Review ZED RUN – A new NFT-based racing game, which is the most interesting investment opportunity that could help you earn real money
Zed Run’s popularity has recently skyrocketed, thanks to a rabid fanbase and some major recent press in the New York Times. While it is still in its early stages, Zed Run is one of the most incredibly interesting investment opportunities available right now.
It’s the crossing point of three major trends: NFTs, video games, and gambling. Each of these three trends has significant tailwinds, so combining them all creates something truly unique.
What is ZED RUN?
ZED RUN is a digital horse racing game in which users can own, breed, and race digital racehorses with other players from all over the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It uses emerging technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrency to provide users with the same benefits as owning a thoroughbred racehorse in real life.
All racehorses in the game are statistically unique and defined by their bloodline, genotype, and racetrack performance. The more your horse races and breeds, the better your racehorse will become. The more valuable the steed, the more money you can make by commanding a higher selling or breeding price through ZED’s auction system.
Furthermore, breeding horses is not required to play, and players can simply buy a ready-made horse from another player or place bets on other players’ horses. When looking to purchase a racehorse, there are two important factors to consider: bloodline and genotype.
Who owns Zed Run?
Chris Laurent, the company’s founder, and CEO established Zed Run in Australia in 2019. Chris, like many Aussies, was a big fan of horse racing. FYI, horse racing is a big deal in Australia. It’s a big part of the culture here, and the Melbourne Cup has the world’s second-largest purse. Horse racing has become more democratic in recent years. We now have racehorse syndicates and even fractional racehorse marketplaces like MyRaceHorse, MyHorseDealer, and Commonwealth.
Nonetheless, the general lack of accessibility to horse race culture got him thinking: how could this experience be liberated so that everyone could feel the victory of having a winning horse? This sparked the idea of digital horse ownership and the use of NFTs and the blockchain to achieve decentralization.
The early team blasted out of the gate, ran with the concept, and essentially willed Zed Run into existence.
Zed Run was one of the first businesses to successfully implement NFTs. In order to get started, the team at Virtually Human Studios (Zed’s formal parent business) raised a tiny seed round from early supporters. This got the team up and going and gave them the necessary early momentum.
Despite the boom in sports betting, some have questioned Zed Run’s legality, alleging it may violate interstate gambling regulations. Zed Run has stated unequivocally that they do not wish to be a gambling platform. The developer has said unequivocally that Zed Run is a strategy and skill game in which users have autonomy and control over their performance and potential results.
It’s challenging to maintain track of legal requirements in multiple jurisdictions because it adds another layer of decision-making to their roadmap. However, by treating legal challenges with a game-first perspective, they can maintain the product’s integrity and avoid allowing legal issues to stymie development. This sometimes makes things more difficult. However, it is the correct thing to do.
Outstanding Features
Transcendental Design
When users saw Zed Run for the first time, it completely blew their minds. It was like seeing into another world via a telescope. Tamagotchi Pets meets Robin Hood meets TRON. And the one who creates is Chris Ebeling
He is an animator with experience in VR/AR and creative direction, having worked on Hollywood blockbusters including The LEGO Movie and fellow Australian Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (which has amazing art direction and won an Oscar for Best Production Design).
The goal of Zed Run is to develop the digital sport of the future, one that takes place in an alternate dimension on the planet Novus Earth. The idea is to take players to a future in which digital horse racing has become the world’s largest sport and “the beating heart behind everything you do.”
A Huge Digital Community
Zed Run places a high value on community. It is, without a doubt, the single most crucial pillar of what they do. In addition to large Twitter and Instagram accounts, the Zed Run Discord has over 121,000 members as of this writing and (by my estimations) rises 10-20k new members per month.
The Discord channel has everything you’d expect: rabid fans discussing strategies, asking questions, giving advice, offering product ideas, sharing photos of their horses, live streaming races, showing off a little, and primarily attempting to learn, teach, and help each other navigate this new world.
But what fascinating the most about the Zed Run group is the multiplicity of sub-communities that have sprung up. It’s incredible: there are now entire websites, newsletters, and datasets dedicated entirely to Zed Run. These are all fully unofficial, unsponsored, and unfunded by the company (though they are almost always encouraged and supported). Such as:
- The Zed Gazette is one of the first community-led Zed Run news sites delivering free info and tips without a paywall.
- Award Racing is dedicated to helping beginners find their feet
- Poseidon Racing is a website and video channel packed with live streaming content led by a Stable Owner called Poseidon Racing
- KnowYourHorses Analyzes race performance and bloodlines (You can see in the image below)
- Pony Plug is a Twitch for Zed Run news, races, and banter (Zed Run of course has their own Twitch. Pony Plug is just the most popular spinoff.)
- r/zedrun on Reddit. Obviously.
- Zed Run Insights provides a leaderboard with data
- Sigma Stables does the same thing, collecting data every hour
- Farmah.com.au Uses Power BI to organize and make sense of massive Zed Run data sets
- ZedRun.tools has more data & analytics
There are still more out there. But this also proves one thing is how big is the community and how people are so in with this project.
Zed Run’s Popularity
If you Google “Zed Run,” you’ll find hundreds of pieces from well-known mainstream publications.
Dividend Creation
Unlike in the real world, Zed Run is constantly evolving, which means your NFTs can earn money even while you aren’t racing them. As of now, this is mostly accomplished through the game’s breeding mechanism, which allows you to loan out your horse for a set length of time to assist another player in siring a new NFT horse. It’s practically free money you can make by offering someone your digital resource passively.
