When buying goods from any marketplace, you have the “Primary Market” and the “Secondary Market”.
The Primary Market are places like clothing stores where you can buy goods directly from a company. You get a lot of protection here because you’re buying directly from the company.
Drop Events are the Primary Market of Zed.Run.
The Secondary Market includes places like eBay, Yard Sales, or Poshmark. These areas can be much trickier to navigate and often offer less protection.
In terms of Zed.Run, Open Sea is the official Secondary Market.
However, buying a horse directly from a Seller can still be very difficult and it’s probably the #1 question currently asked on the official Zed.Run Discord.
Let’s get to it and figure out the answers to some basic questions, such as:
- Should I buy a Zed.Run Horse from a Zed Drop Event or Open Sea?
- Can I buy a horse from a Discord member directly?
- How Do I Avoid Scams?
- How Do I Find a Good Horse on Open Sea?
- I can’t Find Any Horses In My Budget… What Should I Do?
If these are the questions you have; keep reading on!
Should I Buy a Zed.Run Horse From a Drop or From Open Sea?
We actually wrote a whole post about how you should think about the upcoming Zed Drop here. To summarize, if you’re looking to get in the game cheap – you should absolutely try to buy a low-end Genesis horse at drop.
However, not everyone will succeed (supply & demand) so it is good to be informed on how Open Sea works.
About 74 times per day in the official Zed.Run Discord; Malachi (a mod in the community) will post this Warning message:
Basically… Open Sea hosts a LOT of different NFT’s from a lot of different people. I’m not even really sure how the technical side of that works – but here is what you need to know:
ALWAYS check to make sure that you are purchasing from the verified Zed.Run Marketplace on Open Sea!
MalachiJive repeats it over and over in Discord. I’m telling you here. Once you’ve read this, there is no excuse for being tricked by an impostor.
Someone DM’ed me On Discord — Should I Buy Their Horse?
NO.
Let me repeat that for emphasis…… No.
Never. Ever. Buy. a. Zed. Horse. From. Someone. You. Meet. On. Discord.
Now…. I know that may not be enough for some of you. Let’s go even deeper:
Do not buy from someone on Discord:
- Even if they seem really nice
- Even if they’ve been very helpful to you
- Even if they’re offering an amazing deal
- Even if someone in the community vouches for them
- Even if your specific budget only works for this particular horse and this would let you get into a super-awesome breeding strategy and you feel like you’re going to miss out on the fantastic world of Zed.Run if you don’t jump on this deal right this very second
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
These people are good at what they do. And what they do is build trust, create a huge need of their product, and take money from your crypto wallet.
Once you send someone crypto, there is like a 0.01% chance you’re getting it back. There is no eBay protection here. You’re out the money. It’s gone.
Pay the 2.5% fee and have the seller list on the official Zed.Run Open Sea category. If they can’t do that, there’s a very high percentage chance you’re dealing with a scammer and you’re about to lose any ETH you send.
Short Positive Discord Disclaimer: I know that makes Discord sound bad… and I have made TONS of true friends through the Zed.Run Discord and there are SO many amazing people who are willing to take time out of their day to help you with things. I LOVE ALL OF YOU for that…….. Just don’t trust anyone with your hard-earned ETH, okay?
How Do I Avoid Scams?
Okay, so we just covered the fact that you do not want to buy a horse from a Discord user directly… hopefully that’s clear now.
Let’s go into some of the other things you may come across that may not be so great in the Secondary Market of Zed.Run.
Escrows
A lot of people in the Discord will commonly ask about an “escrow” or trade service. The basic idea being:
- You give your horse to a third party
- The person you’re trading with gives their horse to that same third party
- The third party sends them both to the trade recipients.
As good as that sounds, unfortunately there have been escrow situations that do go wrong. In this instance, you are asking someone who you have no “real world” relationship with to protect assets that may be worth multiple ETH.
Even if a community member “vouches” for an Escrow… PLEASE remember:
Previous successful escrows are not an indicator of successful future escrows. Period.
You never know if someone has been setting up a “long play” or has come into financial trouble.
A work-around for horse trades that would typically need an escrow would look like this:
- Trader A lists horse for 4 ETH on Open Sea
- Trader B lists horse for 4 ETH on Open Sea
- Trader A buys B’s horse, Trader B buy’s a horse
- Total fees come out to be .2 ETH
Only use a price that you feel would be fair to sell without the trade… that way if Trader A buys your horse and runs away – you’re not disappointed. .2 ETH would be a small fee to pay for the guarantee of a safe transaction of a trade involving $20,000 in USD valued-assets.
