[00:00:00] Luke: From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist podcast, we’re demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I’m your host, Luke Malks, VP of Business Operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy respecting Brave browser and search engine, now powering AI with the Brave Search API.

[00:00:29] You’re listening to a new episode of the Brave Technologist. And this week we interviewed Caitlin Cook, Director of Growth at Moonwalk Fitness, a gamified fitness accountability tool built on Solana. After starting her career in finance at Deutsche Bank, Caitlin transitioned the creation and development of a crypto education platform for RIAs, family offices, and other institutional allocators.

[00:00:50] And in this episode, we covered the moonwalk fitness app does, how it utilizes web three and crypto utility into a health and wellness app, [00:01:00] how challenges and incentives from the crypto world can help to motivate people to having better health and better health with groups of friends and teams.

[00:01:08] And ways that Moonwalk Fitness can expand beyond steps and step challenges into other activities and other types of health and wellness benefits for the masses. And now for this week’s episode of the Brave Technologist. Caitlin, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How are you doing today?

[00:01:26] Caitlin: I’m good. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:28] Luke: Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to this. Just to kind of get folks familiar and set the table a bit. You started your career in finance at Deutsche Bank and transitioned What kind of inspired you to make that shift? How did your background in finance shape your approach to crypto?

[00:01:43] Caitlin: Yeah.

[00:01:43] So I started working in crypto totally by accident. I was working in finance. Like you said, didn’t love what I was doing. It was like looking around for jobs. I’d been on Twitter for like five, six years at the time. So I had a good network and ended up reaching out to someone that had a. Basically a [00:02:00] crypto for trad five startups.

[00:02:02] So the clients I’ve been working with a Deutsche bank, a similar audience, but just like a crypto focused product and got a job offer from that team was really bullish on the founder. And the first thing that I asked him when he offered me a job was, you know, I know nothing about crypto, right? And fast forward from that to ending up building and running a crypto education platform for family offices and money managers.

[00:02:21] So. Obviously didn’t let that stop me. very good way to learn. I’d had to, so started in the space through that and then ended up in 2021, seeing a lot of more fun stuff happening in the bull market. And I was doing a lot of one on one education stuff. And I kind of was looking over it, all of the new and interesting stuff that was being built and thought I want to be.

[00:02:40] in deep on that. So ended up taking a job at, for a defy project. It was basically infrastructure for derivatives and vetting platforms. So teams that wanted to come build UIs, which was a very different job and kind of went down the rabbit hole from there. And then when wind walk fitness came around, it was just like, so aligned with what I’m personally passionate about.

[00:02:59] So made the [00:03:00] jump over to more. consumer Applications in that world versus DeFi which has been a lot of fun so far.

[00:03:06] Luke: That’s awesome. Yeah Let’s get into moonwalk a little bit. What is moonwalk for people that are listening?

[00:03:11] Caitlin: Yeah, so moonwalk fitness is a fitness accountability app that uses financial incentives that crypto supports So well and then social incentives to help people achieve their health goals Right now we’re starting out with step based competitions.

[00:03:24] So hypothetically say you and I enter a game, it lasts a certain number of days and every single day has a minimum step requirement, you know, that going into the game and you know, that signing up and to join the game, you have to put up an entry deposit that deposits denominated in USDC, Solana, or Bonk.

[00:03:40] And basically the way that the game works right now, and we’re going to expand upon this is that if you hit your steps every day, that step goal that is set out for you, the deposit that you put up at the. Beginning of the game, you get that back with the opportunity to earn more where the prize pool comes from for winners is if you miss your steps on a given day, that day’s worth of the overall deposit goes to a prize [00:04:00] pool, which is split amongst the winners.

[00:04:01] And the winners are either the people who win Hit their goals every single day, or if it’s a longer contest, it’s the group with the highest rate of completion. So just really trying to award consistency and daily habits, focusing that on step count, because that’s just a proxy for daily activity and something that anyone can do wherever they are.

[00:04:17] So I like to call it gamified accountability, and we can talk about what we’re doing with like the product to expand it from there.

