I’ve played virtual, fantasy and e-sports for years. Even when they were called something different. I remember, and this wasn’t even that long ago, playing a postal soccer game and eagerly waiting an envelope with that weeks scores in to land on the doormat. As technology advances, the arena for playing, and winning at, virtual sports and games is expanding rapidly, and at the SGPN zed.run has caught our attention.
What is Zed Run?
Zed Run is a virtual horse racing platform which uses Blockchain technology. The goal is to make money (and have fun) through the ownership and racing of virtual horses. As the game expands out of beta-mode, breeding will add another layer to your pursuit of owning a successful stable of champion thoroughbreds.
Zed Run Transactions
Transactions are made using the crypto-currency Ether, and Ethereum is the blockchain technology used to facilitate its movement. Purchasing Ether is straightforward once you have a crypto-wallet. Don’t let this paragraph put you off. I did it, and trust me, I’m an absolute dinosaur.
Getting Started
You can sign up at Zed Run using your e-mail address, but I strongly suggest that you take slightly more time and use Metamask to get it going. Metamask is a Chrome extension, and acts as your wallet in which to move your money around. Once you’ve done this it is much easier to purchase horses, enter races and deposit or withdraw funds. You’ll need ETH to purchase horses and race them on Zed, if you don’t already have ETH or a crypto account you can get one from BlockFI here.
Buying Your Horse
You can buy your Zed Run horse in one of 3 ways:
1 – Zed Run will ‘drop’ a new batch of horses onto its website for anybody to purchase. These drops have been infrequent and it’s proved tough to act quickly enough to purchase successfully.
2- There is a secondary market on opensea.io. Players post horses here for sale. At the time of writing, the cheapest available horse there is 0.155 Eth ($428.21)
3- Private sale with an owner. Zed Run has a vibrant discord community in which horses are bought and sold privately.
What Should I Look For When Buying a Horse?
At its inception, Zed Run created 38,000 Genesis horses. These are the only 38,000 that will ever exist and were born into the top 10 available generations. They were created in 4 separate bloodlines. Nakomoto, Szabo, Finney and Buterin. All horses in the game will be descended from here. Z 1 is the most pure bred generation and is limited to 1000 horses. The lowest pure bred level is Z 10 of which there are 10,000. Below that, bloodlines are diluted all the way down to Z 238.
Put simply, the higher your Z number the purer bred your horse, which should translate into results on the track and the horse should be able to compete at a higher level.
You can also look up the horses history via KnowYourHorses.com here’s the profile of SGPN’s first horse Take A Risk.
Racing
Racing takes place over 6 Classes. Griffin class is free and is designed for you to learn more about your horse so you can rate and enter it at an appropriate level of competition. Beyond this, races go from Class 5 at the lowest end up to Class 1. Races can cost from $2.50 up to hundreds of dollars to enter. Prize money is allocated to the first 3 past the post. A race is filled and scheduled when 12 entrants have confirmed.
The races take place on a futuristic track set amidst the skyscrapers of whatever city you are racing in that day. The graphics are fun and you get an exciting racing experience watching the horses compete. Zed Run assure a provably fair racing system using a dynamic algorithm which they say provides exciting and unpredictable racing. Watch SGPN horse Take A Risk run below, starts at (24:45).
Horses are allocated points according to race finishing positions. These points determine what class you can race in. Below 20 and you’re in Class 5, above 80 and you have a Class 1 performer.
Currently, your horse neither dies, ages, or suffers fatigue, so you’re free to run it as often as you like. I believe these factors, as well as other racing variables such as distance, track, post and going, are all things which Zed Run aim to introduce into their racing algorithm.
Betting
Wagering is not currently offered on Zed Run races. ZEST (Zed Extremely Sexy Token) is the future in game token with which betting on these races will be available.
Breeding
Purchasing a zed horse may seem financially prohibitive currently (it certainly was to me). The introduction of breeding will help here, as supply and demand will start to even out. If you feel priced out I would advise waiting until a full breeding programme is up and running and as a result prices will drop.
Owners will be able to breed using 2 of their own horses, or can provide stud/broodmare services just as in the real world. Breeding will offer a fascinating layer of opportunity to the game for those wishing to create a seriously strong and valuable stable.
Overview
Zed Run looks great, and is a tantalizing proposition for those of us interested in gaming and gambling hybrids. There is certainly room for heavy hitters to put together a valuable stable of resources, but also, in time, the lower end should provide a fun platform for the more recreational player. The game will constantly be evolving and like most things in life, you’ll get out what you put in.
If you’re already into Zed Run or looking to watch some races join our Slack Channel here.
