Dominion Apex Racing, custom resin 1/64 race cars + competitive league
Hey RLD,
I'm Architect. Been following this community for a while and Brian gave me the go-ahead to introduce what I'm working on.
Dominion Apex Racing is a competitive 1/64 league built around custom resin-printed race cars. Every car is designed from scratch through a full 3D pipeline, printed on an Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra 16K, hand-finished, and raced on a physical track with livestreamed events. Custom chassis with tungsten weighting, screw-mounted axles, and I'm building an 8-lane modular track with Arduino starting gates and IR timing.
The twist: each car also has a digital ownership component (NFT + on-chain race results). I know that's not everyone's cup of tea and I'm not here to pitch it. At its heart, this is physical cars racing on a physical track. The digital layer is just the ownership and record-keeping system.
I'm deep in the build phase and came here because RLD is where the people who actually know 1/64 racing hang out. Looking for honest feedback on the concept, the build approach, whatever comes to mind.
Not here to spam links or sell. Just here to share and learn from people who've been doing this way longer than me.
— Architect
Dominion Apex Racing
Discussion
Is this something where we would buy the 3d cars from you, modify them and ship them back to race? Not saying I'm against it, but I'm skeptical until I see pics/video etc
- No shipping. The cars never leave our facility. You own the car as an NFT and it stays in our vault. We race it on a physical track every week on livestream. You watch it compete. Down the road there may be an option to retire a car and have it shipped to you but the real value is keeping it in competition. A car on a shelf is a collectible. A car on the track is an asset. Pics and video are coming. Skepticism is fair and we plan to earn it. — Architect
- You lost me at comparing it to crypto/NFTs. Good luck though — RLoRacing
I think it's more fantasy-league style...just guessing here...but you buy the car they design/print and have exclusivity but you don't get anything tangible in return. It's more like adoption with built-in betting. You'll get the rewards that come with it, if any. And it sounds like all the rewards would be digital crypto-like currency...which is where I think it's fair to be skeptical; it's new and not understood well. Although I give them credit for exploring a new space and going for it.
Although most of my "will it be fun" concern are with the 3D printed cars instead of HW/MBX retail cars. You can do some research with retail but not so much with cars someone is printing on their own and just providing specs. Maybe they'll do qualifying type stuff and people can bid/shop for the cars...it's pretty interesting and I can see the engagement. It's not unlike how I used to run the RLD Fantasy League just with real money.
Regardless of the digital currency gimmick, I am very interested to see how 3D printed cars look and perform on a regular track. As a 3D hobbyist myself, it's neat to think about but if you're making every part yourself...body, chassis, axles, wheels, etc...then I'm not sure the cost efficiency is there, but who knows. Again, it's a different idea and I applaud that innovation within scale racing.
- Appreciate the breakdown. You nailed the fantasy league comparison. That's the closest analog except the cars are real and the races are physical. Every car is 100% original. No licensed molds. No retail castings. Every body style designed from scratch and serialized. The car lives in our vault and races on a real track every week on livestream. You own it through an NFT which is just permanent proof of ownership on the blockchain. Think racehorse. It's yours. It runs. You watch it compete. The crypto side is just the engine under the hood. Prize pools are real and transferable. You can sell your car on secondary markets anytime. Not ready to show the full production pipeline yet but when we do I think the 3D hobbyist in you is going to have questions. Looking forward to that conversation. — Architect
- Gotcha. Yeah, my fantasy league racing /was/ real...real cars, real track, real weekly racing. People just "owned" cars and made picks through the website. Kinda same thing just without the blockchain stuff. — redlinederby
- I think being able to buy/mod the cars ourselves would have more appeal to actual builders. Like someone else said, I have no interest in something I cannot pick or mod myself. — RLoRacing
- @redlinederby The difference is permanence. In a traditional fantasy league, the platform owns everything. If the site goes down, your car, your record, your history, all gone. With blockchain ownership, your car exists independent of us. You could sell it, trade it, or hold it forever and no one can take it from you. The racing is the same real physical experience. The blockchain just makes sure the ownership can never be revoked by any single company. — Architect
