The world of horse racing has been somewhat slow to embrace digital disruption, despite having cultivated a global audience through digital broadcasts, fantasy leagues, and online betting. This is all changing with the advent of Web3 technology, which marks a particularly important milestone in the evolution of the sport, unlocking exciting new possibilities for competitions, athletes, breeders, and spectators. Through leveraging the powerful capabilities of blockchain, horse racing can become more accessible than ever before, court new and younger audiences, and offer powerful new ways for fans to interact with their favourite sport. Several projects have already begun to develop platforms that integrate the promise of Web3 technology with the thrilling sport of horse racing. Let’s take a look at five of the top Web3 projects in the world of horse racing.
Headlining the list is The Winners Circle, an innovative fan engagement platform launched by Racing League and powered by Zilliqa that rewards fans for their engagement and provides them with exclusive experiences.
The Winners Circle is a loyalty programme that rewrites the rules of engagement to give fans the opportunity to have a stake in their favourite sport. Using Web3 technology, the platform offers advanced opportunities such as discounts on racehorse ownership syndicate shares, becoming a manager in a fantasy prediction game, governance voting on crucial team decisions, and more.
One of the game-changing features of The Winners Circle is the Racing League prediction game, which allows users to earn rewards based on their skill in predicting the performance of horses in real life races.
This game is built on the Skill2Earn approach to Web3 gaming championed by the low-cost, high-throughput Zilliqa blockchain, which enables players to earn rewards based not just on their interactions but their skill and proficiency, incentivising a deeper level of engagement.
$HRSE is the native fan token that powers the Web3 features of The Winners Circle, and it is set to have a market cap of $1.5 million upon its Token Generation Event (TGE).
Highlights of the project so far include partnering with star jockey Saffie Osborne and the announcement of its native $HRSE token, which is set to launch this year. With a potential reach of 2.5 million horse racing fans through Racing League, The Winners Circle is set to shake up the racing fan experience.
Photo Finish is a virtual horse racing game where players are able to race their horses for real money, breed them through a true-to-life genetics system, and exchange them in a player-driven marketplace.
Originally created as a virtual real-money racing game, Photo Finish later adopted blockchain technology which enabled the launch of its $CROWN utility token. Secured by the Solana blockchain, $CROWN can be used to stake on racetracks within the game for a share of the revenue they generate.
The platform offers players the ability to purchase a digital racehorse, which they can race on a variety of tracks with different surfaces and weather conditions to earn tokens.
Horses in Photo Finish are digital collectibles that can be bred and have a lifespan that follows an in-game calendar where four weeks in real life corresponds to one in-game ‘season’.
Photo Finish has become one of the biggest Web3 horse racing projects in the world, with the market cap of $CROWN now at more than $100 million.
The platform also has strong real-world ties to horse racing, as showcased by its partnership with Churchill Downs - the home of the Kentucky Derby.
ZkRace, formerly known as DeRace, is an NFT horse racing game built on the Ethereum blockchain that offers both active and passive gameplay opportunities.
The platform offers an immersive horse racing experience within a virtual environment that leverages zk-rollup technology to deliver innovative Web3 features. Horses on ZkRace are represented by NFTs secured by the blockchain, and owners of these tokenised horses are able to breed, rent, and trade their horses in addition to competing in races.
ZkRace features multi-chain EVM support and uses its native $DERC token for all in-game transactions and NFT trades. This token will soon be changed to $ZERC to reflect the project’s new identity.
With a fully developed market cap of $27 million, ZkRace offers an engaging and innovative metaverse for horse racing fans backed by a multi-chain ecosystem of features.
Building on its success, ZkRace was recently acquired by XCAD, one of the biggest projects within the Zilliqa ecosystem.
Another project built on Ethereum and focussed on NFTs, ZED RUN is a horse racing game and NFT platform that leverages blockchain technology to power a Web3 gaming experience centred around virtual racehorses.
Users can buy, breed, trade, and race virtual racehorses on ZED RUN, and they are able to earn rewards based on the performance of their horse in these virtual races. One of the key aspects of ZED RUN is breeding, which allows players to mint new virtual racehorses based on inherited genetic traits.
The platform features a large marketplace with more than 70,000 unique NFT owners and a range of virtual racehorses, with their value based on traits that affect gameplay and create more opportunities to earn rewards.
Pegaxy: Blaze brings a different spin on Web3 horse racing by offering a multiplayer online horse racing game where futuristic horses called “Pega”s race against each other on virtual tracks.
The game is free to download and play on Android and iOS and leverages Web3 technology to deliver its Play-to-Earn gameplay loop, where players earn rewards for competing head-to-head in online multiplayer.
Pegas are tokenised as NFTs on the platform’s own Mirai chain, a subnet of the Avalanche network, and owners can earn tokens by trading these futuristic horses on a public marketplace or trading seats and fractions through shards.
The project was previously released as a 2D game built on Ethereum, but it has since shifted to Avalanche and focussed on 3D game development for mobile.
