Move-to-Earn Token GST Drops After STEPN Hit With DDoS Attacks

Australian move-to-earn fitness application STEPN has reported multiple distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in the wake of a major anti-cheating upgrade on its platform:

As mentioned in the above tweet, STEPN was expecting to secure and recover the servers in anywhere up to 12 hours but had not posted an update for 20 hours at the time of writing.

“Our engineers are working hard to fix the problems. We will announce here once recovery is complete. Thank you so much for everyone’s patience,” STEPN further tweeted.

The DDoS attacks occurred after the platform introduced “STEPN’s Model for Anti-Cheating” (SMAC) on June 3. The security-based system aims to eliminate fake users from the platform as well as prevent fraudulent motion data on the STEPN app.

Token Numbers Inflated by Bots and GPS Fudges

Launched last December, STEPN is an NFT game that allows users to earn tokens (either GST, the utility Green Satoshi Token, or GMT, STEPN’s governance token, aka the Green Metaverse Token) by exercising outdoors while wearing NFT sneakers. Apparently some players had been using bots and GPS fudging to inflate the number of tokens generated by using the application, hence STEPN’s SMAC system.

In the past 24 hours, both tokens recorded declines. GMT suffered a 6 percent slide with a 20.56 percent drop in trading volume, although increased distribution appeared to be under way at time of writing:

Just last week, GMT plunged almost 40 percent in 24 hours following news that mainland Chinese users would be barred from the service from July 15 this year. In April, STEPN reported that GMT’s value had increased five-fold over the previous month after securing a sneaker deal with Japanese brand Asics.

Meanwhile, the GST-SOL token recorded a 19.18 percent loss, though at time of writing volume was up 11.53 percent, consistent with a bear market correction.