One funny/interesting moment from this week occurred during our weekly news briefing meeting where we discuss important industry news. One of the research team members brought up a decentralized digital horse racing game called Zed Run. The idea is that you buy, breed, bet on, and race horses within the community. The end goal is to build a stable full of elite racehorses which will become part of your legacy that you can "pass on" to future generations. I found it interesting that they are trying to mimic the nuances of real horse racing down to the social aspect. Breeding is also taken very seriously in this game as it is the main strategy to build elite racehorses. There are only 38,000 first-generation horses known as genesis horses which fall under four different bloodlines. When breeding horses, you have to be aware of their genotype purity, bloodline scarcity, and rarity. Genotype purity is measured in a percentage and describes how similar the offspring is to its initial ancestors. Similar to the real world, it is well regarded to breed pure hores within the same bloodline.
The game operates on the Ethereum network, and all transactions are executed through smart contracts which are recorded on the blockchain. One question I had was, "if the racing is digitally simulated, then can't you use an algorithm to compute the outcome and place successful bets all the time?". I couldn't find a very clear answer on this but their website says that they use a secure dynamic algorithm to make the races fair and unpredictable. The game is also decentralized and runs on a blockchain which means there is no private party that is manipulating the game.
Something interesting to note is that each horse is traded and owned in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). NFT's are unique digital assets that are traded on blockchains to prove their existence (can't sell replicas). Just like unique photos, videos, and music could be turned into NFT's, so can these horse's identities.
The New York Times reported that as of May 12th, one user sold their entire stable of horses for $252,000 and another sold a single horse for $125,000. I am really surprised by how much money people are investing in this game. I wonder if it is just a trend or if this is something people would participate in long-term.
Here are the links:
https://zed.run/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/style/zed-run-horse-racing.html

images from two different races
Thanks for sharing, Megha! Wow, I am also surprised by the amount of money people are willing to invest in this game!!! Can this possibly be a sound investment strategy? Or do these people just have so much disposable income that they don't care either way?
ReplyDeleteI am completely fascinated by this. Money is already not real (i.e., it is a system created by humans that most people choose to adhere to), and then this goes even deeper. I have so many questions and can't really wrap my mind around all this. I don't know what it means to buy a thing that is a program that runs races created by a computer. Wow.
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