At its peak, the game saw roughly 5,000 ETH in volume, accounting for 95% of Ethereum’s network usage.
As more outlets wrote about CryptoKitties, often lampooning the game as a ridiculous fad, more users poured into the game to see what all the hubbub was about.Īs the game became more popular and the demand for CryptoKitties increased, so did the prices– the game was soon engulfed in a speculative mania. Silly and lovable digital pictures of cats selling for thousands of dollars had palpable value for media outlets thirsty to give a raging audience interested in the perceived absurdity of the cryptocurrency boom what they wanted. Another strategy is to buy a cat on the secondary market with hopes of flipping it for a higher price to a future buyer. The trading and breeding mechanisms underpinning CryptoKitties allowed for a rudimentary path for experienced users to profit: buy a bunch of cats, breed them to make a rarer more valuable cat, sell the cat on the secondary market, and repeat. The breeding aspect of the game is an on-chain algorithm nestled within a closed-source smart contract that determines the “cattributes” (genetic code of the new cat.) Some cats with certain cattributes are valued more than others, so ensuring the randomness of breeding required an adept level of foresight. The Axiom Zen team, courtesy of the Axiom Zen Medium blog.Īs an NFT, each CryptoKitty exists on the blockchain as a unique asset using Ethereum’s ERC-721 non-fungible token standard. The first generation of cats “Generation 0” was auctioned to a small audience in a Dutch auction format, and any new cats could be sold on a secondary market.
The primitive game was built on-chain on Ethereum (a decision that proved to be chaotic for both parties).ĬryptoKitties raised a total of $23 million from top-shelf investors like a16z and Union Square Ventures. The Origin of CryptoKittiesĬryptoKitties was launched in late 2017 at an Ethereum-oriented hackathon, ETH Waterloo by Axiom Zen, the creator of CryptoKitties’ creator, the consumer-focused Flow-blockchain Dapper Labs. The following guide will explore CryptoKitties as an NFT pioneer, how the game functioned, and critical lessons learned by CryptoKitties that have benefited the entire world of NFT creators. The technology underpinning CryptoKitties, the blockchain, essentially acts as a replacement for a centralized “authenticity verification and escrow” department that accompanies most collectible auctions and marketplaces, such as eBay.
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