[00:04:23] Luke: Yeah, no, that’s super cool. I mean, like, so basically for the listeners, if you’re already using a step app, which a lot of folks are doing, like step counting things like that.

[00:04:30] but like, let’s say you have a group of friends or something that you want to kind of make a challenge out of or something and kind of gamified a bit, and you can also, I’m sure like talk crap to your friends that aren’t hitting their step counts or whatever and take their money or whatever. I think it’s super cool.

[00:04:45] Like, I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I want to have you on today. There’s a lot of noise in the crypto space. It’s one of those things where. Things like Moonwalk and others are taking some of these incentives models that really can help to change the game with Web3 and then like put them in something that everyday [00:05:00] people can use.

[00:05:00] And I think there’s such a honest and focus on people like improving their health and you know, everybody has kind of seen what happens when people sit in a chair for eight or nine hours a day. And this is one of those cool things where like, if you’re already using a step counting app, like you can kind of like take it to the next level, maybe this is also something where like, it helps you to get motivated a little bit more just to do that little bit more to hit your goal every day.

[00:05:22] I think it’s super cool. What kind of attracted you to the mission Moonwalk?

[00:05:27] Caitlin: Yeah, it literally felt prophetic for me to join a project like this. I just didn’t think it would exist. So really cool to have the opportunity come up, but I’ve always been super active. So just growing up, played every sport that you can think of.

[00:05:39] My whole family was athletes and really, really active just my entire life. I was a division one soccer recruit. during COVID people on Twitter knew this too. So they found it funny when I switched jobs that during COVID for nine months straight, my roommate and I went for a six mile walk every day at 5 30 a.

[00:05:53] m. And my whole campaign on Twitter, just for my personal account was like, hashtag get outside. And I posted that every single [00:06:00] day for months and just started getting, you know, I was like the get outside girl then and was getting messages from people during COVID where it’s like, this saved me because if I wasn’t active, I would be in a really bad place.

[00:06:09] So kind of started a long time ago. And then when moonwalk came around, it was really one of the first, and I feel like I get crucified for this by a lot of, you know, more crypto hardcore users. Moonwalk is one of the first. Crypto powered apps that I was using every single day. And I was basically showing the product before I even worked there.

[00:06:27] I was just like helping them promote it. Thought it was a great mission was hosting games myself and just like trying to onboard people. So it made a ton of sense. I knew a lot of the team already. And when they, we had a discussion about bringing me on boards, everyone involved thought that it was a perfect fit, which is super fun because it doesn’t even feel like I’m doing a job.

[00:06:46] It’s just something that I would be doing either way.

[00:06:49] Luke: That’s awesome. No, I mean, like I totally remember that get outside hashtag stuff and it’s cool. I mean, I think we need more of that. And I think too, like in the crypto space, I mean, we see this because we have a wallet at Brave too, where you’ve got [00:07:00] people like trading, but it’s not like an everyday thing, you know, like, like the thing I really like about this is it’s something you can actually do with crypto every day.

[00:07:07] And it’s kind of like similar to how we have like a rewards model where you’re just basically like browsing every day and getting something. We need more things like this, I think, you know, to kind of connect it to a broader audience of people who aren’t just looking at charts all day and like, you know, I mean, they are in a way, right?

[00:07:21] Like they’re looking at their step counts and really into their fitness stuff. But like, here’s a way to maybe even get a better reward off that too, you know?

[00:07:27] Caitlin: Yeah, it’s positive some though, right? And I think that’s something that’s really cool is like, even if you’re losing money in a game, because you might not be hitting your steps every day.

[00:07:35] At baseline, you’re probably thinking a bit more about the habits that you’re trying to form and like being more active. And that’s something that you’re kind of consciously integrating into your day to day, which most people weren’t doing before, especially like we’re beta testing this with people from the salon ecosystem, which is like You are always at your desk.

[00:07:51] You’re either trading or you’re working, or you’re an engineer and you’re locked in at your computer. Like people need to be thinking about doing stuff like this. And then you have the financial, you know, potential for financial [00:08:00] upset as well, because the yield is coming from other people in the game. So it’s something that you can do regardless of where the market’s at.