Low Cost of Entry
At the time of writing, the cheapest Zed Run horse NFT costs $160. A real racehorse costs an average of $76,000. The math is very simple – that’s a huge difference for anyone who has ever wanted to buy a horse or join in on the action personally.
Game Structure
Each horse has a unique ability that is determined by a few elements, including bloodline and genotype. The more rare the horse’s pedigree, the faster the horse — and the more expensive the horse to buy.
Breeding
Bloodlines
There are four bloodlines, each with a different scarcity level. The Genesis breed refers to the first generation of horses that were released. Only 38,000 of these horses will ever be released into the wild, with the business having already released around half of them.
Genesis horses are the first horses included in the game. It is not possible to breed more Genesis horses. They are the rarest horses in the game. The principal source of revenue for the company is the sale of horses to the market, notably these extremely valuable Genesis horses.
Genotypes
Each horse has a genotype, which functions similarly to a serial number on an NFT trade card. It’s a way to distinguish the horse. The closer the serial number is to “1,” the purer and more expensive the horse. When two horses breed, the genotype numbers are simply added together, and the genotype of the resulting offspring is the total of the two numbers.
So for example, if a 10 breeds with a 27, their offspring would have a genotype of 37. If that offspring later breeds with a 33, their offspring would have a genotype of 70. And so forth. Ancestry is very important in this game, and the top stable owners are able to strategically breed their horses together to generate the fastest racers.
The algorithm of racing
Zed Run has no direct influence on who wins each race. It’s extremely fascinating how it’s been designed. Before each race, the system operates thousands of simulations of the race. These simulations are based on the algorithm’s mathematics, which includes variables such as lineage, genotype, track distance, speed, stamina, and more.
The algorithm considers all of these possible circumstances before selecting one of the race simulations at random to serve as the actual race. It selects one at random from all potential outcomes. This means that, while the algorithm promotes performance, it is not reinforced by repetition bias.
Fostering Serendipity
The algorithm of the game is pretty smart an so far is based on what reality would happen, and what does it mean by that? In real life, the fastest and best horses do not always win the race, so why should Zed Run be any different? You certainly have some horses with higher odds than others, but the whole point of horse racing is that you never know what’s going to happen!
This means owning a more expensive horse with a better genotype gives you a better chance of winning. However, this does not rule out the possibility of an inferior horse being champion. And this is the essence of horse racing. Victories by underdogs are what make the sport so entertaining.
This architectural choice was not made by chance. Initially, the company hired a real-world horse racing specialist to assist them in reimagining how real-world racehorses may perform statistically. The company reasoned that if they could incorporate and measure the appropriate degree of randomization, they would be able to recreate real-world dynamics within the game.
Racing
Racing Classes
All un-raced racehorses begin as a Griffin classed racehorse. Each un-raced racehorse will have a base rating linked to its Genotype as shown below:
| Genotype | Base Rating |
| Z1 to Z4 | 57 |
| Z5 to Z9 | 37 |
| Z10 + | 17 |
Racing Classes in ZED RUN consist of six (6) Classes, with the class bringing increased competitions and bigger prize pools to race for.
| Class | Base Rating |
| Griffin | Un-raced |
| Class 5 | 0 – 20 |
| Class 4 | 21 – 40 |
| Class 3 | 41 – 60 |
| Class 2 | 61 – 80 |
| Class 1 | 81 + |
In ZED RUN, Class 1 is the highest-rated Class and Class 5 is the lowest.
Tournaments
Tournaments are an exciting part of the future of the ZED RUN racing landscape. Accessible to all and offering big prize pools, tournaments provide another way to prove your racehorse is a champion.
There will eventually be a wide variety of tournament forms and structures, so keep a lookout for tournaments that you believe would suit even racehorses you don’t consider elite racers. The following competition formats are currently in use:
- The Podium Plate
- The Fibonacci Sequence
When a new tournament format is announced, further subsections will be added here.
The Podium Plate
One of the ZED RUN tournament formats is the Podium Plate. The system employed for the first ZED RUN Tournament was named after its qualification process, which ranks racehorses based on their Place Rate (percentage of finishes in the top 3).
The Podium Plate is formed of two sections:
- An initial two-week qualifying period
- A two-day finals event once qualifying ends
Distance Funnels
The Podium Plate uses a distance funnel to fairly classify the top-performing racehorses over all distances.
Racehorses are ranked during the qualification period based on the distance funnel in which they compete: Sprinter, Mid Runner, or Marathoner. The following are the definitions of distance funnels:
| Distance Category | Distance Funnel |
| Sprinter | 1000m, 1200m, 1400m |
| Mid Runner | 1600m, 1800m, 2000m |
| Marathoner | 2200m, 2400m, 2600m |
Qualifying Period
All racehorses are eligible to compete in The Podium Plate, and all racing events, paid or unpaid, count towards qualification. However, certain criteria must be completed during the two-week qualifying period in order for racehorses to be eligible.
- Racehorses must compete in a minimum of 30 races
- These 30 races must correspond to a distance funnel
- The top 192 racehorses in each distance funnel are entered into the Quarter Finals
- This means 576 racehorses qualify for the Quarter Finals in total
- The qualifying racehorses are decided based on their Place Rate
The Fibonacci Cup
One of the ZED RUN event formats is the Fibonacci Cup. It is named after its qualification scoring system, which ranks racehorses based on their average points scored throughout qualifying.
