner on the right has less mints, better base stats, and better gem sockets than the walker on the left, making it the better sneaker for this strategy.

Walking, earning, and spending

Once you have your sneaker, you’ll see your energy cap raised to 2. Here’s where the fun begins!

Enhancing your sneaker

Again, this part will be the same as in “The Walker.” Feel free to skip it if you’ve read it already.

If you bought a level 5 sneaker with no added attributes, you’ll have 20 points to spend on improving your NFT.

As I mentioned before, the most relevant stats for the Mechanic strategy are efficiency ad resilience. They’re also the most demanded by the market, and thus, the most valuable, so that’s what you should be spending your points. My recommendation is to improve them on a 3:1 ratio (for every 3 points you add to efficiency, add 1 point to resilience).

However, this will depend on the base attributes of the sneaker you purchased. 2:1 and 4:1 ratios are also acceptable, always prioritizing efficiency over resilience.

Leveling up

At first, the GST you earn for walking 10 minutes will barely be enough to repair and level up your sneaker. Be patient.

After your daily walk, leave your NFT leveling up at night (first levels take a few hours). The next day, you’ll see that you can add another 4 points to your attributes.

Keep enhancing your stats using the same ratio until you reach sneaker level 9. By that time, your sneaker should have 30+ efficiency and 10+ resilience. This type of attributes for a sneaker will yield you about 4–6 GST for each energy, or 0.8–1.2 GST for each 0.2 energy.

At $5 per GST, that’s $20–30 for 10 minutes a day. That earning rate means you’ll recover your initial investment of $1,200 in the next 40–60 days. Nevertheless, the Mechanic strategy doesn’t rely solely on walking.

Here’s a good picture of what your sneaker should look like at level 9.




Reselling your sneaker

After you reach level 9, which should be in about a week to 10 days, you’ll have a fully upgraded sneaker to sell on the market.

By the time of writing this article, these type of sneakers are going for 14.5 SOL in the marketplace. That’s a ~7-10% profit on what you originally paid for your level 5. Congratulations!

Now’s would be the time to switch sneakers I talked to you about before.

At this point, you can buy another level 5 and restart the process (securing the 7–10% of profits), with the option to switch to another sneaker class if you think the one you chose was too intense or bland for you. You should also have about 4–5 GST remaining in your STEPN wallet, which should give you a head start for the next phase.

If you start the process again, at ~7–10% profits in 10 days, and considering the additional earnings in GST, you would need to repeat this process for about 1.5–2 months to double your initial investment. That’s a 100% profit!

Another option you have is to restart the process, but switching to the Walker strategy. Which involves a little less risk and allows you to earn in a more relaxed manner. You can access “The Walker” here:

STEPN Earning Strategies, #1: The Walker.   How to earn passive income from moving around


Risks and closing thoughts

“The Mechanic” is a bit riskier than the Walker strategy, since it involves a certain degree of NFT trading. That said, you should look out for these factors:

• NFT price volatility: A major risk factor in this strategy. NFTs can experience big swings in price, and the sneaker you bought for 13 SOL may be worth 12.5 the next day. This would make a huge impact on your profits, but could also give them a huge boost if prices go higher. Stay alert!

• SOL volatility: NFTs are priced in SOL, so its price also affects profitability. If you buy a sneaker for 13 SOL at $90 ($1,170), and sell it for 14 SOL at $80 ($1,120), you’ll be selling at a loss. Even if it seems you’re earning 1 SOL, you’re actually losing $50. Make sure you keep track of coin prices and total amount in fiat — as long as you want to measure your earnings in fiat, of course.

It’s important to note that, unlike the Walker strategy, “The Mechanic” doesn’t really care about GST volatility. This is because your profits won’t come from GST earnings but from NFT sales.

That’s it! I hope you find this useful and can take advantage of “The Mechanic” to maximize your STEPN earnings — and have some fun and exercise while doing so!

I’ll be sharing more STEPN strategies in the near future, so make sure to follow me on Medium if you don’t want to miss them.

Thanks for reading!