[00:08:06] It’s something that you can do regardless of like anything else in your day. Like you should be moving at a baseline, a fair amount. And if you aren’t, then this is a good motivator for that. And it’s also not. In terms of risk, right? Like versus doing something like trading. I’d say it’s definitely positive ROI, even in worst case.

[00:08:25] So it’s definitely differentiated than that, for sure. And we’ve seen a lot of people who are commonly locked in at their desks every single day that have really positive feedback on it because it is something that you can and probably should be doing daily.

[00:08:36] Luke: Yeah, no, totally. It’s like you have better control over your potential ROI than like whatever’s happening, like in the macro, you know, it’s like, it’s awesome.

[00:08:44] I think, how long has Moonwalk been out for?

[00:08:46] Caitlin: They started ideating on the product at the beginning of this year, I want to say January, because I think I started hosting games in early spring.

[00:08:54] Luke: Okay, cool. So, I mean, that’s not that long, but I mean, in that period of time, like, have you had any really [00:09:00] interesting, like, engagements with users about, like, the impact that Moonwalks had, you know, on their day to day?

[00:09:06] Caitlin: And that’s been the coolest part of this job. So I, one I’m like gathering testimonials because I think like sharing user stories and the impact it’s had super powerful. So I share a lot of them. And then I’ve organically heard them as well. Like I was even scrolling Twitter today and someone replied to one of my tweets and said, can moonwalk reimburse me for new clothes?

[00:09:23] I don’t fit in any of mine anymore. I lost weight, but we’ve had, you know, stories like that. We’ve had people with more on like the mental health issue side where like, this is vastly improved kind of. The quality of their mental health. We’ve had people tell me about, which I find really interesting is that healthy habits, forget healthy habits.

[00:09:39] So I’ve had several people tell me that they started out with these contests and they started eating healthier. They stopped smoking. They started drinking less. They started lifting again. They got back to doing things that they really enjoyed doing, but kind of forgot about how good it felt to do regularly.

[00:09:52] And since they started moonwalk games, they fell back into those healthy habits. So yeah. It’s been all across the board, like some people have really loved the social [00:10:00] component of it and made a lot of new friends. We’ve seen people that have met up like in person to go on walks together or runs. And so really whatever you’re looking for, there’s a little bit of something for everyone, whether it’s like social, physical, mental, just discipline wise.

[00:10:12] Like it’s been really, really cool to hear all the stories. And it’s been a ton of positive feedback in a pretty short amount of time.

[00:10:18] Luke: Yeah, it’s super cool. And I know like we even kind of did some stuff with, with you all with our back community around the Olympic challenges that you were all doing. But I mean, you know, just kind of thinking back and looking at the potential here.

[00:10:28] I mean, there’s so much room for this to become something that, Oh, your baseball team’s doing together. Or like, you know, you’ve got like other clubs or people that you normally interact with or your circle of friends or whatever, where there’s this whole social element of it that is like pretty, it’s kind of like fantasy sports, like in a way where, you know, you’ve got all these people kind of like, you know, focused on this one thing together.

[00:10:47] And, you know, you’re going to have like outliers who just never make their count or whatever, but maybe you, you do it. I don’t know. I’m one that believes in kind of like these little differences can make a huge impact, and this seems like one of those things that’s super cool.

[00:10:58] Like that, aside from like [00:11:00] user impact and things like that, like where, where are your heads at with kind of, is there, are there any plans to kind of scale beyond walking in steps into other areas what are some other ideas for how you all plan on expanding moonwalk?

[00:11:12] Caitlin: Yeah, so we get this question a lot and I mean, we started with steps because it’s just such an easily accessible activity that anyone can do and just like a very good baseline thing that you should be integrating into your day to day to don’t need equipment.

[00:11:24] It doesn’t matter where you are. If your legs are functional, you can do it. So starting there, but there’s definitely been a lot of talks about, you know, where we go next with it. And first of all, it’s just around like enhancing the UI UX because our mission is going to you. Norm, like I hate saying normie, but like non crypto native users and having this be one of the first like consumer apps that’s powered by Solana or any other blockchain, but it’s used by normal people where they don’t have to know or care that that’s on the backend.

