J. N. Campbell talks digital horse racing with Zen Run

We have posted several times now on digital horse racing. We love the idea . . . for obvious reasons. It is the wave of the future and increasing in popularity by big leaps and bounds.

Imagine. Horse racing where you can bet and watch or just watch and have fun without worrying about how the horses are treated, how much they are doped (legally or otherwise), what happens to the ones who no longer make the grade, who are dumped or got rid of or demoted to the brutal lower ranks where they are run until they break down, drop dead, or trucked off to the slaughterhouse for a fistful of dollars. These are just a few of horse racing’s many, many egregious sins.

But let’s get back to the business at hand. Here is an alternative to get excited about that has great potential to free racehorses around the world.

Zed Run

Enter Mr. J. N. Campbell of HorseRacing.net fame. Campbell wrote an excellent article on Zed Run, which he allowed the Paulick Report to use, which is where we found it.

Zed Run is the latest digital collectible company leveraging blockchain technology to create a platform where people can buy, trade, breed and race digital collectible racehorses.

Mr. Campbell opens with:

Could I possibly be the first professional turfwriter to pen a piece that postulates “virtual” digital horse racing will someday eclipse “live” Thoroughbred racing in the real world?

We are wishing and hoping and praying.

Here are a few excerpts to tempt you to read the full article:

Created a couple years ago by an Australian-based company, it is part of a movement that is sweeping across the Internet that directly deals with the creation of assets called NFTs, or Non-fungible tokens. In case you do not know, an NFT is something unique that has a specific value in the marketplace that cannot be replicated. They can range from a digital piece of artwork to currency, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which can fit on a flash drive or slide virtually into an online wallet. Next gen stuff indeed. The history of the blockchain, that serves as a ledger constructed of bytes, is relatively youthful. Make no mistake about it, the phenomenon is blazing new trails that defy boundaries, economics, and anything else you could classify as traditional. And that includes an age-old sport like horse racing.

Designed around a “straight racecourse,” events give the viewer the chance to watch a series of 24/7 races of varying distances, “grades,” and purses. If you own a horse you can pay a fee to “enter” you horse in one of these races and win money. Large fields of runners assemble, and the design reminds one of something futuristic out of the movie The Tron. That is probably because Atari, who is still around, assisted with the overall design.

Speaking of classes, the platform has 4 major bloodlines that run through the original horses that make up the game. Like Darley, Godolphin, and Byerley, the original 3 Thoroughbreds, likewise ZED Run has original bloodlines too. Named for famous “crypto” legends, their numbers run from rare to more common, and include: Nakamodo, Szabo, Finney, and Buterin. Breeding fees exist, and with dams able to produce 2 foals per month, sires have the ability to yield 7 in the same time. Thus, a Nakamoto is more difficult to obtain since there are not many of them out of the 38,000, and conversely, a Buterin is pretty much standard.