As ZED rolls out new tournaments, many additional aspects of the ecosystem continue to change in an effort to finetune racing and breeding. We’re here to fill you in on the most recent tournament, The A-Shape Skates, along with everything else going on in the world of ZED and what’s to come.

The A-Shape Stakes

The A-Shape Stakes is the 5th tournament ZED has unveiled, as the team continues to experiment with various tournament structures. If you’re not familiar with the term “A-Shape”, it refers to a horse’s placing distribution, with most finishes occurring near the middle of the pack rather than the front or back of the field. The higher the peak in the middle, the more defined the A-Shaped horse is.

A few weeks ago, ZED launched The Pity Point Cup, the first tournament to explicitly reward horses that didn’t come in 1st – 3rd. Instead, horses that came in 4th received the most points:

The impetus for the tournament structure was a clear nod from ZED that they are trying to find ways to give value to horses that may not be conventionally good. Yesterday, ZED followed up that notion with the A-Shape Stakes, benefitting horses that find themselves in most unenviable finishing slots, 6th and 7th place:

Point Structure

The structure of the tournament is essentially the same as the Pity Point Cup or the Fibonacci Cup, a tournament we highlighted a few weeks ago. Like the Pity Point Cup but different from the Fibonacci Cup, horses will need 25 races in a specific distance funnel to qualify, down from 30. One other difference you might notice in the A-Shape Stakes is that the points associated with each place are lower than past tournaments – for example, 6th or 7th place, the best spots to finish in the A-Shape Stakes, nets you 24 points, whereas the best finish in previous tournaments netted you 89 points. While the raw point totals are low, the distribution from a percentage perspective has also been tweaked:

In other words, the third highest raw point total you could get in the Fibonacci Cup was 34 for coming in 3rd place. This is 38.2% of the max points you could have achieved, 89 points for coming in 1st. Additionally, a 3rd place finish would net you 14.7% of the total pot, as 232 points were distributed in each race. In the A-Shape Stakes, the max points you could receive is 24 for coming in either 6th or 7th, and the second highest total is 15 points, achieved for coming in either 5th or 8th. In this tournament, only 100 points are distributed for each race.

This ultimately means that the point distribution was much more top heavy in the Fibonacci Cup – only two finishing spots had more than a 15% share of the total pot – 1st and 2nd place, whereas the A-Shape Stakes have four finishing spots with at least a 15% share of the pot, 5th – 8th place. There isn’t as much of a premium for placing in the position with max points, largely because the A-Shape Stakes has a flatter distribution curve emanating outward from 6th and 7th places, and there are only 6 different point allocations compared to the Fibonacci Cup’s 11 (10th and 11th place were both given 1 point). This gives horses in the A-Shape Stakes a wider margin for error, which should keep more stables in the running.

The one criticism we have about the A-Shape Stakes, which we also held for the Pity Point Cup, is that once horses get to the Quarter-Finals and beyond, advancement reverts back to your standard 1st – 3rd set up. For this tournament, it means a horse that comes in 1st will receive 0 points through the Qualifying Round but will then need to place 1st – 3rd to advance. If the idea is to reward the most A-Shaped horses, it seems logical that horses finishing in 5th – 8th in the Quarter-Finals and beyond should be rewarded with advancement, rather than a complete about-face to a standard racing system. Simply put, why change the entire foundation and purpose of the tournament once the qualification period is over? This decision is a bit of a bummer because it means true A-Shaped horses, ones that very rarely win, are back at a major disadvantage when it comes to placing and potentially winning some real money post-qualifiers. While we love the idea of adding value to a wider variety of horses within ZED, we’d really love to see a tournament structure that truly represents these changes going forward.

Future Tournaments

We haven’t received any details on what future tournaments will look like, but ZED has already stated that they’re experimenting with different possibilities. It seems likely that a U-Shape tournament is on its way, which will favor horses that are essentially the exact inverse of A-Shaped horses – lots of 1st and last place finishes but a dearth of middle-of-the-pack finishes. We’d also love to see tournaments that are based on Bloodlines, giving non-Nakamotos more of a shot, along with tournaments structured on Genotype and Breed Type, which could provide value to horses further away from their Genesis ancestors – imagine a tournament comprised of Z268 Buterin Pacers! Tournaments with these structures would not only provide opportunities to a wider array of horses, but could also create long-term value for breeding, potentially giving stable owners a reason to breed horses that are further down the genetic food chain.

Class Updates

In addition to the new tournament, ZED announced a few changes to its class system. These tweaks change both the point range for each class and the points allocated in a race for different finishing positions:

Class Point Range

Class Points Awarded Per Race

Additionally, free races will be subject to negative points again, a welcome adjustment to the last round of changes, which limited negative points to paid races. Cumulatively, these changes are meant to provide a more equitable racing ecosystem, while addressing some of the unintended consequences from the last update. For example, under the previous structure, Version 2 in the chart above, horses running in free races could only class upward and could easily jump multiple classes during the qualification period. At the end of the tournament, a large number of horses were found stranded in classes they didn’t belong in, and would need to spend some serious time and money just to class them back down to face appropriate competition, an unattractive proposition to users.

It should be noted that this is likely far from the last tweak we’ll see in ZED. There is speculation that the class system will eventually migrate to an “Elo rating system” though there are no details on the variables or inputs that would be used for calculation purposes. Elo rating systems are used in chess, and are named after its founder, Arpad Elo. Outside of chess, the system is used in various other board games, video games, and pro sports. If you feel like nerding out, check out this article that breaks down the nuances of various rating mechanisms and applications. We’ll be sure to keep you apprised of future ZED changes, so keep an eye out for more updates as ZED continues to refine their product, and good luck in the A-Shape Stakes!