[00:11:51] It just works. And it’s something that they’re interested in doing. So there’s a lot in the works on that front in terms of making it really accessible, easy to onboard, taking away the complicated [00:12:00] wallet experience, that sort of thing. But the other half of that is thinking about different types of competitions for different types of people and catering to different activities, because at the end of the day, you can create healthy habits around any sort of activity.

[00:12:11] It doesn’t just have to be walking. So there’s a lot that we could do on that front. We’ve gotten so many user requests for different activities, like even. Like Raj from Solana was asking at an event about I think snowboarding or something, right? Like that’s not something you think of, but like, that might be cool to have later down the line, like in the winter, like being able to do competitions for snowboarding or skiing or Vikings when we’ve gotten a lot, like just all different kinds of things.

[00:12:35] And it’s just figuring out, you know, how we track them in games that make sense for people to compete on. But I mean, we definitely are planning on expanding the functionality for it, both within step competitions themselves and then other activities.

[00:12:48] Luke: Yeah, it’s really cool. I mean, because if you think about like wearables and things like that, like all these capabilities that they have to detect different activities that you’re doing, or like, you know, I, it’s pretty awesome.

[00:12:57] I think just where this could go. I’m [00:13:00] sure that you all are getting early feedback. I was seeing too, speaking of kind of making the usability easier to, like, I saw that you are using like tip link, right. Where you can kind of almost get started with this just with a, with an email account, which is like super cool to see too.

[00:13:12] So that’s another, another reason why I wanted to have you on too, is because like, I think, you know, what you all are doing. doing is one of those things that’s trying to make things easier for people to onboard, which so few people try to do in this space. So it was super cool to see you guys doing on this, you know, web three is kind of this bucketed term, right?

[00:13:26] Where do you see kind of moonwalk growing beyond it? Like as the broader web three space grows, how does moonwalk fitting into a space where we’ve got adoption on this type of thing?

[00:13:36] Caitlin: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of work to get there. I know you just mentioned like tip link and having logged in with Gmail.

[00:13:41] And a lot of it is work around one, having an app where the entire experience is in one place, super polished, very easy to use. And then there’s kind of the, you know, we want to go and take this to. Run clubs and gyms and trainers and CrossFit groups and corporate wellness programs, or, you know, just like rambling things off.

[00:13:59] So [00:14:00] there are so many different ways that we can go with it, which I think is really exciting just because it’s like very broadly applied and we can do a lot, but before we do that and to actually make it so it’s easy to onboard to, which is, you know, you’ve mentioned not a ton of projects have worked on being truly.

[00:14:15] Mainstream consumer compatible, and I think that a lot of the projects that I’ve tried doing it in the past either didn’t go far enough or didn’t have the tech that they needed to make it truly easy because, you know, we’ve been in crypto a while. What’s easy to us is not easy to mainstream users in most cases, I’d say probably almost all of them.

[00:14:33] So a lot of it is looking at. The Web2 space and seeing what are users actually used to? How do they normally log into a site? How do we remove the wallet part of it and just have it on the back end where our team could manage it? But how do they onboard with the how can we have it? So it’s a very easy experience for them with things that they’re familiar with rather than, oh, you need USDC, Solana, or Bonk, and you have to have a wallet and you have to connect that wallet.

[00:14:56] You have to fund it. Like every hurdle that you add to the onboarding experience, just seeing [00:15:00] Results in so much drop off from use and retention. So it’s thinking about that and then kind of where we’re seeing it for the long run is we want this to be like one of the first consumer apps with real escape velocity that normal people can use and will use.

[00:15:14] So like, obviously that’s the end goal for it. And you know, lots of different ways that people can use it, different activities, different types of game and fit for different types of people. But. I mean, we’re going to go really big on this. It’s truly the end state and like eye on the prize is, you know, starting with the crypto group that we’re all familiar with.

[00:15:30] They’re great at beta testing. They’re great at giving feedback and they’re used to maybe less than desirable UI UX, but using that as a base and then expanding to like something that my mom could eventually use. Right. And not having to worry about, will she understand this? Because she will, it’s going to be simple enough for that.

