Step Finance Q3/Q4 Update

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Welcome to another strategy post on what our plans are at Step Group and where to from here, I think youll like this one. Step Group is in a time of transition, notice how we refer to what we do as a ‘Group’ now as we have 5 brands/companies all achieving their own goals but anchored to being beneficial to one another and growing the Step ecosystem of projects. I think the best way to brain dump some of our strategic thinking is in a Q and A format, lets get into it.

What is the future of the core product- Step Dashboard?

This is something we ask ourselves alot and we think there is some directional changes to be done here, a summary of thinking is below:

• The Portfolio dash is in a good state generally but there is the continuous hamster wheel of new integrations to be done always which cost money and time and have zero direct payoff.
• The Portfolio is a core product of the Solana ecosystem with a steady userbase of hundreds of thousands of MAUs, but its highly reliant on general macro usage of Solana and crypto in general (number up = more users, number down= userbase rekt)
• The thinking to date has been maintaining the portfolio dash as the portal to the Step ecosystem (news, events, validator staking etc) as a ‘top of the funnel’ product. This still remains true but with some caveats
• The time and resources required to maintain it to a high level is immense and probably 90% of our dev team (15 or so ppl) is continuously working on it in different ways (frontend UI, backend indexing, APIs, bug fixing, mobile etc)
• Who are Portfolio dashboard users? Generally the answer is ‘old people’ aka ppl with some decent money allocated to crypto and use DeFi as a power user. This segment isnt growing. People these days generally engage with one or two Defi products only making the utility of the dash less than its been in the past.
• Mobile is the future here and the work we do on the Step dash is directly relevant to the upcoming mobile app refresh. Its pretty much the same frontend and backend but in mobile form with some additional spicy new things (wallet-like functions and new ecosystem discovery spice). New app currently in testing.
• The old desktop+defi users arent something we will cater to going forward as much of the focus for the step webapp will be on mobile. Thats where the users and money are and we have some unique moats that others dont have there (the defi data indexing infra we have spent years refining)

So it’s a mobile future then?

Probably, yes. This is where new growth is happening and where we have some unique moats. It makes sense to focus more here. But it isnt just a matter of ‘put step webapp on a mobile’, that wont be good enough, so we have to innovate.

What’s up with Remora?

Lets be real, the biggest bullish narrative for the Step ecosystem, despite all the effort we put elsewhere is Remora lol. We acquired a company late last year and agreed on a number of milestones they needed to achieve as part of the acquisition. They had 6 months to do it. They failed. We had the choice to cut our losses and move on here or double down on the concept of RWAs. After some investigation we decided to bring it in house with a new team, new product and throw away everything that was built prior as it simply wasnt up to spec in any way and failed multiple security audits.

You win some you lose some on acquisitions, this was our 3rd and while we had 2 excellent outcomes on the first two the 3rd one not so much. The lesson learned here is pretty much ‘if you want something done well then do it yourself’. This also rings true on other things we have outsourced recently too like the ticketing infra for Crossroads which was meant to be a simple job but became an annoying headache of dumb problems with contractors.

But now we are refocused on Remora like never before and in a waaaay better position with the product, team and regulatory setup. As youll note I was recently in Kazakhstan for the SEZ demo day Solana put on there at the AIFC zone. The best offshore jurisdiction for crypto company formation in the world, I write about it a bit here. The new Remora is excited to be working in Kazakh and we are in the process of all the regulatory stuff that needs doing there, we can’t rush that as much as we would like to.

So TLDR- new team, new product, new regs, new company. All Remora, same goal. Tokenised stonks are going to be huge this year and its the next big thing for crypto in general and we will have a piece of the pie. We have some unique competitive advantages we will elaborate in time on (competitors are watching lel) but its a core focus for us. In fact we are considering bringing over some of the step team to work on Remora as currently the teams have been entirely separate. But in terms of bang for buck we really should be working on the explosive new things for growth, not maintaining the old.

Hows Solanafloor doing?

Really well actually. One of the major crypto publications of the world and a growing team of real journalists and an increasing amount of video content coming out now. We want to continue to grow the SF side of things as its important we own the media as there is immense value in always being a focal point for discussion in the Solana ecosystem. There will also be more Solanafloor focused events in future which will likely tag onto existing crypto conferences which is much more efficient than doing any of that yourself.

How about events? Crossroads and Allstars Academy?

Crossroads was a great success and we are in the early planning stages of what comes next there. Is it the same formula or something different? TBD

Allstars went through a branding revamp from ‘Solana Allstars’ to ‘Allstars Academy’ to reflect the positioning of the Allstars brand now. Allstars Academy is the largest crypto irl meetup in the world with 11 000+ attendees monthly. People attend our meetups to learn more about crypto, use crypto apps and become engaged in the crypto ecosystem in some way. We are consolidating the countries we already operate in at the moment and working on internal efficiencies to bring costs down and impact up. Its an important frontline for getting any new products we want out there to people.

Also we realised we had alot of interest in non-solana ecosystem teams. The door is now open, we are in the process of standardising our content across all crypto chains, not just Solana. We have a massive marketing power and brand and its something some other ecosystem are interested in benefiting from. Sponsors welcome.

What about API data sales?

We are literally the only provider now in the entire Solana ecosystem that can give you portfolio value data. What are the positions of a wallet? We can tell you. Jup bought Sonar and closed that part down and the number of inbound requests for this has grown. We already had a bunch of big names using our API but the issue is the market is small for this sort of thing. I can count the number of projects who will pay good money for this on my hands and even CEXs of which we have using it are unreliable.

We also need to improve the API, needs a dedicated team tbh and we are currently hiring a devrel to grow that. Let us know if you’re interested it can grow more with dedicated people handling this aspect of the business.

So its there, makes money but needs dedicated people on it to pour gasoline on the fire.

How is marketing going?

Well. Youll note the amazing new AI videos we have been making on the Step social accounts, these get more traction and interest than other things we could be spending time on and the cost is quite minimal. All our other brands help do the heavy lifting on making Step known to the world too. We are also experimenting with paid ads on socials with Solanafloor and have a go to market strategy ready for Remora launch, new step app and more.

What is the most exciting thing for Step now?

Stock trading onchain will be huge, new billion dollar empires will be forged. Its fundamentally a better experience to download a wallet and buy $TSLA than it is to download Robinhood and connect an archaic banking system to that. Not only that but you can use that $TSLA in the Defi world- stake it, LP it, borrow against it. Its game over. Its the next huge new horizon and we are going to be there for it.

That means we need a competitive mobile app with unique functionality, stonk coins (remora) and ecosystem opportunities. The potential of such apps is measured in the billions of dollars and the RWA narrative is currently top of mind for alot of people looking at what’s next in crypto.

Steps’ future will be less focused on maintaining the old things and instead putting our team of literal solana gods to build the new things which have massive growth potential.

If you think all of this sounds good then we invite you to come along for the ride, the $STEP token has been there for years and gets direct flows of prfits made that go to buybacks for stakers. All buybacks are posted weekly, have been public for years, we have one of the lowest FDVs in Solana ecosystem, VCs sold years ago and when charted $STEP has performed better than like 95% of ecosystem coins (pinned chart in our discord). We dont have retarded influencers shilling, we dont pay for listings, we do everything onchain because thats the present and the future and fundamentally what the world needs.