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Game of Silks, a digital horse racing simulator in the metaverse, announced today that it will hold races that mirror the real-life Keeneland Spring Meet. Digital twins of real racehorses will race alongside their counterparts in the metaverse, with the owners of the digital horses earning rewards for their performance.
Silks, the New York Racing Association’s blockchain partner, created NFTs modeled after the 2022 crop of then-year-old horses. All told, it created more than 17,500 digital twins of the young racehorses, who are now in their first racing season. It partnered with the Jockey Club, the official thoroughbred registration organization, to accurately recreate the date of the horses. According to Silks, it will auction any digital racehorses running on the Meet that are not yet owned before it begins.
Keeneland Race Track will hold the Spring Meet in April. The event features several races, including the Blue Grass Stakes – a race commonly used as a preparation event for horses scheduled to compete in the upcoming Kentucky Derby. Silks has not specified whether it would only reflect races for the aforementioned two-year-olds, which does not include the Blue Grass or the Ashland Stakes, both of which are run by three-year-olds.
Silks houses the digital horses on one-acre plots of in-metaverse land. Users can engage in a larger economy, including building stables for other players to use. Players can buy and sell the horse NFTs and also race them.
Troy Levy, co-founder of Game of Silks, said in a statement: “Part of Silks’ mission is to expand the excitement of racehorse ownership to new audiences and demographics beyond the upper class. Since launching last year, we have built an engaged online community of over 25,000 fans and have become a Top 10 sports-themed NFT platform in the OpenSea marketplace, which we see as the tip of a very large iceberg. Hosting the first professional horse race in our metaverse is a major milestone in the sport’s history.
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