[00:15:46] Luke: Speaking on that kind of current stage of things, right? Like I know that you all are doing these challenges, right? Is this something that like Moonwalk is going to put up challenges for over the next several months and other, teams can kind of come in and participate in the challenges or [00:16:00] are teams able to kind of go in and set up their own types of challenges?

[00:16:02] Like, how does that work?

[00:16:03] Caitlin: Yeah, so if you have an account and you go like log in and moonwalk. fit, the first thing that you’ll see is a public games page. That’s either games that our teams created that we have, you know, different moonwalk global ambassadors that have the ability to create public games that show up on that feed.

[00:16:19] So no matter what, there’s always going to be games with different entry amounts, different step counts, different lengths that people can choose from and sign up for, which I’d recommend because we launched a points program. And the more games that you enter, the higher experience you get. If you’re hitting your goals in multiple games at once.

[00:16:32] That being said, we did recently launch like opening up the floodgates on game creation. So if you’ve participated in at least three moonwalk contests, just because we want people to understand how the games work before they create them themselves, you have the ability. Now there’s a button that says new once you log in and are on the games page and you can create.

[00:16:49] Okay. Any amount or any type of step contest that you want. And that’s a private game that you can share with your friends, your family, your communities, and however you want it to be. So there’s [00:17:00] any option now for if users want to come do that, they have the ability to and we open that up. So that’s kind of like our first step of coming out of beta was opening the floodgates on game creation.

[00:17:09] And so anyone can do that now that’s live on the site. And the new button will show up. If you’ve completed at least three games, if it hasn’t obviously reached out, but it should. And from there, we’ve also had sponsor games too. I know we’ve worked on this with brave as well. So right now for normal games, as I was mentioning, the price pool is created.

[00:17:25] And kind of the funds come from people who are missing their steps and parts of their deposit for the days that they miss. We also have, on top of that, we’ve seen a lot of projects that, you know, want to have a fun activation for their communities, or they want to get the word out there and get in front of new audiences.

[00:17:39] And a lot of teams have been. Sponsoring additional prize pools on top of it to make it more lucrative for the people who are hitting their steps. So that could be any SPL token. We have teams that have given out NFTs or different subscriptions, and that can be done manually as well, because obviously we have a list of users that hit their goals to get that, you know, get those prizes to them kind of more manually.

[00:17:59] So [00:18:00] we’ve seen a lot of interesting. Ways for that and we’ve also just like literally right before this call actually set up I think it’s matrika. I’m gonna probably say it wrong, but for doing token gated or nft gated games So that’s something that we had a lot of like NFT communities or, you know, different token communities interested in doing that where a big competition, but it’s limited to a certain community or group in one way or another.

[00:18:22] So there’s a lot of options now, but again, expanding the different game types and maybe it’s winner take all, maybe it’s whatever the case may be. We’re trying to expand that too.

[00:18:30] Luke: That’s awesome. Yeah. Cause it’s totally something where you can see a lot of like communities wanting to kind of like participate in it, I don’t know, for, for community morale and like, you know, keeping things going,

[00:18:39] Caitlin: it’s a good activation.

[00:18:40] Luke: Yeah, exactly. You

[00:18:42] Caitlin: got to keep it fresh. Right. And it’s just something that is again, very positive. Some in terms of like the behavior that you’re incentivizing, it’s a little bit less degenerate. I mean, I guess you’re still kind of like betting your money on certain outcomes. Right. But again, it’s partially within your control, how you end up doing.

[00:18:56] Right. So we’ve seen a lot of communities, [00:19:00] especially, you know, on the NFT side too, right, where you have this group of people that, how do you activate them in a, in a fun and engaging way? That’s new. So we’ve seen a lot of teams that are interested in that. And I think it is good because it’s something you can do on an ongoing basis.

[00:19:12] That’s pretty low maintenance on the backend too.

[00:19:15] Luke: Yeah, that’s awesome. Are there any ideas around like how like AI can kind of work in with with these things? Is that just kind of like we’ll we’ll get to that when we get to that or

[00:19:24] Caitlin: yeah I I can’t say that I’ve thought about it a ton. I mean, honestly, it’s more like from like a support standpoint Yeah, I was just talking to someone about this earlier like, you know There are very frequently asked questions in terms of odd boarding or you know Different little things within the product that we get questions about how do we?

