Fitness Metaverse: trade sweat for NFTs

:OliveX wants you to earn while you burn. The Hong Kong-based digital fitness company rewards players with crypto and NFTs as they flee marauding pirates and monsters across a dystopian wasteland.

Gamers can earn DOSE tokens and NFTs by completing missions within OliveX’s adventure game that requires them to run varying distances in the real world with their smartphones in hand. The virtual rewards they accumulate can be used to level up games, or to be traded on crypto exchanges and NFT marketplaces.

“Move-to-earn is a game changer,” Keith Rumjahn, the 37-year-old founder and CEO of OliveX, said in a video interview. “For the first time ever, players have true digital ownership of their games, and game developers also earn more because there’s no middleman. So it’s a win-win.”

OliveX said its strategy enables it to tap into three booming industries by combining physical fitness with mobile video games that incorporate blockchain technology. The company’s longer-term aim is to build an ecosystem of fitness games integrated with Animoca Brands’ metaverse title the Sandbox, a virtual world where players can build, buy and sell their in-game assets as they interact with other users and brands.

Keith Rumjahn, founder and CEO of OliveX: Dustland Runner is based on an earlier smartphone game called Zombies, Run!, which is said to have an average of 300,000 active users per month, of which roughly 50,000 are paid subscribers. Zombies, Run! was the creation of London-based game developer Six to Start, which was acquired by OliveX for $9.5 million in March 2021.

“Our mission is to onboard a billion people,” Rumjahn said. “In doing so, I want them to earn their first NFT and crypto token through exercising.”