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Web3 Earning Through a Bear Market

Web3 Earning Through a Bear Market

Despite the ongoing crypto bear market, the ability to earn on web3 through play-to-earn gaming and other categories of web3 apps remains the same, with good projects building through it and new projects continuing to launch. In fact, earning through a crypto winter can be a great opportunity to access cheaper NFTs and grow assets that can increase exponentially in value when a bull market returns.

Separating the wheat from the chaff is a difficult but important process that the blockchain industry goes through each bull to bear market cycle. Sometimes it can be impossible to tell the good projects from bad, as has been seen in recent months. From the Terra crash, to the FTX bankruptcy crisis, with many flow-on impacts from these spectacular and shocking collapses, unexpected project failures are still very common across the space. 

But silver linings to the pain of a crypto bear market are lower barriers to entry, less noise and a clearer picture of which projects are built on good foundations and continue to add value for their communities. According to classic Darwinian theory, the survivors of this downturn will be the projects building products that can thrive even in a harsh and uncertain environment.

During the bull market many ‘copy-pasta’ web3 startups appeared and achieved inflated valuations with nothing but hype to underpin them. Consequently, the industry is shaking those out, but all projects are weathering the impact of the market losing heat. Tokens and NFTs rewards earned using play-to-earn, move-to-earn, data-sharing and other kinds of web3 dapps are worth far less than they were 9-12 months ago and in most cases will continue to decrease until the cycle turns bullish once more. This has an impact on user interest in projects with less lucrative short term earning potential taking the shine off for people seeking quick returns. 

However this creates opportunities for users with a longer term outlook, such as earning tokens and NFT’s more easily in a less competitive space, buying cheaper utility NFTs that will increase in value, and leveraging their assets and experience into the next bull market.

Moving to earn through the bear

By using blockchain technology, it’s possible to combine the well-being benefits of exercise with the ability to earn real value while doing it. Exercise allows participants to be healthy, spend time with friends and enjoy themselves. With web3 move-to-earn dapps, a user can combine these benefits with another important aspect of life: earning money. 

Most web3 dapps give users the option to earn crypto tokens or non fungible tokens (NFTs), sometimes they have to be bought by the user before participating, but a user doesn’t necessarily have to invest in expensive NFTs to be involved earn within dapp economies and token models. 

With the current situation, the fiat value of cryptocurrencies and NFTs across the board have taken a major dive. Just ask Justin Bieber, who paid $1.3 million for a bored ape NFT in January that’s was recently worth $69,000. 

Utility NFTs are in the same position. Popular move-to-earn running dapp Step’n requires users to own NFT sneakers to earn the platform native token GMT. These were worth $700-1200 USD at their peak but can now be bought for less than $30 USD. 

The upside is that savvy users of good dapps can continue their activity and use the chance to accumulate value more easily, which could see a significant gain in value during the next bull run. 

Meet a web3 earner

An example is Step’n community member Krit, who is still earning 15-18 $SOL per month:

Krit is using their experience to diversify into other move-to-earn applications like Genopets and believes that these decentralized apps have great benefits for both health and income.

So while there may be constant FUD and the market may be in a long bearish stage, keep in mind that every bear market so far has been followed by a bull. To make the most of the next crypto summer, you may want to continue your web3 earning activities through the winter no matter what unexpected storms the market has to weather.

Godfrey
November 30, 2022

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