None of what you read below is financial advice! Take your own financial situation into account and do your own research before investing.
Mrs. DK and I bought a new house recently, so I’ve been spending lots of time working on home projects. I’m at the point now where you show me any nut or bolt and I’ll find the right size wrench for it on the first try. I must be top 1% in the world at that skill by now.
I’m also working a full-time job, spending time with my kids, trying to catch some NBA playoff games and occasionally sneaking out golfing in the spring weather. And you know what can get lost in the shuffle a bit? Downclassing my goddamn horses.
But somehow, I’ve still found some time to keep up the Zed grind. Although my activity has been lighter than normal, I’ve found motivation to keep running my horses, keep grinding and keep building my stable in Zed.
Where has that motivation come from?
Although the Zed team has done some nice things like the challenges for Nascar Pass holders, a C1 Premier re-roll, and some small quality of life adjustments to the racing platform, it frankly hasn’t been this that’s kept me coming back.
We are still in a racing ecosystem that only really benefits the top level of stables/horses and has many pain points that still need to be worked out. There are questions about the direction and future of breeding as well since the Jon Lee departure.
I am very bullish on Zed in the long-term. Nothing has changed there. Outside of the occasional deal, I am not selling my horses and I am continuing to have fun playing the game!
But what has really kept me going through all of this is the Zed Community.
I want to share some of the Zed third parties that particularly have my attention and where I am investing as much time and capital as I can:
Danshan/ZLead Tournaments
Enter here: https://zed-tourney.vercel.app/
Danshan is one of the most outspoken voices on Zed social media. Love him or hate him, he is constantly pushing the game forward and is a wealth of knowledge on Zed (and Spearmint Rhino).
The VOLT Racing team and I made the decision with the breeding update a few months ago to purchase access to the Blood Tool. Our thesis for investing in Blood Tool was in breeding 2.0, we needed access to the best data and the best stables in the game to truly build out our empire in the long term. And frankly, we wanted to invest in Danshan and the other stables involved in the Blood Tool.
What we didn’t know at the time was that he was about to roll out these game changing tournaments.
Danshan’s ZLead torunaments have a wide range of options. They can be Fibonacci scoring, Pity Point, 357 (10 pts for 3rd, 9 pts for 5th, 8 pts for 7th), Down Class scoring, etc. They can be bloodline specific, only certain Z #s, class specific, etc. They can also have various payout structures, like winner take all, double ups (50% of field doubles their money), head-to-head (only two entrants), etc.
Many of the tournaments line up with the Zed daily tournaments, but there are also flash tournaments like sit-n-go’s that run as soon as they are full.
This diverse set of options has been a great source of added utility for horses that have never had a place to run in the Zed ecosystem.
You enter them through this page. Take a look at the Open tournaments and look closely at the entry criteria and Rules link! Find one you want to run and click “Sign Up”, then follow the prompts to enter your horse and pay. There is about a 5% rake on the tourneys.
Then from there, run your races per the Rules of the tourney and keep an eye on the leaderboard as the tourney goes on!
Know Your Wallet Founder’s Pass
Info here: https://founders.knowyourwallet.io/
Another investment I made recently was a Founder’s Pass from Know Your Wallet. You’ve probably heard this from smarter people than me, but in times of volatility, I want to be invested in people and concepts I believe in!
Know Your Horses has basically been my homepage since I started in Zed a year ago. They’ve consistently delivered value FOR FREE to Zed users through their tools and have always been looking to improve and gather feedback along the way.
They are planning to provide data on other games in the P2E space as well and the Founder’s Pass is going to give holders a first look into these things, access to higher level data and tools and some say in the future offerings.
The pass cost .423 ETH and I minted the minute pre-mint opened. I look at this as an investment in pillars in the community and a bit of P2E diversification in general. Zed is really all I have capacity for myself, but as other P2E communities grow, I have faith that KYW will be there to add value to those communities as well.
Hawku
Hawku site: https://www.hawku.com/zed
Hawku has changed the game as well in the last several months in opening their marketplace. I now exclusively use Hawku to buy and sell horses. Opensea, at least for Zed, is dead to me.
