The concept

The model: the Harzer Wandernadel

Hikers in the Harz mountains have been collecting stamps since 2006: 222 green boxes stand at viewpoints, huts and rock formations, and you stamp on paper into a hiking passport. What began as a tourism idea is now one of Germany’s most successful hiking movements – most recently with around 90,000 passports sold per year and thousands of “Wanderkaiser” (hiking emperors) who have completed all 222 stations.

The recipe for success is simple: clear tiers (bronze from 8, silver from 16, gold from 25 stamps, hiking king from 50, hiking emperor at all 222), a finite, collectable set, a low barrier to entry and badges for children too.

Our translation for Chemnitz & the Ore Mountains

Steigerpass takes this mechanic – and drops the paper:

• Over 80 stamp stations between the Küchwald and the Fichtelberg, curated with an eye for variety: summits, lookout towers, castles, dams, natural monuments, city landmarks and sites of the UNESCO World Heritage Mining Region – including the first destinations on the Czech side of the Ore Mountains.
• You stamp via GPS in the app: hike there, tap “Stamp now”, done. It even works offline – the app syncs later.
• Marked hiking trails can be shown as a map layer, coloured by tier, with a hiking route and elevation profile to every stamp station.
• Badges with a mining soul: Erste Schicht (“first shift”, 1), Kupfernadel (copper pin, 5), Zinnnadel (tin pin, 12), Silbernadel (silver pin, 20), Goldnadel (gold pin, 28) and the Steigerkrone (miner’s crown) for all stations in the region. Plus themed pins such as Stadtbummler & Stadtwanderer (city strolls), Gipfelstürmer (the high Ore Mountain summits) and Montankrone (mining heritage) – as real collector’s medals.
• Social like it’s 2010: feed, friend lists, “Glück auf!” greetings instead of likes and summit patrons – whoever visits a destination most often holds the title. Foursquare says hello.

Why our stamps can be trusted

A digital stamp is only worth something if it cannot be forged – all the more so if health insurers are to build bonus programmes on it. That is why the Steigerpass server verifies every check-in in several stages:

1. One-time codes: every stamping attempt first requests a short-lived one-time code. Recorded or replayed requests go nowhere.
2. Location check: the GPS position must lie within the stamping radius and be sufficiently accurate. Positions flagged as “mocked” by the operating system are rejected.
3. Device attestation: every stamp must come with a device attestation – without it there is no stamp. During the pilot phase the attestation is received and checked server-side; at launch it will be wired up to Play Integrity (Android) and App Attest (iOS), so that only the unmodified app on real devices can stamp.
4. Plausibility check: anyone whose check-ins “travel” from destination to destination faster than physically possible gets caught. Daily limits prevent mass stamping.
5. Trust score: suspicious accounts lose trust; their check-ins are flagged and never flow into activity proofs.

For health insurers

Users can export their verified hiking activity as a cryptographically signed proof (HMAC-SHA256). Partner insurers verify the signature via a simple API and can accept the proof in their bonus programmes – without access to movement profiles, because only what the user actively exports is shared.

Roadmap

Ready for your first stamp? Get Steigerpass on Google Play – free, ad-free, trilingual.

Glück auf – see you at the summit!