- @RLoRacing Totally understand that. The hands-on builder side of this hobby is a huge part of what makes it special. Right now the cars are custom designed and built by us to keep the playing field level for the initial racing seasons. But the future vision absolutely includes owner modifications. Different wheels, weight adjustments, upgrades, all chosen by the owner and applied to your car. Every modification gets stored on the blockchain and updated in your car's metadata for the world to see. Complete transparency. No secret setups, no hidden advantages. Your car's entire build history and race record is public and permanent. Think of the early seasons as establishing the foundation and proving the format. The builder side of ownership is very much part of the roadmap. — Architect
- “ Every car is 100% original. No licensed molds. No retail castings. Every body style designed from scratch and serialized.” What kind of production scale are you envisioning? All these custom cars designed, printed, painted and hand assembled and tuned? — Sals_Speed_Shop
- @Sals_Speed_Shop Every car is original. Designed in house, resin printed, hand assembled, painted, weighted, tuned, and serialized. Universal chassis keeps the racing fair. Different body styles and rarity tiers bring the variety. The production pipeline is built to be repeatable and scalable but right now the scale matches the format. When we start showing the process I think you're going to have questions. Looking forward to that. — Architect
- @arch - Yeah, I get that the blockchain keeps the log of everything independently, but that's not a problem that needs solving in this case so why go to the trouble? You could still print your cars and have your Packs and race, all totally managed by you and no one would really worry about it. You can charge people for gaming without the crypto and they will, just like any other game with recurring microtransactions. I get your long term plans but I'm thinking you might be overindexing on the enticement of reselling the NFTs and stuff. But I do think you should consider offering the non-crypto way to play and then also the NFTs for those that want to try to play the prospecting game. — redlinederby
- Any idea what a car will cost? What is the cost for us as users/members? We all know what mainline Hot Wheels cost, but it’s the streamlined production process that has always kept the cars affordable. — Sals_Speed_Shop
- @redlinederby Appreciate the thoughtful take. We're not going to move away from the blockchain side though. The entire league is designed to eventually be community owned through a DAO. That only works if the ownership infrastructure is built in from day one. If we bolt it on later it becomes exactly what everyone here is worried about, a gimmick layered on top of something that didn't need it. Building it in from the start means the transition to full community ownership is seamless. The crypto isn't an add on. It's the reason the community will eventually own 100% of the league instead of one company holding all the power forever. — Architect
- @Sals_Speed_Shop Pricing isn't something we're ready to announce yet. What I can say is that these aren't mainline Hot Wheels and they're not trying to be. Every car is custom, original, hand assembled, and serialized with a real race record attached to it. The value isn't just the physical car. It's the competition it enters, the record it builds, and the ownership that's permanent. That said it could potentially cost someone nothing to get started. We have an affiliate program where you earn real token rewards for bringing verified signups to the project. The league can't get off the ground without people buying in but buying in doesn't have to mean spending money out of pocket. If you believe in it enough to spread the word and bring people along, that's your entry point. When we're ready to reveal pricing it will make sense in context of the full package. — Architect
Hot Wheels I.D. cars, How long did that last? Don't mean to burst any bubbles but.
Watched too much $ float away, very wary on a new concept.
- Respect that. The difference is Hot Wheels iD only existed as long as Mattel kept the app running. They shut it down and the digital side was gone forever. With DAR your ownership lives on the blockchain. The car is real and sitting in a vault. Every race result is recorded permanently. None of that depends on an app or a server staying online. — Architect
Appreciate all the questions and the skepticism. That's exactly what we want.
Let me paint the full picture for everyone.
You know the feeling of ripping open a Pokemon pack or a box of sports cards. You're chasing that one pull. The holo. The rookie auto. The card that makes your hands shake a little. Now imagine instead of a card it's a real physical 1:64 scale race car. It has a rarity tier. Unique paint finish. Serialized with its own number. You own it permanently as an NFT on the blockchain. No middleman. No company can revoke it.