The Fibonacci Cup is formed of two sections:
- An initial one-week qualifying period
- A one-day finals event once qualifying ends
Structure
Once the qualification period ends, The Fibonacci Cup splits into two (2) different tournaments that will include the top 1,152 racehorses:
- Tournament A comprises racehorses ranked 1 to 576 at the end of the qualification period
- Tournament B comprises racehorses ranked 577 to 1,152 at the end of the qualification period
Tournament A and Tournament B have identical structures to one another and will both be run during the same one-day finals event.
Distance Funnels
The Fibonacci Cup employs a distance funnel to classify the highest performing racehorses over all distances.
Racehorses are ranked during the qualification period based on the distance funnel in which they compete: Sprinter, Mid Runner, or Marathoner. The following are the definitions of distance funnels:
| Distance Category | Distance Funnel |
| Sprinter | 1000m, 1200m, 1400m |
| Mid Runner | 1600m, 1800m, 2000m |
| Marathoner | 2200m, 2400m, 2600m |
Qualifying Period Criteria
The Fibonacci Cup is open to all racehorses, and all racing events count toward qualification. However, there are several requirements that must be completed during the one-week qualifying period for racehorses to be eligible, which are as follows:
- Racehorses must compete in a minimum of 30 races
- These 30 races must correspond to a distance funnel
- Racehorses ranked 1-192 in each distance funnel qualify for Quarter Finals of Tournament A
- Racehorses ranked 193-384 in each distance funnel qualify for Quarter Finals of Tournament B
- This means a total of 1,152 racehorses qualify
- The qualifying racehorses are decided based on their average points
Zed Run Beginners’ Guild
Create Your Stable
There are two (2) ways you can create your stable in ZED RUN:
Email Login
Entering your email address is the simplest way to create a stable; no passwords are required!
The email login option is a password-free sign-up process that sends a unique link to your mailbox that you can use to sign in to your ZED RUN stable.
- From the zed.run home page, press start and enter your email address.
- Verify your email address by clicking on the unique link that appears in your email inbox.
- Return to zed.run and you will be automatically logged you in.
You can read more about our password-less login here.
Metamask
If you have experience with blockchain and are familiar with MetaMask, ZED RUN also supports this way. MetaMask is a digital wallet that you keep in your back pocket!
ZED RUN Wallet
The ZED RUN wallet is your newest pal, allowing you to enter any race, breed, and purchase racehorses at breakneck speeds, all without the cost of gas or transaction fees. It allows for 2 key benefits:
- 10x improvement in transaction speeds and load times, and
- Zero gas or transaction fees when racing.
The Matic Network, which powers the ZED RUN wallet, is a decentralized platform that enables speedier and gas-free transactions while maintaining the security and safety of the blockchain. The Matic Network is a leading and trusted Ethereum Layer 2 solution that significantly improves the user experience on ZED RUN.
The ZED RUN wallet works as a bridge between your ETH and WETH balances. Once you have monies in your WETH Balance, you can breed, buy, and race!
Depositing Funds
Simply click on the new wallet symbol in the top right-hand corner of your screen when logged in to ZED RUN.
When you click on the wallet icon, the ZED RUN wallet will slide out. If you don’t have any funds in your ETH balance, you can transfer ETH from any other digital wallet by scanning a QR code or copying the provided wallet address. To display your wallet’s address, click the ‘Show/Hide Details’ button.
You can also top up your ETH Balance with a credit card without having to visit a different page. When you buy or transfer Ethereum, it will automatically appear in your ETH balance. Depositing funds from your ETH balance into your WETH balance requires three steps:
- Press the deposit button
- Type in the amount you wish to deposit
- Press deposit to WETH
Withdrawing Funds
Withdrawing funds from your ZED Balance is nearly similar to the first three steps listed under Depositing Funds, with the addition of a step to withdraw funds back into your ETH Balance. To withdraw funds from your ZED Balance, follow these steps:
- Press the withdraw button
- Type in the amount you wish to withdraw
- Press withdraw from ZED
- Claim your withdraw amount
When you press the Withdraw button, input the amount you want to transfer from your ZED Balance to your ETH Balance (i.e. MetaMask or email wallet).
It may take up to 30 minutes to withdraw funds from your WETH Balance. When you’re finished, click the claim button to get your money!
Buying or Selling a Racehorse
All ZED RUN racehorses can be found on OpenSea, a reputable secondary marketplace for buying and selling racehorses. OpenSea is ZED RUN’s preferred secondary marketplace partner for buying and selling racehorses. When making a purchase or selling on OpenSea, always use the official and validated ZED RUN contract. The blue check in the graphic below indicates the correct contract.
- Avoid buying fraudulent ZED RUN racehorses by only buying from the genuine and verified contract listed below.
- All ZED RUN racehorses are owned by stable owners and are available for viewing on OpenSea.
- Racehorses labelled “Buy Now” by stable owners allow you to acquire them immediately.
- Other racehorses offered for sale by stable owners may only be available for negotiated prices.
- OpenSea charges a 2.5 percent fee
- ZED RUN takes 2.5 percent of all OpenSea trades.
How to Enter a Race
Visit the ZED RUN Events Page once you have one or more racehorses. On this page, you will have access to current races that can be purchased as well as Free Racing, which you can learn more about in this guide. There will always be a variety of races offered with varying entry fees.
When you click on a race, you’ll see what other racehorses and stables have entered. Use the information (race starts, total wins, breed type, genotype, and so on) of other racehorses to assist you to decide which racehorse to enter.