[00:19:40] You Automate the support functions of that to get people their answers at any hour of the day, like very quickly other than that. to be honest, haven’t thought about it a ton, but I’m sure that there’s going to be ways that we could integrate AI components to make it a smoother process. Like there’s new stuff being built every single day on that front.

[00:19:56] So I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be some sort of crossover at some point. [00:20:00]

[00:20:00] Luke: Totally, totally. No, that’s awesome. Have you guys run into any like big challenges just around the blockchain component of this? I know you mentioned earlier kind of onboarding a little bit, but aside from that, have there been any hurdles around this with using the blockchain on the back end?

[00:20:14] Caitlin: Honestly, no. I think early on when there was like some congestion in Solana, I think, I think there was maybe difficulty in like creating games. So like, To create a game or to put your entry deposit in, those are on chain transactions. Your steps every day don’t count as that. So there’s never going to be an issue related to blockchain in terms of like syncing that data.

[00:20:31] That’s all off chain. So that makes it a bit smoother. But other than that, I don’t think we’ve had any complications, which is great. That’s awesome. Obviously those on the Solana front, we’re taking care of fingers crossed. So nothing other than that, that we’ve run into, to my knowledge, it’s been pretty seamless.

[00:20:46] Luke: That’s cool. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you might want the audience to know about, about what you all are doing, or just anything in general, anything coming up, maybe?

[00:20:55] Caitlin: Yeah, I mean, nothing related to what we’re trying to do. I feel like that’s pretty [00:21:00] clear, pretty simple, which is always nice.

[00:21:02] But in terms of things that are coming up, I mean, the biggest is, and this isn’t really a secret, is the launch of the iOS app. As a starting point, we’ll have Android as well. I know a lot of people are Android users. It’s just got to start somewhere. So, The launch of an app where the entire experience is all in one place.

[00:21:16] And there’s going to be a lot of new features and a lot of really fun kind of gamified components to it as well. So that’s coming out pretty soon. Not sure when you put these podcasts out, but speaking on it at Solana break point as well in Singapore next month. So that’s super exciting. That’s the biggest thing.

[00:21:33] And then of course, you know, I kind of mentioned like a little bit further down the road in terms of different game types, different activities, like, you There’s so many different ways that we can go with the product. And we plan to do a lot of those and just based on, you know, user feedback and whatnot.

[00:21:44] So there’s like no shortage of things that we’re, cooking up. So highly recommend following along any sort of user feedback. It’s always appreciated ideas, always appreciated. So just trying to kind of get a feel for, for what people are most interested in.

[00:21:57] Luke: Totally. And on that note, where can [00:22:00] people follow you and follow the project that want to reach out or just follow along?

[00:22:04] Caitlin: Yeah. So the website is moonwalk. fit. You should be able to sign up within like a very short span of time. If you want to start joining games. So pretty quick to do that. And then if you want to follow along the Twitter’s at moonwalk fitness, mine is dead Kate bounce, Kate, C A I T. And that’s where most of the updates are coming from right now.

[00:22:21] We also have, you know, obviously going to be catering to non Crypto audience. So we have Instagram, we’re going to work on TikTok, YouTube, all the mainstream kind of social media sites to cover our ground. So if you’re on any of those, definitely all the same handle.

[00:22:33] Luke: Awesome. Well, Caitlin, we really appreciate you coming by today.

[00:22:37] This has been great. Everybody should try out Moonwalk. I think it’s one of those really cool things where, you know, we’re kind of crossing worlds between crypto and everyday types of use. And plus, you know, get outside and all that good stuff and stay healthy. Love to have you back to do an update, like, and just see how things are going.

[00:22:51] Caitlin: I’m available anytime. Always excited to chat.

[00:22:55] Luke: All right. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks, Luke. Thanks for listening [00:23:00] to the Brave Technologist podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app. If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave browser, you can download it for free today at brave.

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