Faulty Links / Technical Aspects
Basically, this happens in one main way — authorizing a transaction on Meta Mask that is not an official Zed request.
This is a simple one to avoid. Always check your browser and make sure you are only transacting on Zed.Run or OpenSea.io. No one else should EVER need access to your Meta Mask.
Since we’re talking about Meta Mask.. no one will EVER need access to your “Seed Phrase” either. You can google “password best practices” to figure out how to keep your Seed Phrase safe in general.
One other note here – you’re only secure as your entire computing environment. If you log in on your iPhone or on your laptop and someone manages a complete take-over, well your Meta Mask won’t be secure for too long.
If you have thousands of USD invested in Zed.Run – you probably need to take this a bit more seriously than I have the technical knowledge to help with. If you’re a casual player, simply be smart please and minimize your risk.
How Do I Find a Good Horse on Open Sea?
So, we’ll actually be posting a full Guide about this as soon as the next Drop Event ends (June 10th/11th) … however here are some good tips in the mean time while you wait for that guide to appear 
- Know What Breed Type , Blood Type, Z#’s, and Performance Stats have value
This is important because you need to fully understand the difference between a Genesis Buterin with a 2% Win Rate and an Exclusive Nakamoto Z-7 that is pulling 8-9 odds.
If that sentence didn’t make sense to you, I recommend you go back to our “Getting Started” page and do your homework.
However, once you understand the Breeds, their rarity, the difference between Win Rate & Odds, and many more factors – you should be able to use Zed-Nucleus.com to sort through Active Listings and Recent Sales to spot horses that might be under-valued.
- If It’s Under GENESIS.. WAIT for Breeding!
While there are all kinds of things that can effect supply & demand, nothing is a better bet than waiting for breeding to buy Legendary & below horses. The supply of these Legendary, Exclusive, Elite, etc. horses right now is ZERO.
There are zero being created. Once breeding opens up, if nothing else we’ll see a lot of options coming on to the marketplace. Right now, all of the best deals are spoken for and you’re probably buying someone else’s unwanted glue at an inflated price if you’re paying up right now.
- Never Let Bids “Hang”
It is a common selling tactic to post an Un-Raced Genesis Horse on Open Sea, wait for bids to come in, and then run the Genesis while the bids are pending.
If this happens, the Seller will be able to view the Horse’s odds and could even run it multiple times if you’re not checking your bid.
If the horse gets bad odds, the Seller will accept your bid and you’ll get an asset worth much less than you offered. If the horse gets good odds, the Seller simply keeps the horse for himself and you’re shut out with nothing.
This doesn’t just apply to Un-Raced though either – just be careful letting any bids “hang” on a horse you’re not completely sure you want to buy.
- Realize that no horse is a guarantee
You can do as much homework as you want, but if you’re buying a Zed.Run horse for the first time, no one can guarantee that you find a profitable horse.
All kinds of changes will be coming down the road from Class Structure to Weather Factors to the simple introductions of tons of bred horses. This doesn’t even mention the fluctuations of ETH or other economic factors. Keep this in mind as we move to our final section:
I Can’t Find Any Horses In My Budget… What Do I Do?
FOMO is a huge part of our society today – and I get that Zed.Run can be a huge FOMO-causer.
The game looks awesome & it seems like a ton of fun… for the most part, I personally think it is.
However, you’re going to have a really miserable time if you put money in that you actually need for real life. You should never invest any money into Zed.Run that you are not willing to lose. At the end of the day, Zed.Run is a game.
No one can guarantee you that your digital NFT of a horse will ever hold a certain value, return a certain profit.. or any other claim. No one knows if investing in Zed.Run horses will create millionaires or ruin people.
If you’re reading this – I want YOU to be in a good place with the money you put into the game. I would say the absolute #1 most common reason why people get scammed is because they’re either being greedy or they talk themselves into something to the point of delusion.
Do NOT fall for a scammer’s tricks. Do NOT be desperate to get into this game.
Participate in the Zed.Run Drop Events, turn to the OFFICIAL Secondary Market if you need to, and always enjoy Zed.Run responsibly.
I’m going to shorten the link to this post to “ZedGuru.com/OpenSea”
Please feel free to share this article directly with anyone who may benefit from this advice!
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