I Accidentally Made Hundreds of Dollars on Pedometer Apps

Lauri Elias
1 min readMay 24, 2024
3 screenshots of the STEPN app — my currently selected sneaker, the in-game market for sneakers, and my Solana wallet attached to the account
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bcy.fsapp

I once emotionally flicked over €50 to this here step-counter app. Apparently the silver coins (GST) I’ve hoarded are worth $35, the sneaker I’m currently leveling could go for 500 GMT x 0.22 ~= $110 on the market, and the rounding error amount of Solana I left lying around after buying 3 pairs of virtual shoes is $188 these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2 screenshots showing the Estonian step challenge app FitSphere
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thefitsphere.android

Here’s a local one that awards me random stuff from time to time — I’ve gotten concert tickets, spa passes, magazine subscriptions.

Actually it’s an ad-watching simulator where companies get a thousand pairs of eyeballs on their copy and only have to dish out loot to like 3 of them. But you’d never install it if not for the fitness aspect, so I guess it has to be there.

I could probably find a hundred of these on the Play Store and spoof the counts, but that would be effort.

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