When Oleg Fomenko co-founded Sweatcoin in 2014, the idea was both straightforward yet profoundly ambitious: get the world walking by rewarding every step. It wasn’t built on blockchain, not yet. Despite his fascination with cryptocurrency dating back to his first encounter with Bitcoin in 2011, the infrastructure simply wasn’t ready.
“Bitcoin was too slow and expensive. Ethereum didn’t even have a name yet,” he says. “We were dreaming Web3, but building in Web2.”
So Sweatcoin began life as a centralized points app. Users earned a unit of value, one sweatcoin, for every 1,000 verified steps. They could redeem it for products, services, or donate it to good causes. But Fomenko’s ambitions went far beyond step counters and rewards marketplaces. From day one, he wanted to build an entirely new asset class.
“The reason we’re not as active as we want isn’t motivation or time. Nature built us to conserve energy,” he says. “Neanderthals weren’t doing push-ups. They were saving calories to survive.”
It’s what behavioural scientists call present bias: our tendency to prioritize immediate comfort over long-term benefits.
“Thankfully, nature gave us an antidote,” Fomenko says. “It’s called instant gratification. That’s why we all still exist — nature gave us orgasms. But it forgot to attach one to physical activity. That’s where Sweatcoin comes in.”
From Caveman Logic to Crypto
Fomenko knew that rewarding movement could shift behaviour at scale, but in the early 2010s, blockchain couldn’t support it. So he waited. Every year, he and his team reassessed the landscape. Finally, in 2021, the tech caught up.
Faster and more scalable protocols like Solana, Avalanche, and NEAR arrived. After evaluating 14 blockchains, Sweatcoin chose NEAR Protocol and launched Sweat Wallet and the SWEAT crypto token in September 2022.
“We created Sweat to genuinely decentralize and monetize physical movement,” Fomenko says. “We weren’t doing blockchain for the buzz. We were building the movement economy.”
Walk, Earn, Repeat
The economics behind Sweat are designed to be both intuitive and sustainable. Initially, users minted one SWEAT token for every 1,000 steps. But over time, the “minting difficulty” rises, encouraging people to get active sooner rather than later. Today, it takes 7,500 steps to mint a single token.
“It’s like Bitcoin halving,” says Fomenko. “But ours happens continuously, in real time. The earlier you move, the more you earn.”
Today, Sweat Wallet boasts over 20 million token holders and continues to onboard 15,000 to 20,000 new users every day. The Web2 app Sweatcoin has now surpassed 190 million registered users, making the ecosystem one of the largest gateways into Web3.
“If you can walk, you can earn,” Fomenko says. “No need for upfront crypto knowledge. We’re letting people walk into Web3.”
Defining the Movement Economy
Fomenko’s vision goes far beyond fitness. He believes physical movement is an economic resource, just like attention, which fuels the trillion-dollar ad-tech ecosystem.
“The attention economy made Google and Facebook rich,” he says. “But movement is just as valuable, and until now, people couldn’t own the value they generate.”
To back this claim, Sweat commissioned independent research. The findings were remarkable: a day of walking, roughly 10,000 steps, creates an average of $3.96 in global economic benefit, spanning healthcare, productivity, and public savings. Yet the market currently values that day’s output at just over one cent in SWEAT.
“That gap is massive,” Fomenko says. “And it’s exactly what we’re closing. Movement has value and it belongs to the mover.”
He envisions a world where employers, insurers, and governments integrate SWEAT into benefits systems, public health programs, and even tax credits. That’s already happening: Sweatcoin has partnered with the UK’s NHS to incentivize walking for people at risk of diabetes.
“If they walk more, they don’t become diabetic. It’s cheaper for the NHS, better for them, and better for the country.”
And in the future? Fomenko imagines paying your taxes in SWEAT. “If you’re physically active, you’re healthier, more productive, and less of a burden on public services,” he says. “So it makes perfect sense for governments to recognize that value, and even accept it as part of your tax contribution. It’s good economics and good policy.”
No Web3 Fairy Tales
In an industry plagued by hype and short-term thinking, Fomenko is blunt about Web3’s problems.
“Crypto is full of fairy tales. People sell dreams, the token pumps, and the founders vanish.”
He wants no part of that. Sweatcoin has been profitable for years in Web2. Now, with Sweat Wallet, they’re building a tokenized economy with real utility, real users, and transparent governance.
“We’re not anonymous. We’ve been around since 2014. We built a business before we built a token. And we’re not here to cash out, we’re here to build.”
He points to Sweat Economy’s DAO, which has already held multiple governance votes with hundreds of thousands of participants. One major vote backed token buybacks using platform profits, a way to reward holders and reduce supply.
“In Web3, there are no shareholders. Profits go back to the community. That’s the model.”
Walk the Walk
When asked about his proudest achievement, Fomenko doesn’t talk about downloads or dollars. He talks about ethics.
“I’ve stayed true to the mission. We haven’t cut corners. We haven’t dumped on our users. That’s what I’m proud of.”
He admits that the hardest part isn’t building, it’s telling the story.
“We’re creating a movement economy. That’s complex. My biggest wish? More power of persuasion. I want more people to see the scale of what we’re doing, and to join us.”
It’s not just talk. Fomenko and his team are walking the walk, literally, as they build a new layer of the global economy, powered by something almost every human does every day: move.
“We’re not here to disappear after the hype,” he says. “We’re building something fair, sustainable, and real. And we won’t stop until every step you take is valued, by you, your community, and the world.”
