Lympo Paves Way For New "Blockchain Gym" Business Model

Lympo has completed it's ICO and is poised to take the fitness app market by storm! The big news going around now is that they've elected to distribute shares in the company to those who hold LYM tokens! I've never heard of this being done before which makes it quite exciting. They'll be giving out 20% of their company to token holders, capping out a single person's slice of the pie at 1% to try and encourage many people to hold LYM tokens. This means even if the market for the token fluctuates, you'll have shares in the company with value as well! For those who are unaware, @originalworks had a previous writing contest for Lympo, so there's tons of great articles out there on this project. Feel free to check out my post from the previous competition for a light-hearted and fun article about how Lympo could be used to cure the "dad bod." This time around I wanted to get a little more specific about a business model that will be made possible with Lympo, the blockchain gym! But before I get into the specifics of what that business model might look like, let's discuss the underlying technology that makes it possible.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

How does Lympo work?

Lympo allows users to complete health and fitness related tasks in exchange for LYM tokens. It does this by using data collected by sources such as smart watches and other fitness activity tracking devices that monitor several metrics such as heart rate, gym check-ins, or steps taken. To take it a step further, Lympo helps you track and own all kinds of data/metrics from your activities. Whether you realize it or not, if you use applications in the health/fitness space, you're more than likely collecting this data and providing it to companies that profit from it already. This both limits the potential of the data and inflates the monetary value of the data (while centralizing that data in the hands of companies instead of the blockchain). Outside of the monetary implications of the data, the Lympo whitepaper has this to say about a current health crisis that could be impacted by this technology.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 17.7 million people died from CVDs in 2015, representing 31% of all global deaths. At the same time, WHO stresses that “most cardiovascular diseases can be prevented by addressing behavioural risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet and obesity, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol.”

• Lympo's Source for this metric: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), The World Health Organisation

There's 2 great reasons why better data management is advantageous to users. First, it's great to have analytics to reference to see how you're progressing. This reason is also the one that could help users decrease their likelihood of getting a CVD and could have huge health implications for users. Second, since you own the data, you can also sell that data to interested parties. In a world where many popular applications are already siphoning your personal information to the highest bidder without you seeing any cut of the action, it's wonderful to come across an application that lets you own and monetize off of your own data. It's this second reason that bursts the doors open for this new blockchain gym concept.

What is a blockchain gym?

Think about gyms that you've gone to before. You signed up and likely paid a monthly fee to have access to the gym. Unfortunately, if you wanted to have a lot of classes or services the cost to add these likely got quite expensive. If you went the other route and joined a gym with no extra classes or services offered and very limited staff, it was likely harder to get the results you wanted. Nobody is surprised about this because it's been pretty standard in the health/fitness space that for top end results you have to pay top dollar. However, with Lympo, you now have an additional resource at your disposal as a user. You have your data! The data is particularly valuable to gyms, because they are constantly competing against tons of other gyms that offer a similar set of features/prices. With a competitive space like health and fitness, it can be difficult to set yourself apart. Then, if you do have great programs, it's hard to be able to show tangible results to prospective clients. Lympo allows users to get metrics on a personal level that would be of great value for a gym trying to show that they can produce results.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

This leads to our new business model, the blockchain gym. In a blockchain gym, many things are the same as other gyms. You purchase a membership (with options to pay in cryptocurrencies of course!) and schedule classes that members can participate in. Then, you offer the incentive that if users share their Lympo data from any of the sessions they are a part of, it discounts their membership cost based on the LYM tokens earned in the class. This accomplishes 3 big things. First, it gets you proof that your programs work which can be used to attract new members. Secondly, users are more likely to produce results because it's lowering their monthly premiums for the gym! Everybody is incentivized to do better and attend more frequently! Last but not least, it also allows the gym to see data tailored to the individual so they can help personalize diet/exercise plans for the individual for max effect.

From the gym's end of things there are also some additional perks that result from those 3 results above. First off, customer retention can be quite difficult for gyms. Many people sign up for gyms and end up later realizing they're paying for membership at a gym they're not attending. So they cancel their subscription until they decide they want to try again several months later. This is because these users have not been engaged properly by the gyms they attend. The reason they have not been engaged with properly is because extra classes/training/attention cost the gym money to facilitate. They typically have had to reserve those for people willing to pay extra for those services to make it worth the money. That extra payment for the classes creates a barrier between the providers and any skeptical users. Now, people can decrease the financial impact of signing up for these services because they'll be able to subsidize their own costs by selling data back to the gym! This means people are more likely to sign up for services that will improve their gym experience and help retain them better as customers. The gym then still gets the value out of selling these extra services in a mixture of raw payment and data that can be used to benefit the gym.

Photo Credit: Lympo Website

What can I do now?

So, now that you're familiar with the blockchain gym concept, you might be thinking to yourself "what if nobody opens a blockchain gym near me to participate?" The great news is the blockchain gym is just one way the Lympo platform works, you can still take part of this wonderful project now! They have a big list of potential uses in their whitepaper from healthcare to employee incentive programs that might spark your interest. Even through all the potential uses, at the end of the day there's always the very basic option of tracking your own health/fitness and monetizing on your data. To this end, you could head to the Lympo website now and sign up to be a part of the products testing. Then, you can pick up some LYM tokens from one of the various exchanges listed on their website right now while they're still going for approximately $0.02-$0.03. Once this project is in full swing and generating a lot of demand, that price will likely be a distant memory!

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