The state of ZED RUN or Remembering my momentary delight in NFTs 💸🐎
With the new surge of crypto interest I started digging around my holdings. I don't have more than a few hundred from years ago when I was super broke. Better than nothing, I suppose.
However, it reminded me of my head first dive into the utilization of NFT and cryptocurrency in gaming. Specifically with the game ZED RUN.
For those not in the know, ZED RUN is a game of racing and breeding digital horses built on Web3. Which means that it uses crypto for trading, selling, whatever. And the horses are NFTs so one for one digital assets.
I got into it over the Pandemic. I was unemployed with a part-time freelance gig, living at my mom's place. I was looking to make some money on the side and find a distraction. Enter ZED RUN. At first, it was fun.
You could compete in free races and win a few bucks. The competition to get in was crazy. You found a race and entered by clicking in as fast as you could. If you were lucky, you would get into a lane. Since I had so much free time I got pretty good at entering into the free races.
I also started breeding and trying to grow a stable. I even bought an old horse breeding book to get into the mentality of it all. This was my new hyper focus.
However, I was starting small and trying to work my way up. And yes, I thought this was the future of blockchain! A circulating economy where you could start at the bottom and build something!
That all ended with the removal of free races. Pretty quickly, I moved on to other projects and ideas. I fell out of love with NFTs shortly after. I could see the writing on the wall. People were afraid to spend crypto. Its only use was invest and trading it for fiat. I slowly turned away from cryptocurrency as well.
Back to today, I was looking over my past purchases. Opensea showed my transaction history of horses. The money I spent was a lot for me at the time. Now, I don't think I'd get a dollar for my whole stable.
Looking at ZED RUN's site, I got a little sad at the potential for digital games. I really thought I would see Wizards of the Coast implementing NFTs along side their physical cards. I dreamt about picking up a pack and being able to get a one for one copy of everything in MTG Arena.
But the beauty of digital products isn't their uniqueness. It's that you can sell as many as you want with the click of a button. I don't think the game industry wants to deal with the headache of that.
I checked out ZED RUN's socials and saw that they had announced a new "evolution" of the game, ZEDx. It says it will be more of a skills based game which won't take much. The original racing was picking a lane and letting your horse run which I hated at first but grew to love. I felt like an owner in the stands.
I'm not sure how this new version will look. I don't even know if my old stable will be usable. That would suck to lose them even if I don't run them any more. But that's the nature of the digital sphere. Things change. Time moves on. And assets are abandoned.