After picking which racehorse to enter, press “Nominate” to begin the buy-in transaction on MetaMask using your digital wallet. When your purchase is confirmed, your racehorse will be highlighted next to the gate number you selected to buy into.
IMPORTANT: Your racehorse will appear instantly here; however, if the transaction is delayed or fails, your racehorse will vanish and another racehorse may take its place. A yellow horse icon on the buy-in or next to run page indicates that a racehorse from your stable has been entered.
Once you have clicked on any available race, you will also see what race gates you can buy into.
By clicking on any accessible race gate number, you will be able to examine your stable of racehorses’ past performance data.
Alternative Projects
DeRace
DeRace is the first decentralized blockchain-based racehorse platform, bringing together millions of racehorse aficionados in a community where you can purchase and breed NFT horses and host races in your own hippodromes for real money.
It is a platform that replicates real-life horse racing and provides users with the best horse racing experience possible. It includes not just racing but also other aspects of the industry.
Horse owners have the ability to own, breed, and trade horses, as well as engage in races. Hippodromes host races and compete with one another to draw spectators.
Pegaxy
Pegaxy is a horse racing game where users battle for top three positions against 11 other racers in a play-to-earn PVP manner. Wind, water, fire, speed, and other elements are randomly assigned to each race. Players must finish in the top three using clever improvements, food, and skill to win the platform’s utility token, VIS (Vigorus).
Players could earn VIS tokens by breeding, renting, selling, and racing your Pega in the game. When developing an NFT/Blockchain-based game, this method has shown to be a smart long-term economic solution because it allows teams to construct massive guilds, scholarship programs, and even allows single players to make a second income through daily racing.
Conclusion
Pros
Generate Passive Income
Users can breed and stud horses on the platform on a monthly basis and earn a reasonable ROI. While breeding and studding are important for the platform’s growth, they also highly compensate those who do so.
This has a significant attraction to investors and people wishing to invest in something long-term. People buying up these genesis money machine horses could result in a large influx of capital over time.
Positive Community
The community on most platforms is usually highly private and hostile to outsiders. The Zed Run community is the polar opposite. You may quickly join the discord and ask questions in a private chat with almost any of the top performers on the platform.
This is a big aid for people searching for advice on buying horses, racing, or just making a name for themselves in the community! I strongly advise anyone learning Zed Run to take advantage of this opportunity and leverage the resources of others to move ahead!
Graphics and Roadmap
The platform’s current clean and classic design style already shows great promise. They may be able to innovate the racing sector in the future.
It’s also worth mentioning their road map. While it may become more adaptable and variable in the near future, the platform’s long-term goal is to provide users with even more tools for success, such as renting out horses and even owning your own track, which I am sure would be great in a VR environment.
Development Team
Virtually Human Studio is the firm behind the platform (VHS). VHS recently got a $20 million investment to continue development as part of a Series A fundraising round led by TCG (The Chernin Group).
While most teams in the market are only interested in making quick money, this team appears to care about the ecosystem and wants their users to be satisfied. Recently, there has been a strong push for more free races on the platform. The team promptly responded by releasing a massive update to assist with this. Not to mention all of the extra work they’re continually putting in to have the whole site up and running.
The development staff responds quickly to support tickets, fixes blocked races and advances their platform ideas. It’s amazing to see such a strong response to users from a development team!
Cons
Difficult For Newbies
Getting started in Zed Run, like most things in the crypto sector, can be difficult. Along with learning the site’s fundamentals, there are multiple processes just to get your Ethereum converted and used on the platform, which may deter many new users.
Furthermore, racing can be considered as gambling, and it is extremely simple for new users to deposit a couple of hundred dollars and rapidly lose it all by racing a slow horse.
Long-Term Horse Value
While most people believe that Genesis horses can hold their worth throughout time, there is something else to consider. As the platform grows in popularity, there will eventually be an overabundance of legendary, exclusive, and elite horses.
As a result of this, the value of breeding a legendary horse will fall owing to oversupply on the market, thus lowering the value of producing genesis horses. Although it may be a long time in the future, having a limitless number of horses may someday provide a challenge for long-term sustainable value. This is something that should concern investors and those wanting to create long-term stables for profit.
Constant Bugs
While the platform is still in the BETA stage, there are a lot of flaws that are constantly affecting the race. The most notable example would be the stuck race problem. And the most recent problem of Zed Run, that the team is trying to achieve short queue times, which has affected:
- Their infrastructure can’t handle the high demand, and the whole system just breaks so nobody can enter races
- Even when it’s working, short queue times mean that the dominant horses just enter every race. So unless you own one of those dominant horses, you’re better off not racing.
Aggressive Business Model
While there are numerous methods for Zed Run to earn wealth, consistently extracting it from the ecosystem this early on may not be the greatest strategy. It should be noted that Zed is now withdrawing funds by:
- Retaining a share of the stud fees for each horse that breeds (44% – 60%)
- Keeping a percentage of the fees collected from horses sold on Opensea 2.5%
- Taking a percentage of every race run (10% -15%)
Clearly, these percentages are far too high to be taken out on a constant basis over the long run. For the platform to be viable in the future, these percentages should all be less than 5%. However, because they are investing so heavily in development, it should soon be able to fund itself only through the platform, without the need for new series rounds in the future.
Find more information about ZED RUN
Website: https://zed.run/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zed_run
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/runzedrun/
Medium: https://medium.com/@zed_run
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/zedrun
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or ideas about the project, please email ventures@coincu.com.
DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary, and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.
