A dozen pedigreed horses make their way down a racetrack as a crowd erupts in a low roar. Super Sal, a frisky colt, takes the early lead and looks like he might run away with it.
But as the pack stampedes through the 500-meter mark and starts to thin out, a mare named Fascoo begins to pull ahead. Wait! Here comes Ghost Hunter, a shimmering, khaki-colored steed. The horses’ rhythmic clip-clopping grows louder. Ghost Hunter whips through the finish line first, beating Super Sal by a fraction of a second.
This nail-biter isn’t any horse race you’ve ever heard of, nor is it even taking place in real life. It’s unfolding in a virtual world called Zed Run. This blockchain-based game lets anyone buy, breed, and race horses like Ghost Hunter 24 hours a day, on a course that’s suspended in space and surrounded by video-game atmospherics. The thoroughbreds, which look like digital mosaics with neon-colored bridles, never age, die, or even tire, after multiple races. Owners’ rights in the cyber ponies are held via a nonfungible token (NFT), certificates of ownership for digital images that grant the owner certain rights. When they win, they earn prize money paid out in Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain on which Zed Run is built. By the summer, Zed had already sold $30 million in horses, and there are players who have become millionaires in the two years the game’s been live.
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