Play

The DeRace beta was released in December 2021 and is ready to play. It’s important to know that whilst the game is still in such an early stage of development it is still subject to change. Development has been progressing well and the team have delivered on their roadmap and are continually adding new features.

Before you learn how to play, have a read of our introduction to the game to see what it’s all about. Below you’ll find an official DeRace overview to quickly get you up to speed on how to race, but if you want to know more, please scroll down further.

Buy some $DERC tokens

$DERC is a token on the Polygon network that fuels the DeRace metaverse. In order to play the game, you’ll need to own some $DERC tokens in the same wallet as your horse. The $DERC token is required to enter your horse into races. It’s also the token that your race winnings are paid in. See our token page to learn where to buy $DERC.

You’ll also need to ensure you have some $MATIC tokens which are used to pay the transaction fees on the Polygon network. Polygon fees are extremely low and 1 $MATIC will keep you going for a long time.

Buy a horse

The full DeRace vision will offer players many ways to get involved, whether that’s horse ownership, rentals, breeding, betting or hippodrome ownership. However, in these early stages of the game, you’ll need to own a horse to participate in races as other features as still in development.

Horses can be bought on the official secondary marketplaces and are becoming ever more affordable as NFT horse breeding is coming into effect. DeRace plan to introduce horse rentals later in the development of the game so that players do not need to purchase a horse outright in order to play. This should provide a passive income for horse owners, but also provide a more affordable entry into the game for new players.

Enter some races

Now you have a horse, some $DERC tokens and some $MATIC for transaction fees, you’re ready to start racing. Head over to the Races page on the DeRace website to see all available races.

To enter a race select one and click the register button. You’ll need to complete two transactions to enter the race. The first transaction is to approve spending of your $DERC tokens; you’ll be presented with the option of approving an unlimited amount of $DERC tokens if you wish to do so. Approving an unlimited amount of $DERC will save time entering races in future. The second and final transaction will execute the race registration smart contract and your entry fee will be deducted from your wallet.

You’ll be able to see your horse in the entrant’s list shortly after and once registration has closed the registration button will be replaced by a “Watch Race” button to view the race in 3D.

Good luck! If you win a race your winnings will be automatically transferred to your wallet shortly after the race.

You can browse all past races and view your racing history in the Results, Winnings and History pages.

What next?

There’s a lot more to the game and racing than clicking a button to enter a race and watching your horse compete. You need to test your horses out on different surfaces and distances to find out where they perform the best. To understand more about horse performance and racing tactics, please see our Racing section.