But here's where it gets different from anything else out there.
That car doesn't sit in a binder or on a shelf collecting dust. That Saturday night you tune into a livestream and watch your car race on a real physical track against other cars owned by other people. Real physics. Real crashes. Real outcomes nobody can predict or manipulate. Your car wins and that result gets written permanently on the blockchain. Next week it races again. And again. And again. Every single result building a history that can never be edited or erased.
Now think about what that does to value over time. A car that went undefeated through an entire season can never be replicated. That's not artificial scarcity. That's earned legacy. A car that survived a crash derby and came back to win the next week has a story no one can manufacture. Collectors don't just want rare things. They want rare things with meaning. Every car in this system earns its own meaning on the track every single week.
We're merging worlds that have never been in the same room. The dopamine of pulling a rare collectible. The intensity of live competition. The culture of diecast and scale racing. The permanence of blockchain ownership. The community of livestreaming. All of it feeding into one experience where every piece makes the other pieces more valuable.
The reveals are going to be a slow rollout because we're building for multiple audiences at once and want to make sure everyone understands what they're looking at when we show it.
Cars and track footage are coming. We plan to earn the trust not ask for it.
- I feel ya, but when I rip open a pack of cards, I have a card I can hold...and thing. I own a thing. An NFT is not a thing, it's just a digital asset...that's the hard sell here. The fantasy league aspect is not the issue. Do you have any plans to have a free aspect to the racing? Like just a pick'em or something so people can watch and play but not get invested in all the crypto stuff? It might be a way to get people engaged and educate them without fears of digital money. — redlinederby
- That's a fair point and honestly a smart suggestion. The physical side is coming. The retail vision is actual packs you rip open with multiple cars inside, rarity tiers, the whole experience. The rare pull you get has a duplicate in The Vault that enters the racing league once claimed. So you would hold your car in hand and have it competing on stream. That's the endgame. A free way to engage is something we've thought about. Letting people watch the races, follow specific cars, get invested in the storylines before they ever spend a dollar or touch a wallet. That's the kind of thing that builds real community around the racing itself. Appreciate you thinking through it with us because that feedback is exactly the kind of thing that shapes how we roll this out. The crypto isn't the product. The racing is the product. The blockchain just makes sure the ownership belongs to the people and not one company. No one can take your car, alter your record, or shut it down. It's yours permanently. — Architect
Agree with RLD here. You speak of the excitement of ripping open a blister and holding the car in our hands, except we never get to hold it ourselves. This sounds like feudalism creeping into this hobby, where we pay for everything and own nothing.
Tech bros aren't going to ruin Diecast collecting and racing for me I'm afraid. Thank you for sharing your idea and good luck with your project. I would still be interested in seeing the track you build.
- Appreciate the honesty and the interest in the track. The feudalism comparison is actually the exact problem we're designed to solve. The long-term vision includes retail packs, physical boxes you rip open with multiple cars inside, each with rarity tiers. You hold the car in your hands. But here's what makes it different: the rare pull you get from that pack has a duplicate held in The Vault, and once you claim it, that car enters the racing league with a real on-stream record tied to your NFT. You own the car, the record, and the legacy. That retail side is the future phase though. First we have to get the racing off the ground, build the track, prove the format on stream. That foundation is what makes the retail experience worth something later. Stay tuned for the track build. It's going to be something. — Architect
I looked at your website. To become an Affiliate I need to provide 2 different social media accounts as well as an email? I'm not interested in the social media sites you listed, so how would I get involved (assuming I can get past the NFT aspect)?