KAZ
Coincu Ventures
Author
GameFi Reviews, Knowledge
Review ZED RUN – A new NFT-based racing game, which is the most interesting investment opportunity that could help you earn real money
Zed Run’s popularity has recently skyrocketed, thanks to a rabid fanbase and some major recent press in the New York Times. While it is still in its early stages, Zed Run is one of the most incredibly interesting investment opportunities available right now.
It’s the crossing point of three major trends: NFTs, video games, and gambling. Each of these three trends has significant tailwinds, so combining them all creates something truly unique.
What is ZED RUN?
ZED RUN is a digital horse racing game in which users can own, breed, and race digital racehorses with other players from all over the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It uses emerging technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrency to provide users with the same benefits as owning a thoroughbred racehorse in real life.
All racehorses in the game are statistically unique and defined by their bloodline, genotype, and racetrack performance. The more your horse races and breeds, the better your racehorse will become. The more valuable the steed, the more money you can make by commanding a higher selling or breeding price through ZED’s auction system.
Furthermore, breeding horses is not required to play, and players can simply buy a ready-made horse from another player or place bets on other players’ horses. When looking to purchase a racehorse, there are two important factors to consider: bloodline and genotype.
Who owns Zed Run?
Chris Laurent, the company’s founder, and CEO established Zed Run in Australia in 2019. Chris, like many Aussies, was a big fan of horse racing. FYI, horse racing is a big deal in Australia. It’s a big part of the culture here, and the Melbourne Cup has the world’s second-largest purse. Horse racing has become more democratic in recent years. We now have racehorse syndicates and even fractional racehorse marketplaces like MyRaceHorse, MyHorseDealer, and Commonwealth.
Nonetheless, the general lack of accessibility to horse race culture got him thinking: how could this experience be liberated so that everyone could feel the victory of having a winning horse? This sparked the idea of digital horse ownership and the use of NFTs and the blockchain to achieve decentralization.
The early team blasted out of the gate, ran with the concept, and essentially willed Zed Run into existence.
Zed Run was one of the first businesses to successfully implement NFTs. In order to get started, the team at Virtually Human Studios (Zed’s formal parent business) raised a tiny seed round from early supporters. This got the team up and going and gave them the necessary early momentum.
Despite the boom in sports betting, some have questioned Zed Run’s legality, alleging it may violate interstate gambling regulations. Zed Run has stated unequivocally that they do not wish to be a gambling platform. The developer has said unequivocally that Zed Run is a strategy and skill game in which users have autonomy and control over their performance and potential results.
It’s challenging to maintain track of legal requirements in multiple jurisdictions because it adds another layer of decision-making to their roadmap. However, by treating legal challenges with a game-first perspective, they can maintain the product’s integrity and avoid allowing legal issues to stymie development. This sometimes makes things more difficult. However, it is the correct thing to do.
Outstanding Features
Transcendental Design
When users saw Zed Run for the first time, it completely blew their minds. It was like seeing into another world via a telescope. Tamagotchi Pets meets Robin Hood meets TRON. And the one who creates is Chris Ebeling
He is an animator with experience in VR/AR and creative direction, having worked on Hollywood blockbusters including The LEGO Movie and fellow Australian Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (which has amazing art direction and won an Oscar for Best Production Design).
The goal of Zed Run is to develop the digital sport of the future, one that takes place in an alternate dimension on the planet Novus Earth. The idea is to take players to a future in which digital horse racing has become the world’s largest sport and “the beating heart behind everything you do.”
A Huge Digital Community
Zed Run places a high value on community. It is, without a doubt, the single most crucial pillar of what they do. In addition to large Twitter and Instagram accounts, the Zed Run Discord has over 121,000 members as of this writing and (by my estimations) rises 10-20k new members per month.
The Discord channel has everything you’d expect: rabid fans discussing strategies, asking questions, giving advice, offering product ideas, sharing photos of their horses, live streaming races, showing off a little, and primarily attempting to learn, teach, and help each other navigate this new world.
But what fascinating the most about the Zed Run group is the multiplicity of sub-communities that have sprung up. It’s incredible: there are now entire websites, newsletters, and datasets dedicated entirely to Zed Run. These are all fully unofficial, unsponsored, and unfunded by the company (though they are almost always encouraged and supported). Such as:
- The Zed Gazette is one of the first community-led Zed Run news sites delivering free info and tips without a paywall.
- Award Racing is dedicated to helping beginners find their feet
- Poseidon Racing is a website and video channel packed with live streaming content led by a Stable Owner called Poseidon Racing
- KnowYourHorses Analyzes race performance and bloodlines (You can see in the image below)
- Pony Plug is a Twitch for Zed Run news, races, and banter (Zed Run of course has their own Twitch. Pony Plug is just the most popular spinoff.)
- r/zedrun on Reddit. Obviously.
- Zed Run Insights provides a leaderboard with data
- Sigma Stables does the same thing, collecting data every hour
- Farmah.com.au Uses Power BI to organize and make sense of massive Zed Run data sets
- ZedRun.tools has more data & analytics
There are still more out there. But this also proves one thing is how big is the community and how people are so in with this project.
Zed Run’s Popularity
If you Google “Zed Run,” you’ll find hundreds of pieces from well-known mainstream publications.
Dividend Creation
Unlike in the real world, Zed Run is constantly evolving, which means your NFTs can earn money even while you aren’t racing them. As of now, this is mostly accomplished through the game’s breeding mechanism, which allows you to loan out your horse for a set length of time to assist another player in siring a new NFT horse. It’s practically free money you can make by offering someone your digital resource passively.