What makes Hawku so great is the integration of data and market. You can sort through Hawku filters to find a specific horse in a specific price range and then actually buy that horse right there. You can also analyze and list your own horses right from the Hawku platform and you know that potential buyers will have a better look at your horses than they would have on OpenSea.
Hawku also recently partnered more formally with Zed and KYH, adding a 2% royalty to sales (now 4% total, still less than OpenSea) to go to Zed to help fund tool/content creators like KYH.
This is another community pillar who I want to support in any way that I can.
Zed Draft
Zed Draft site: https://www.zeddraft.com
Zed Guru runs the Zed Draft website (which may be going through some rebranding soon?). Zed Draft does pari-mutuel betting, which is essentially a system where bettors place bets on horses in a race you get paid if your horse wins.
Odds are set in this system based on how much money is bet on each horse, so you get a higher payout by picking a horse that fewer bettors are putting their money on.
Zed Draft runs events for most tourneys and high-profile races and seems to be moving into more of the broader P2E space. They also stream many of these events.
In a world where Zed ownership becomes more exclusive, a site like this, where you can get action down on a race without owning a horse, could become more prominent in the future.
Zombie Maidens/Tournaments
Zombie Tournament site: https://zombie.racing/tournaments
Zombie Racing rolled out the Zombie Racing Club last year and the ZRC tokens were another mint I jumped on in the first minute they went live!
Zombie has added a lot of value through a unique set of tourneys and they have now been running additive Maiden tourneys aligned with Zed’s bi-weekly Maidens. They also run leaderboards for many other content creator tournaments, including:
PonyPlug Tournaments
Zook and the PonyPlug team have been running tournaments, including the recent Buterin Bonanza, again adding value to horses that may otherwise not have value.
Even though my horse, Konnichiwa Tim, got wrecked in the finals, the bracket style tournaments these guys have been running have been some of the most fun I have had in Zed.
I’m buying in on every single one of these that I can!
So many amazing content creators….
These are the third parties that I’d view myself as currently “investing” in at varying levels, but there are also so many other amazing content creators out there that are adding value every day.
I’ll be on for a bit with Zed Chateaux talking Maiden and breeding on Sunday night, who also has a great Twitch and beginner YouTube channel.
And I have no idea how he’s pulling this off, but Avon Fields is going to be running a 24-hour F*ck Cancer charity stream starting Saturday 5/14!
There are so many other amazing streamers and creators that I’m going to leave it here for now for fear of missing somebody, but there is an incredible Zed content guide by Sangudo Stables that you should check out to be sure you’re finding the best Zed content out there:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eiSkp-4aCQimZFD_mdi6m1n-rY5ONQR0Hr0DvLJMMG4…
Sangudo also happens to be Community Manager for Hawku and has some great content for those getting started in Zed Run:
Starting in Zed Run - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T6zxY37vtDFBm7LYMNfEw7HjULr4FqFJJT_NCDSINQk…
Stream of A-Z signing up, 3p tools, bookmarks, buying horse, racing a horse, dailies, etc.. - https://twitch.tv/videos/1479260738
Power to the People
Ultimately, Zed Run is still a game that will change over time. There is a wide range of outcomes, both positive and negative where the game could go.
The optimist/Zed employee might say that Zed will come up with amazing racing and breeding solutions that we all love. Maybe the token is a hit and lending/rentals come out and the game explodes!
Or the average Zed Discord junkie might say Zed will disappoint us all. Maybe they continue to roll out changes slowly, communicate poorly, and they will miss the mark on their upcoming roadmap items.
Maybe at some point Zed pivots to become more of a service model where users call an API and run their own racing events entirely.
I think we should all continue to push Zed and VHS to be better every day, so this is not to let them off the hook in any way, but in the short term, I am bullish on the community over all else. These amazing creators and builders have proven that they can move the needle completely on their own.
It is the people in Zed that will take it over the top and I’m here to support them in any way that I can!