- Good question. The affiliate program requires social accounts mainly as bot protection, not as a barrier to entry. You can sign up with just an email at dominionapexracing.com to follow the project and stay in the loop. On the NFT hesitation, think of it less as crypto hype and more as proof of ownership. The long-term vision includes retail packs you physically open with multiple cars and rarity tiers, just like trading cards. The rare car you pull has a duplicate held in The Vault, and once you claim it, that car enters the live racing league on stream. The NFT is just the title that ties you to your car and its race history permanently. That retail phase comes later though. Right now we're focused on getting the cars racing and the league running first. We're building this for car people. The tech just makes the ownership real. — Architect
- Thanks for the answer. I did sign up on the site to follow the project, but it doesn't solve the issue of a time I would want to be an affiliate but need to provide presence on 2 social media sites. It turns me away before I even decide if I want to get involved. — StrayDog
- Appreciate you signing up. That alone keeps you in the loop for everything coming. On the affiliate side, the social account requirement is specifically bot protection. The affiliate program pays out real token rewards for every verified signup you bring in, so we have to make sure real people are earning those rewards and not bots farming the system. That's the only reason the social verification exists. Beyond that, the affiliate program is also a pre-launch campaign tool. We need real people spreading the word and building awareness before we go live, and affiliates are the ones who make that happen. Without the bot protection the entire affiliate reward pool gets drained by fake accounts and the people actually putting in work get nothing. If that ever changes or we find a better verification method we're open to it, but right now that's the gate and it's there to protect the people participating. — Architect
- What threat do bots pose to your business model? — Sals_Speed_Shop
- @Sals_Speed_Shop In the crypto and NFT space botting is one of the biggest threats to any project. People build automated systems to farm free tokens, drain affiliate pools, create fake signups, and exploit any marketing campaign that doesn't have protection in place. It's not theoretical, it happens to nearly every project that launches without safeguards. That's why the social verification exists. It's not about gatekeeping. It's about making sure every reward goes to a real person who actually put in the work. — Architect
"The tech just makes the ownership real." If physically ripping open a package is possible because there's an exact duplicate of that car in "the vault" then how is it different or better than having a car Hot Wheels made more than one of, owning two or more of those cars and mailing one in to members' races? I don't need social media accounts to do that.
I don't mean to break your balls, but it just seems over complicated
- I agree. I think the car packs and digitally owning a car in a league is a great idea, it worked for me when I did it! Folks had fun with it. I had sponsors and everything, it was a good time. But I do think the crypto blockchain stuff will scare more people away. Only those that understand it will be interested, the rest of us will avoid the complexity. — redlinederby
- Not breaking anything, these are the right questions. The difference is what happens after the car hits the track. You guys already race Hot Wheels and that's the same energy we're building on. The passion, the competition, the community. DAR isn't trying to replace that. We're trying to take that vision further with a structure that can scale globally. A league with permanent records, real prize pools, transparent ownership, and a format that brings worldwide support to what you're already doing. The blockchain isn't there to complicate things. It's there so the league and the ownership can grow beyond one platform, one company, one community. The people already racing and building in this space are exactly who this is for. We just want to give it a bigger stage. — Architect
- I don't disagree with what you're saying but adding blockchain *is* complicating things because no one knows what it is or how it works or why they should bother to deal with it. That's a tough spot because now it's up to you to not only tell people about your league but also educate them about blockchain and crypto. The value prop isn't easy to see. — redlinederby
- You're 100% right and I appreciate the honesty. The education piece is the hardest part. That's on me to solve, not the audience. If I can't make the value clear without someone needing to understand blockchain first, then I haven't done my job yet. The goal is that someone can buy a car, watch it race, and feel ownership without ever thinking about what's happening on the backend. The tech should be invisible. I'm not there yet but that's the standard I'm building toward. — Architect
