Since the recent launch of the DeRace v2 efficiency upgrade, the DeRace team have been hard at work building out their roadmap.
As the markets are starting to show signs of life again, it seems as though the bottom might be in (or soon could be). Here’s why we believe that DeRace is set to take off when the markets get going again.
The next major update scheduled for release is NFT chests and keys which can be earnt simply by playing the game. These new items introduce a new level of gameplay which we will touch on later, but more importantly, they present new ways to earn NFTs even if your horse is not winning races.
Chests and the keys required to open them are earnt by racing and taking part in the ecosystem. All players need to do is complete achievements and missions.
This will help new players earn some items whilst getting to know their horses. For those who are already racing but aren’t making a profit, it adds a boost to earnings which could take currently unprofitable players into profitability.
Most importantly, new rewards are going to attract new players, and the more people playing the game, the better.
With the release of NFT horse equipment players can suddenly start setting up their horses strategically. If your stables are full of mediocre horses which cannot turn a profit, this is your chance to shine. We’ve seen that many top horses perform well on different distances and even surfaces. They can be entered into a wide range of races and still be profitable. With equipment allowing you to increase stamina, speed and reaction time, sometimes at the expense of other stats, the player is suddenly forced to optimise their horses for particular races.
This update ought to level the playing field as the horses become more specialised. In order to keep the races fair, expect to see races split into equipped horse races and non-equipped horse races. You’ll likely find that the best horses race within the equipped races, whilst the unraced horses which are still being explored by their owners will be in the unequipped races.
This split should help to shield the new players from being beaten by those champion horses that race 24/7.
When we first built this website the community was growing rapidly thanks to the efforts of DERCArmy. DERCArmy built up an incredible community of hardcode DeRace fans on both Discord and Telegram. Still to this day, the best place to hang out if you’re a serious DeRace player is the DERCArmy discord server.
DERCArmy has just finished up their Racing Teams Season 2 competition and the prize pool was enormous. DeRace has supported and sponsored these events, and contributed to the prizes that the players can earn. This latest event broke the record for the number of horses entering races within a single day!
Recently we’ve seen many other amazing content creators gaining traction who are working hard on statistical analysis and sharing this data with the community, or interviewing the DeRace team and gleaning excellent new insights into upcoming features. We’ve even seen community members trying to make race data as free and as open as possible, or building automated racing bots.
So why is all of this important? All of these people are adding a huge amount of value to the game, and are actively building tools, communities and content which help players get more out of the game. They’re all helping to market and push the game forward, allowing it to reach new users and better engage the existing ones. DeRace recognises the value of these builders and is supporting their efforts, as well as taking on board the valuable ideas and suggestions that they have to offer. The DeRace team have really made themselves available to these builders and they’re just a message away.
Whilst we’ve had renting-to-breed for quite some time now, very soon we will see the ability to rent-to-race. Players who choose rent-to-race are still able to earn NFT rewards from Chests by completing missions and achievements, whilst also providing a passive income to the horse owner. Renting significantly lowers the barrier to entry for new players wishing to explore the game – which is excellent for any blockchain game.
Community-owned hippodromes are soon going to be launched with tournament functionality built-in. Owners of the hippodrome will be able to design and run complex competitions, and DeRace themselves will be running competitions with amazing prizes from partners who sponsor the races. Imagine being able to rent a horse just to participate in a special event!
Integration with a third-party guild management tool is all part of the grand plan, and it will make it simple and easy for all kinds of players to monetise their idle horses, not just big guilds, but players who own just one or two horses as well.
The price of NFT horses has stabilised over the last three months or so. There’s also a decent amount of volume for a game that’s still in beta during a bear market. So where can the prices of horses go from here? We believe it will only go up (but that’s not financial advice). Let us explain why we believe this.
Decent horses with promising-looking racing statistics are desirable to the hardcore racers who know how to monetise them. There will always be a market for these horses. The advent of racing bots means that these players can manage an ever-growing number of horses at any given time.
Even the donkeys will play their part in increasing in the value of horses. When the horse equipment update is released we will also have the ability to burn NFT items and horses. That means that you can take a bad horse and burn it, in exchange for “sugar cubes”, the new in-game-only currency. This currency can then be used to buy more crates and earn more items.
Adding a burning mechanism to any ecosystem is only going to have a positive effect. Don’t forget there’s a limited supply of Gen 0 horses, there will only ever be 5000 of them.
These are just our top five reasons why we expect DeRace to take off when the markets pick up, but we’ve barely scratched the surface. What do you think are the top reasons? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to get in touch.