MOOAR, Creating $GMT Utility Beyond STEPN

7 min readNov 7, 2022

Marketplaces are a dime a dozen. So why in the world is STEPN, now re-branded as a project under the Find Satoshi Lab (FSL) ecosystem, launching it on the back of an already intensely competitive landscape? This article serves to not only clarify that question, but further expand why we are building an ecosystem around $GMT.

Firstly, what is a marketplace?

For those exploring the NFT scene for the first time, think of NFT marketplaces like ecommerce platforms e.g. Amazon and eBay. Sellers (Creators) are freely able to list their creations, a.k.a projects, on these marketplaces, and interested buyers are free to browse and immediately buy the NFTs of their choice, all via the marketplace.

These actions are performed on the blockchain, providing each transaction with full transparency. For instance, you will easily be able to find out what NFTs your friends have purchased in the past just by searching up their wallet addresses, exactly how much was paid, when it was purchased, and even when it was created!

Why a marketplace?

To the point at hand, we have personally thought about this long and hard. And despite the uphill battle towards getting a foothold in this industry, we have concluded that a marketplace is an indisputable inclusion towards our goal of becoming a super app.

Some may wonder: Wait, don't NFTs make up less than 2% of the USD $2 trillion ecosystem? Well, yes. However, as this article summarises, NFTs are an undeniably effective medium in onboarding new crypto users, with Generation Zs expected to lead the charge in this area. This group of users are usually forward thinking, and are not afraid to explore more obscure technologies. Further, NFTs have been touted to not only push the community narrative, but also bridge the gap between mainstream culture and digital assets.

We are confident that NFTs will be the driving force for the next wave of crypto adoption. In line with our vision of onboarding the next billion crypto users we want to be in a prime position to support this scenario.

What are we up against?

The NFT market has blown up in recent years, with USD $3.4 billion recorded sales in the 3rd quarter of 2022 alone. With this immense volume, it is no wonder that marketplaces have spared no expense in ensuring that they are able to get and keep a slice of that. From run-of-the-mill to specialty marketplaces, let’s take a look at some of the most popular offerings:

OpenSea
One of the longest standing marketplaces in existence, everyone and anyone would be familiar with the name. You will find a wide array of NFTs available here — from unique art works to community-based NFT projects, collectibles and even photography related pieces.

Generally speaking, OpenSea is pretty user-friendly. You don’t have to create an account to trade — just connect your wallet and you’re good to go. They also offer the more mainstream NFT offerings onETH and SOL, and allow anyone to create an NFT from scratch. However, for the convenience and liquidity that OpenSea offers, you pay for that in the form of high platform fees, which currently stands at 2.5% per transaction.

Nifty Gateway
Known as a high-end NFT platform, Nifty Gateway is most notable for generating over USD $91 million in sales for digital artist Pak’s unorthodox creation, The Merge. Think of Nifty Gateway as the Artsy of the Web3 world, offering carefully curated NFT pieces for collectors. Being a more niche platform however, fees tend to be higher. In their case, transaction fees sit at 5%.

Similar marketplaces include SuperRare and Exchange Art on Solana.

NBA Top Shot
Moving on to exclusive marketplaces, these are known to only allow trading for specific NFTs. In NBA Top Shot’s case, anything issued under the NBA brand — from moments (video clips or highlights) and art can be purchased on the NBA Top Shot marketplace. Platform fees also sit at a pricey 5% per transaction.

Other dedicated marketplaces that come to mind are CryptoPunks on ETH and Solana Monkey Business on Solana. For these marketplaces, there are no transaction fees as they were built with the community in mind, offering members a no-frills space to trade their NFTs.

There are dozens more marketplaces out there, but you get the idea. There are so many different marketplaces serving various demographics, from the mass market traders to art collectors.

What sets us apart?

The current issue gripping the existing marketplace industry is that control is still in the hands of the consumer. As seen from the recent royalty debate that has been raging on, all the marketplaces are ultimately fighting to keep users on their marketplace, leading to extremely toxic price wars between marketplaces, with platform fee cutting wars in attempts to salvage the situation.

Indeed, these events have shown that the space has a lot of room for improvement. In order to force a powershift from users to the community, something needs to change. And that’s the premise that MOOAR is built on.

Creator Empowerment
We are 100% focused on being a creator-centric marketplace. Currently, buyers control the marketplace narrative. The recent changes to market-wide attitudes towards royalties have and will hurt creators in the long run. With MOOAR, we intend to create a solution for this. We have no plans to alter royalty fees for NFT projects and their creators, and plan to stand strong with them in this royalty war. We believe that, as a creator, you are the backbone of the NFT industry — you are the champions of the next crypto adoption cycle, and as such, should rightfully be entitled to royalties set on the NFTs.

MOOAR will aim to regularly host creator-focused events to help them thrive in this space. Specifically, our launchpad aims to provide creators with outstanding support and advisory to launch a successful project. We will ensure that creators are not shortchanged while ensuring that users will have access to the best projects available.

Holistic Platform
MOOAR will be released in conjunction with our launchpad. Our platform will integrate community-based initiatives such as using $GMT to vote on launch projects, which would have been pre-screened by our team.

We are committed to serving the community. This includes being very selective with not only our launching, but our listing process as well. We strive to protect our users, ensuring that the chances of being rugged are kept to an absolute minimum — , if not zero.

Via our launchpad, creators will get top-notch support, with MOOAR dedicating all resources to ensure that your project launches smoothly. Even after projects get sold out , we will continue providing necessary assistance to enable you to deliver on your project’s roadmap.

To aid with ease of adoption, we have even enabled a fiat on-ramp, which specifically helps even non-crypto natives to make a purchase.

Achievement Milestones
Obtain NFTs as you progress through your trading journey. At certain levels, these various NFTs will unlock and will be accompanied by perks in the future. We want the community to see MOOAR as more than just another marketplace. We want users to feel like they are part of us. What better way than introducing a levelling system?

Also, users will be eligible for loyalty achievements and rewards as they keep up with their subscription.

Utility Boost
To top it all off, all the above serve to provide further utility to our governance token — GMT. Many users often ask us whether the purpose of GMT is only to govern the STEPN ecosystem. The answer is a resounding no. GMT was built for so much more, and STEPN was only the first step.

On MOOAR, users will be able to use GMT to vote for their favourite projects. And that’s just the start. We plan to integrate even more use cases for GMT in MOOAR over the coming months, as well as into every single product that we build down the road. GMT will be the battery that superpowers our entire FSL ecosystem, integrating many essential services under one standardised currency.

Summarising it all

MOOAR is the first stepping stone towards our goal of becoming a comprehensive, interconnected ecosystem. While there will always be sceptics out there, there is no doubt that Web3 is here to stay — helping to improve existing incumbent systems, while giving more power to the community at large.

We are here to help support the ethos that Web3 was built on — no one party should have a clear advantage over the other. In this case, it is a quest to unite creators and users whilst creating utility for $GMT thus fostering an environment that everyone benefits from.

Look out for us, we’re here to stay.