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Game of Silks, a digital horse-racing simulator in the metaverse, announced today that it will run races that mirrors the real-world Keeneland Spring Meet. Digital twins of real racehorses will race in the metaverse alongside their counterparts, with the owners of the digital horses earning rewards for their performances.
Silks, which is the blockchain partner of the New York Racing Association, created NFTs modeled after the crop of then-one-year-old horses in 2022. All told, it created more than 17,500 digital twins of the young racehorses, who are now in their first racing season. It worked with the Jockey Club, the official organization for registering Thoroughbreds to recreate the horses’ date accurately. According to Silks, it will auction any digital racehorses running at the Meet not already owned before it begins.
Keeneland Race Track holds the Spring Meet in April. The event features several races, including the Blue Grass Stakes — a race commonly used as a prep event for horses planned to compete in the upcoming Kentucky Derby. Silks did not specify whether it would only mirror races for the aforementioned two-year-old horses, which does not include the Blue Grass or the Ashland Stakes, both of which are run by three-year-old horses.
Silks hosts the digital horses on one-acre parcels of in-metaverse land. Users can engage with a larger economy that includes building stables for other players to use. Players can buy and sell the equine NFTs as well as race them.
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Troy Levy, co-founder of Game of Silks, said in a statement, “Part of Silks’ mission is to expand the thrill of racehorse ownership to new audiences and demographics beyond the upper class. Since launching last year, we’ve built an engaged online community of more than 25,000 fans and have become a Top 10 sports-themed NFT platform on 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 significant milestone in the history of the sport.”
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