Web3 gaming is growing up.
After years of hype, false starts, and friction, a new generation of games is emerging, built not just for crypto insiders but for real players, spectators, and scalable ecosystems.
At the center of that shift is Virtually Human Studio (VHS), the team behind the breakout hit ZED RUN, and now the creators of two connected platforms: ZED Champions, a skill-based on-chain racing league, and ZED Picks, a spectator-first prediction sweepstakes app that strips away the usual crypto friction.
Leading the charge is Nir Efrat, VHS CEO and former executive at King, where he helped scale Candy Crush into one of the most successful mobile games of all time.
“We’re not here to rebuild everything from scratch,” Efrat says. “We’re taking what works, mobile accessibility, strong core loops, and social engagement, and applying it to an onchain ecosystem that performs.”
While Champions delivers depth for competitive players, ZED Picks brings a lighter, spectator-first experience to the same ecosystem. It’s mobile-native, social by design, and built to onboard fans without the friction of wallets or tokens.
“ZED Champions is your core game. Picks is your broadcast layer,” Efrat explains. “It’s the ESPN, the way we invite spectators into the economy without asking them to download a wallet or study tokenomics.”
How ZED Picks Works
ZED Picks is designed for instant engagement. Players jump into live digital horse races, choose up to two horses per event, and win if both finish in the top six. It’s fast, intuitive, and built to feel familiar to anyone who’s placed a fantasy pick or scrolled through a sportsbook.
The app uses two currencies: Zcoin for free-play and Zcash for real-money contests. No wallets or tokens required. Picks are locked in before each race, and players can redeem real rewards based on performance and odds.
It’s spectator gaming, reimagined with sweepstakes-compliant mechanics and no crypto complexity. The format removes the usual barriers to entry, letting spectators engage with live events in real time; no wallets, no crypto fluency required.
The ZED Suite: Infrastructure for On-Chain Sport
What’s emerging from all this is more than just gameplay; it’s infrastructure. Virtually Human Studio is building the ZED Suite, a modular ecosystem where products interlock around a shared racing economy, but serve distinct audiences and use cases.
- ZED Champions is the core game, a closed-loop, on-chain strategy league where performance, not speculation, determines outcomes.
- ZED Picks is the spectator layer, a mobile social casino sweepstakes where fans can predict race outcomes and win real or virtual currency, without needing a wallet or crypto knowledge.
- ZED Partners is the B2B layer currently in development, a data and developer stack offering access to live race feeds, APIs, and predictive infrastructure that third parties can build on.
Together, the Suite forms an ecosystem that’s bigger than any single game. Users can race, breed, stake, pick, watch, and even build apps on top of the same economy. For VHS, this isn’t just vertical integration. It’s a long-term play to define onchain racing as its own entertainment category, with multiple access points, revenue models, and participant types spanning players, fans, and developers.
“This isn’t about the next NFT drop,” says Efrat. “It’s about creating a real sports economy onchain and making sure anyone: player, fan, builder can take part.”
The early traction is hard to ignore. Since launching on Base, ZED Champions has clocked thousands of automated races every day, with live token flow powering everything from breeding auctions to retirement payouts. Players aren’t just speculating, they’re strategizing, retiring, reinvesting, and optimizing across seasons.
ZED Picks, meanwhile, is onboarding a broader audience through a mobile-native layer that feels less like crypto and more like daily fantasy. With real-money mechanics, live race feeds, and an expanding pool of predictive data, it’s already showing signs of sticky engagement.
Where most Web3 ecosystems feel fragmented or experimental, VHS is betting on cohesion, a unified system that speaks to different types of users but operates on a shared foundation. This isn’t a suite of side projects. It’s a flywheel designed to reward participation at every level.
The Market Is Ready
This shift isn’t happening in isolation. The Web3 gaming market is projected to reach $33.7 billion by 2025, with over 500 million players expected to enter the space. Mobile now accounts for more than 63% of Web3 gaming activity, and over $12 billion has already been invested in the category since 2020.
What’s driving that growth isn’t just token speculation; it’s gameplay that works. Formats that scale. Frictionless onboarding that mirrors what the mobile world has done well for years. That’s where the ZED Suite fits: an interconnected platform that offers an evolving ecosystem of onchain sport.
“We’ve seen how mobile scaled casual gaming to the masses,” Efrat says. “Web3 lets us take that one step further, giving players ownership and turning participation into progression. With ZED Champions and ZED Picks, we’re connecting deep strategy and broad accessibility in one unified ecosystem.”
ZED Champions is now live here. ZED Picks is set to roll out beta playtests next month.
