In Brief:
- STEPN introduced two new Marathon Season 3 Sneaker designs, a Marathon Sneaker limited to 50 candlelit units and a Marathon Genesis Sneaker built around a chandelier motif.
- The 50 Marathon Sneakers are reserved for Season Pass holders who complete the Round Energy requirement.
- Season 3 runs six rounds of 14 days, with entries locked at 50, 100 or 200 USD and the Season Pass priced at 20 USD for the full season.
STEPN is making just 50 of its new Marathon Sneaker.
The studio announced two Marathon Season 3 Sneaker designs on X, putting the smaller of the two behind both a paywall and a performance target. “A little reward for those who go the distance,” STEPN said in the post.
A little reward for those who go the distance
Introducing two new Marathon Season 3 Sneaker designs:
Marathon Sneaker
A total of 50 candlelit designs for our Season Pass holders who complete the Round Energy requirement.
Marathon Genesis Sneaker
With its chandelier
The first is the Marathon Sneaker, described as “a total of 50 candlelit designs for our Season Pass holders who complete the Round Energy requirement.” The second is the Marathon Genesis Sneaker, which STEPN presented with a chandelier motif. The announcement did not attach a supply figure or distribution method to the Genesis design.
Who qualifies
Both conditions on the Marathon Sneaker matter. Buying the Season Pass alone isn’t enough, and neither is finishing a round without one.
The Round Energy requirement is the daily burn that keeps a participant alive in a Marathon round. Players spend at least two Energy every day in either STEPN or STEPN GO (official site), and the two apps can be split, one and one. There are no rest days across the 14-day round.
Miss a day and you’re eliminated, forfeiting your locked entry for that round and needing to register again. Finish all 14 and you get the entry back plus a share of what the dropouts gave up, and you roll into the next round automatically unless you opt out.
The pass
STEPN set the Season 3 Marathon Season Pass at 20 USD, a single purchase covering the whole season. That’s the same price the pass carried in Season 1 and Season 2, when it was denominated in GGUSD and USDC.
The pass is non-refundable. It can be bought at any point during the season, and rewards apply retroactively for weeks already completed.
STEPN lists exclusive avatars, extra Marathon name changes, premium identity features and VIP status among the perks, layered on top of the GGUSD and free rewards every participant can earn. Pass holders also get eligibility for STEPNathon, the end-of-season capstone.
Season 3 format
Registration for Season 3 opened Aug. 3 at 10 a.m. UTC and closed Aug. 10 at noon UTC. Round 1 ran from Aug. 10 to Aug. 24 at 12 a.m. UTC. Round 2 started at 12 a.m. UTC on Aug. 24 and ran through Sept. 7.
Six rounds of 14 days make up the season, roughly 12 weeks end to end. Participants pick a reward pool by locking 50, 100 or 200 USD, and multiple tiers are allowed.
Insurance is the season’s addition. It covers a single missed day, has to be purchased before a round begins, and is sold separately for each reward pool. Its price moves with registration numbers and how many players cleared the previous round. Unused coverage doesn’t carry over.
Teams were rebuilt too. Players can create or join a group with custom branding, leaders can push notices and reminders to members, and Team Rewards in GGBoxes and Keys go to top-performing teams each round. Results across all six rounds feed a Season Team Leaderboard. Season 3 also added avatars, custom Marathon names, fuller profiles with full-season leaderboards and better challenge tracking.
Why Genesis matters here
Genesis Sneakers carry IDs beginning with a “G” followed by a number between one and 20,000. STEPN and STEPN GO draw from a single shared Genesis pool capped at 20,000 total, which is what makes any Genesis mint route worth chasing.
Marathon has used Sneakers as its top-end incentive from the start. Season 1’s pass bundled extra Marathon Boxes, badges, backgrounds, Starlets, GGUSD coupons and raffle mints for Marathon Sneakers. Season 2 held the price at 20 USDC and introduced teams and a leaderboard ranked by total Energy spent.
In Season 1, pass holders who finished the STEPNathon distance in one go collected a LEGEND badge, an exclusive background and raffle entries for Genesis Sneakers with limited skins. Twenty-one kilometers earned one entry. Forty-two earned two.