Low Cost of Entry
At the time of writing, the cheapest Zed Run horse NFT costs $160. A real racehorse costs an average of $76,000. The math is very simple – that’s a huge difference for anyone who has ever wanted to buy a horse or join in on the action personally.
Game Structure
Each horse has a unique ability that is determined by a few elements, including bloodline and genotype. The more rare the horse’s pedigree, the faster the horse — and the more expensive the horse to buy.
Breeding
Bloodlines
There are four bloodlines, each with a different scarcity level. The Genesis breed refers to the first generation of horses that were released. Only 38,000 of these horses will ever be released into the wild, with the business having already released around half of them.
Genesis horses are the first horses included in the game. It is not possible to breed more Genesis horses. They are the rarest horses in the game. The principal source of revenue for the company is the sale of horses to the market, notably these extremely valuable Genesis horses.
Genotypes
Each horse has a genotype, which functions similarly to a serial number on an NFT trade card. It’s a way to distinguish the horse. The closer the serial number is to “1,” the purer and more expensive the horse. When two horses breed, the genotype numbers are simply added together, and the genotype of the resulting offspring is the total of the two numbers.
So for example, if a 10 breeds with a 27, their offspring would have a genotype of 37. If that offspring later breeds with a 33, their offspring would have a genotype of 70. And so forth. Ancestry is very important in this game, and the top stable owners are able to strategically breed their horses together to generate the fastest racers.
The algorithm of racing
Zed Run has no direct influence on who wins each race. It’s extremely fascinating how it’s been designed. Before each race, the system operates thousands of simulations of the race. These simulations are based on the algorithm’s mathematics, which includes variables such as lineage, genotype, track distance, speed, stamina, and more.
The algorithm considers all of these possible circumstances before selecting one of the race simulations at random to serve as the actual race. It selects one at random from all potential outcomes. This means that, while the algorithm promotes performance, it is not reinforced by repetition bias.
Fostering Serendipity
The algorithm of the game is pretty smart an so far is based on what reality would happen, and what does it mean by that? In real life, the fastest and best horses do not always win the race, so why should Zed Run be any different? You certainly have some horses with higher odds than others, but the whole point of horse racing is that you never know what’s going to happen!
This means owning a more expensive horse with a better genotype gives you a better chance of winning. However, this does not rule out the possibility of an inferior horse being champion. And this is the essence of horse racing. Victories by underdogs are what make the sport so entertaining.
This architectural choice was not made by chance. Initially, the company hired a real-world horse racing specialist to assist them in reimagining how real-world racehorses may perform statistically. The company reasoned that if they could incorporate and measure the appropriate degree of randomization, they would be able to recreate real-world dynamics within the game.
Racing
Racing Classes
All un-raced racehorses begin as a Griffin classed racehorse. Each un-raced racehorse will have a base rating linked to its Genotype as shown below:
| Genotype | Base Rating |
| Z1 to Z4 | 57 |
| Z5 to Z9 | 37 |
| Z10 + | 17 |
Racing Classes in ZED RUN consist of six (6) Classes, with the class bringing increased competitions and bigger prize pools to race for.
| Class | Base Rating |
| Griffin | Un-raced |
| Class 5 | 0 – 20 |
| Class 4 | 21 – 40 |
| Class 3 | 41 – 60 |
| Class 2 | 61 – 80 |
| Class 1 | 81 + |
In ZED RUN, Class 1 is the highest-rated Class and Class 5 is the lowest.
Tournaments
Tournaments are an exciting part of the future of the ZED RUN racing landscape. Accessible to all and offering big prize pools, tournaments provide another way to prove your racehorse is a champion.
There will eventually be a wide variety of tournament forms and structures, so keep a lookout for tournaments that you believe would suit even racehorses you don’t consider elite racers. The following competition formats are currently in use:
- The Podium Plate
- The Fibonacci Sequence
When a new tournament format is announced, further subsections will be added here.
The Podium Plate
One of the ZED RUN tournament formats is the Podium Plate. The system employed for the first ZED RUN Tournament was named after its qualification process, which ranks racehorses based on their Place Rate (percentage of finishes in the top 3).
The Podium Plate is formed of two sections:
- An initial two-week qualifying period
- A two-day finals event once qualifying ends
Distance Funnels
The Podium Plate uses a distance funnel to fairly classify the top-performing racehorses over all distances.
Racehorses are ranked during the qualification period based on the distance funnel in which they compete: Sprinter, Mid Runner, or Marathoner. The following are the definitions of distance funnels:
| Distance Category | Distance Funnel |
| Sprinter | 1000m, 1200m, 1400m |
| Mid Runner | 1600m, 1800m, 2000m |
| Marathoner | 2200m, 2400m, 2600m |
Qualifying Period
All racehorses are eligible to compete in The Podium Plate, and all racing events, paid or unpaid, count towards qualification. However, certain criteria must be completed during the two-week qualifying period in order for racehorses to be eligible.
- Racehorses must compete in a minimum of 30 races
- These 30 races must correspond to a distance funnel
- The top 192 racehorses in each distance funnel are entered into the Quarter Finals
- This means 576 racehorses qualify for the Quarter Finals in total
- The qualifying racehorses are decided based on their Place Rate
The Fibonacci Cup
One of the ZED RUN event formats is the Fibonacci Cup. It is named after its qualification scoring system, which ranks racehorses based on their average points scored throughout qualifying.
