Adidas partners with crypto fitness app Stepn, both NFTs and merch coming

Shoe and sports apparel giant Adidas is teaming up with the Solana-based fitness app Stepn, the latter announced on Monday.

The partnership will kick off with a batch of 1,000 NFTs called the Stepn x Adidas Genesis Sneakers collection. It’s based on some of Adidas’s “most iconic running silhouettes,” according to a statement.

“This genesis collection is the first of a series of co-branded activities between Stepn and Adidas over a one-year partnership that will see further NFT drops and physical, wearable items on the roadmap,” Stepn said in its statement. 

The NFT collection is slated to drop later this week on April 17, via Stepn’s sister non-fungible token marketplace Mooar.

Adidas has previously forged crypto-related, web3 partnerships with Coinbase, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Bugatti.

Stepn is a move-to-earn web3 app that rewards users with cryptocurrency for walking or running. This is not the first time Stepn, which said it has 5 million registered users, has partnered with a shoe company. In 2022, Stepn partnered with Asics.

“That such a physical and digital – or ‘phygital’ – partnership between the most widely used lifestyle app and a global brand like Adidas are now a reality indicates the direction lifestyle rewards are going,” Stepn CEO Shiti Manghani said in the company’s statement.

Last week, Stepn airdropped bonus points worth a total of $30 million of GMT tokens.