alright what if it was free... with the caveat that we have to design our cars. You send whoever wants in a general spec of the car basically just a box size it has to fit in and we can shape and model the cars ourselves and we send you the cad files that you print modifying as little as possible just to make sure the car you know roles and what not then you do the races and the winner gets their car as a prize and you keep the rest this incentives "building" a fast car and it gives you a bunch of cool cars. You should never be looking to make money from this hobby if anything break even @ best and the host should be spending the most to put on the event the only cost the participants should have are whatever they choose to spend on the car and shipping both ways
- Appreciate the creative thinking. That's an interesting model and honestly not far off from how a lot of community racing leagues already operate. DAR is going a different direction though. We design every car in house because controlling the entire pipeline from concept to print to track is how we keep the racing fair and the quality consistent. If everyone is printing their own cars you introduce variables that make competitive integrity almost impossible to maintain at scale. Different printers, different resins, different tolerances, all affecting performance. That said, community involvement in car design is absolutely part of the future. We plan to hold competitions where people submit art concepts and designs, and if your design gets selected for a season or chapter you earn royalties on that car. The creative side of the community gets rewarded for contributing to what gets built. And long term the league is designed to be fully community owned through a DAO. The community will own 100% of the league eventually. We're just building the foundation right now so there's something worth owning when that happens. The host should absolutely be spending the most to put on the event and that's exactly what we're doing. We're investing in the infrastructure, the production, and the format so that what we hand over to the community one day is a real competitive league with global reach, not just a hobby project. — Architect
- Too many layers man. Now the community is designing cars? There’s so many ways this can go sideways i can’t see a way forward. It’s just cars rolling down hill — Sals_Speed_Shop
- @Sals_Speed_Shop It is just cars rolling downhill. Everything else just makes sure the right people get credit, the racing stays fair, and the whole thing can grow beyond one person's basement. Layers aren't complexity for the sake of it. They're foundation. — Architect
crypto
buying something that doesn't exist
this seems pretty grifty to me
first the "proving grounds" thread and now this one
kinda wondering here. Is this an AI written? sounds very much like it.
good luck
dr
- Read my mind. Maybe we lubricate the axles with snake oil? — Sals_Speed_Shop
- Lol....yep! — Dutch_Clutch_Racing
- @dr.dodge I use AI as a tool, same way I use a 3D printer and a slicer. I'm one guy building this whole thing solo. The cars are real, the track is real, and I'm the one doing the work. Crypto is just how ownership is tracked. Appreciate the good luck either way. — Architect
- @Sals_Speed_Shop Ha. No snake oil. Graphite maybe. — Architect
As an old guy that doesn't understand all of this crypto bit stuff there is no appeal whatsoever in a product that does not allow me to physically hold it in my hands. No disrespect meant towards your idea and I love the fact that it's something different being placed on the table, It would be a nopety nope for me. 
- Ha, I get it. But that's kind of the whole point. The cars are real, the races are real, the track is real. Crypto is just how you prove you own one. Same way a title proves you own a real car. The racing part is pure physics. Gravity, weight, wheels, track. Nothing virtual about it. — Architect
Thanks, no thanks. I'm out.
--goes back to drilling mainlines and wheel farming--
- All good. Respect the craft. If you ever get curious, the door's open. — Architect
- Now if you ever want to start selling parts, like body mods, wheel sets, undercarriages, then I may be interested. There's a few custom undercarriages i wouldn't mind getting for some vehicles, and those I would be willing to pay for someone to print out, as I do not have a 3D printer.. — SpyDude
- That's actually a big part of what we're building. Every car in DAR will be upgradeable. Body mods, wheel sets, undercarriages, the works. Each upgrade has a physical component that gets installed on your actual car in The Vault, and a digital component tied to it on-chain. So you're not just buying a static car, you're tuning and modifying it over time just like real motorsport. All those parts will be available to buy, sell, and trade within the ecosystem. Think of it like a full racing aftermarket except everything is tracked, verified, and yours to own. Now, we won't be selling parts to throw on a Hot Wheels or anything like that. These are purpose-built for DAR cars. But down the road, we'd potentially offer some prototype parts as standalone collectibles for people who just appreciate the craft. — Architect
- why say we? said above one person? — dr_dodge
- @dr_dodge Fair question. It's me. One person building this. I say "we" because the vision is bigger than one guy and it won't stay one guy forever. But right now, yeah, it's just me. I'm not hiding behind anything. — Architect
Post some track build pics and pictures of the cars?