The Fibonacci Cup is formed of two sections:
- An initial one-week qualifying period
- A one-day finals event once qualifying ends
Structure
Once the qualification period ends, The Fibonacci Cup splits into two (2) different tournaments that will include the top 1,152 racehorses:
- Tournament A comprises racehorses ranked 1 to 576 at the end of the qualification period
- Tournament B comprises racehorses ranked 577 to 1,152 at the end of the qualification period
Tournament A and Tournament B have identical structures to one another and will both be run during the same one-day finals event.
Distance Funnels
The Fibonacci Cup employs a distance funnel to classify the highest performing racehorses over all distances.
Racehorses are ranked during the qualification period based on the distance funnel in which they compete: Sprinter, Mid Runner, or Marathoner. The following are the definitions of distance funnels:
| Distance Category | Distance Funnel |
| Sprinter | 1000m, 1200m, 1400m |
| Mid Runner | 1600m, 1800m, 2000m |
| Marathoner | 2200m, 2400m, 2600m |
Qualifying Period Criteria
The Fibonacci Cup is open to all racehorses, and all racing events count toward qualification. However, there are several requirements that must be completed during the one-week qualifying period for racehorses to be eligible, which are as follows:
- Racehorses must compete in a minimum of 30 races
- These 30 races must correspond to a distance funnel
- Racehorses ranked 1-192 in each distance funnel qualify for Quarter Finals of Tournament A
- Racehorses ranked 193-384 in each distance funnel qualify for Quarter Finals of Tournament B
- This means a total of 1,152 racehorses qualify
- The qualifying racehorses are decided based on their average points
Zed Run Beginners’ Guild
Create Your Stable
There are two (2) ways you can create your stable in ZED RUN:
Email Login
Entering your email address is the simplest way to create a stable; no passwords are required!
The email login option is a password-free sign-up process that sends a unique link to your mailbox that you can use to sign in to your ZED RUN stable.
- From the zed.run home page, press start and enter your email address.
- Verify your email address by clicking on the unique link that appears in your email inbox.
- Return to zed.run and you will be automatically logged you in.
You can read more about our password-less login here.
Metamask
If you have experience with blockchain and are familiar with MetaMask, ZED RUN also supports this way. MetaMask is a digital wallet that you keep in your back pocket!
ZED RUN Wallet
The ZED RUN wallet is your newest pal, allowing you to enter any race, breed, and purchase racehorses at breakneck speeds, all without the cost of gas or transaction fees. It allows for 2 key benefits:
- 10x improvement in transaction speeds and load times, and
- Zero gas or transaction fees when racing.
The Matic Network, which powers the ZED RUN wallet, is a decentralized platform that enables speedier and gas-free transactions while maintaining the security and safety of the blockchain. The Matic Network is a leading and trusted Ethereum Layer 2 solution that significantly improves the user experience on ZED RUN.
The ZED RUN wallet works as a bridge between your ETH and WETH balances. Once you have monies in your WETH Balance, you can breed, buy, and race!
Depositing Funds
Simply click on the new wallet symbol in the top right-hand corner of your screen when logged in to ZED RUN.
When you click on the wallet icon, the ZED RUN wallet will slide out. If you don’t have any funds in your ETH balance, you can transfer ETH from any other digital wallet by scanning a QR code or copying the provided wallet address. To display your wallet’s address, click the ‘Show/Hide Details’ button.
You can also top up your ETH Balance with a credit card without having to visit a different page. When you buy or transfer Ethereum, it will automatically appear in your ETH balance. Depositing funds from your ETH balance into your WETH balance requires three steps:
- Press the deposit button
- Type in the amount you wish to deposit
- Press deposit to WETH
Withdrawing Funds
Withdrawing funds from your ZED Balance is nearly similar to the first three steps listed under Depositing Funds, with the addition of a step to withdraw funds back into your ETH Balance. To withdraw funds from your ZED Balance, follow these steps:
- Press the withdraw button
- Type in the amount you wish to withdraw
- Press withdraw from ZED
- Claim your withdraw amount
When you press the Withdraw button, input the amount you want to transfer from your ZED Balance to your ETH Balance (i.e. MetaMask or email wallet).
It may take up to 30 minutes to withdraw funds from your WETH Balance. When you’re finished, click the claim button to get your money!
Buying or Selling a Racehorse
All ZED RUN racehorses can be found on OpenSea, a reputable secondary marketplace for buying and selling racehorses. OpenSea is ZED RUN’s preferred secondary marketplace partner for buying and selling racehorses. When making a purchase or selling on OpenSea, always use the official and validated ZED RUN contract. The blue check in the graphic below indicates the correct contract.
- Avoid buying fraudulent ZED RUN racehorses by only buying from the genuine and verified contract listed below.
- All ZED RUN racehorses are owned by stable owners and are available for viewing on OpenSea.
- Racehorses labelled “Buy Now” by stable owners allow you to acquire them immediately.
- Other racehorses offered for sale by stable owners may only be available for negotiated prices.
- OpenSea charges a 2.5 percent fee
- ZED RUN takes 2.5 percent of all OpenSea trades.
How to Enter a Race
Visit the ZED RUN Events Page once you have one or more racehorses. On this page, you will have access to current races that can be purchased as well as Free Racing, which you can learn more about in this guide. There will always be a variety of races offered with varying entry fees.
When you click on a race, you’ll see what other racehorses and stables have entered. Use the information (race starts, total wins, breed type, genotype, and so on) of other racehorses to assist you to decide which racehorse to enter.
After picking which racehorse to enter, press “Nominate” to begin the buy-in transaction on MetaMask using your digital wallet. When your purchase is confirmed, your racehorse will be highlighted next to the gate number you selected to buy into.
IMPORTANT: Your racehorse will appear instantly here; however, if the transaction is delayed or fails, your racehorse will vanish and another racehorse may take its place. A yellow horse icon on the buy-in or next to run page indicates that a racehorse from your stable has been entered.
Once you have clicked on any available race, you will also see what race gates you can buy into.
By clicking on any accessible race gate number, you will be able to examine your stable of racehorses’ past performance data.
Alternative Projects
DeRace
DeRace is the first decentralized blockchain-based racehorse platform, bringing together millions of racehorse aficionados in a community where you can purchase and breed NFT horses and host races in your own hippodromes for real money.
It is a platform that replicates real-life horse racing and provides users with the best horse racing experience possible. It includes not just racing but also other aspects of the industry.
Horse owners have the ability to own, breed, and trade horses, as well as engage in races. Hippodromes host races and compete with one another to draw spectators.
Pegaxy
Pegaxy is a horse racing game where users battle for top three positions against 11 other racers in a play-to-earn PVP manner. Wind, water, fire, speed, and other elements are randomly assigned to each race. Players must finish in the top three using clever improvements, food, and skill to win the platform’s utility token, VIS (Vigorus).
Players could earn VIS tokens by breeding, renting, selling, and racing your Pega in the game. When developing an NFT/Blockchain-based game, this method has shown to be a smart long-term economic solution because it allows teams to construct massive guilds, scholarship programs, and even allows single players to make a second income through daily racing.
Conclusion
Pros
Generate Passive Income
Users can breed and stud horses on the platform on a monthly basis and earn a reasonable ROI. While breeding and studding are important for the platform’s growth, they also highly compensate those who do so.
This has a significant attraction to investors and people wishing to invest in something long-term. People buying up these genesis money machine horses could result in a large influx of capital over time.
Positive Community
The community on most platforms is usually highly private and hostile to outsiders. The Zed Run community is the polar opposite. You may quickly join the discord and ask questions in a private chat with almost any of the top performers on the platform.
This is a big aid for people searching for advice on buying horses, racing, or just making a name for themselves in the community! I strongly advise anyone learning Zed Run to take advantage of this opportunity and leverage the resources of others to move ahead!
Graphics and Roadmap
The platform’s current clean and classic design style already shows great promise. They may be able to innovate the racing sector in the future.
It’s also worth mentioning their road map. While it may become more adaptable and variable in the near future, the platform’s long-term goal is to provide users with even more tools for success, such as renting out horses and even owning your own track, which I am sure would be great in a VR environment.
Development Team
Virtually Human Studio is the firm behind the platform (VHS). VHS recently got a $20 million investment to continue development as part of a Series A fundraising round led by TCG (The Chernin Group).
While most teams in the market are only interested in making quick money, this team appears to care about the ecosystem and wants their users to be satisfied. Recently, there has been a strong push for more free races on the platform. The team promptly responded by releasing a massive update to assist with this. Not to mention all of the extra work they’re continually putting in to have the whole site up and running.
The development staff responds quickly to support tickets, fixes blocked races and advances their platform ideas. It’s amazing to see such a strong response to users from a development team!
Cons
Difficult For Newbies
Getting started in Zed Run, like most things in the crypto sector, can be difficult. Along with learning the site’s fundamentals, there are multiple processes just to get your Ethereum converted and used on the platform, which may deter many new users.
Furthermore, racing can be considered as gambling, and it is extremely simple for new users to deposit a couple of hundred dollars and rapidly lose it all by racing a slow horse.
Long-Term Horse Value
While most people believe that Genesis horses can hold their worth throughout time, there is something else to consider. As the platform grows in popularity, there will eventually be an overabundance of legendary, exclusive, and elite horses.
As a result of this, the value of breeding a legendary horse will fall owing to oversupply on the market, thus lowering the value of producing genesis horses. Although it may be a long time in the future, having a limitless number of horses may someday provide a challenge for long-term sustainable value. This is something that should concern investors and those wanting to create long-term stables for profit.
Constant Bugs
While the platform is still in the BETA stage, there are a lot of flaws that are constantly affecting the race. The most notable example would be the stuck race problem. And the most recent problem of Zed Run, that the team is trying to achieve short queue times, which has affected:
- Their infrastructure can’t handle the high demand, and the whole system just breaks so nobody can enter races
- Even when it’s working, short queue times mean that the dominant horses just enter every race. So unless you own one of those dominant horses, you’re better off not racing.
Aggressive Business Model
While there are numerous methods for Zed Run to earn wealth, consistently extracting it from the ecosystem this early on may not be the greatest strategy. It should be noted that Zed is now withdrawing funds by:
- Retaining a share of the stud fees for each horse that breeds (44% – 60%)
- Keeping a percentage of the fees collected from horses sold on Opensea 2.5%
- Taking a percentage of every race run (10% -15%)
Clearly, these percentages are far too high to be taken out on a constant basis over the long run. For the platform to be viable in the future, these percentages should all be less than 5%. However, because they are investing so heavily in development, it should soon be able to fund itself only through the platform, without the need for new series rounds in the future.
Find more information about ZED RUN
Website: https://zed.run/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zed_run
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/runzedrun/
Medium: https://medium.com/@zed_run
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/zedrun
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or ideas about the project, please email ventures@coincu.com.
DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary, and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.
KAZ
Coincu Ventures
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