NFTs are blockchain-based tokens representing real-world items like artwork and music and serve as a deed of ownership of a digital item.
Currently, colorful digital art is being sold for millions of dollars with some popular NFTs, including digital artist Beeple’s artwork titled “Everydays – The First 5000 Days,” which sold for $69.3 million. Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey also sold his first tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million. A popular GIF from the Nyan Cat meme was also remastered by the original artist for its 10th anniversary as an NFT, which fetched $590,000 (300 ETH). CryptoPunk, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Art Blocks, and CryptoKitties are other trending NFTs.
CryptoKitties are actually one of the oldest and most publicized NFTs. And if you’re familiar with Pokemon cards, you won’t have much difficulty understanding them either, as CryptoKitties is kind of their digital version.
CryptoKitties
2021 was the year when non-fungible tokens exploded into popularity, and crypto adoption went mainstream. The NFT fever took over brands, companies, and celebrities alike, pushing this craze to new heights. But long before that, in October 2017 came CryptoKitties, which was launched by San Francisco and Vancouver-based design studio, Axiom Zen.
These NFTs were released as a blockchain-based game where users breed and trade digital cartoonish cats. Each cat is one-of-a-kind which cannot be replicated or destroyed. These kitties also feature “genes” that are the determining factor behind the appearance of kittens. Often, “genes” are passed along to their offering through “breeding.” Within a few weeks of its launch, CryptoKitties became a viral sensation. The project was intended to be a fun experiment, a way to introduce new users to blockchain technology in an accessible and gamified way. But they became more than that and were able to raise about $1.3 million within a few days of its release. In a matter of a few weeks, CryptoKitties’ prices were well into six figures. They got so popular at the time that they caused a congestion crisis on the Ethereum blockchain.
At its height, CryptoKitties attracted over 14,000 active players daily. Today, there are over 2 million kitties with nearly 128,690 wallets engaging with them. Overall, CryptoKitties have recorded 69.4k ETH in trading volume, according to its website. Over time, the project has also grown beyond just buying and selling these kittens and involves cracking puzzles, creating collections & earning rewards, owning limited edition fancy cats, and playing games in the KittyVerse. In 2021, amidst the NFT market resurgence, some of the oldest CryptoKitties got in hot demand. At the time, one NFT investor spent 145 ETH or more than $400,000 on two geneses CryptoKitties numbers #92 and #98.
Much of the renewed interest was focused on those NFTs that were from the original “genesis” line of CryptoKitties. These were the first 100 NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain using the ERC-721 tokens standard that became the norm last year. The second round of collection frenzy around CryptoKitties was set off by known NFT collector Pranksy, who talked on social media about purchasing a pair of the original 100 founding CryptoKitties for 100 ETH each. Following him, other NFT collectors, Punk6529 and OSF, admitted to scooping up some of the originals. Based on all-time sales volume (at $47.5 million), CryptoKitties rank 69th with more than 112,688 NFT holders, according to CryptoSlam.
How do they work?
While there are older collections such as CryptoPunks, which was launched in June 2017 by the Larva Labs studio, CryptoKitties was the first NFTs to be minted using Ethereum’s-721 token standard. In 2021, this token standard saw widespread usage. As ERC-721 tokens, CryptoKitties are unique and indivisible. While currently available only on Ethereum blockchain, CryptoKitties has announced its transition from Ethereum to Flow, the blockchain created by Dapper Labs, due to delays on the Ethereum network regarding scalability and the latter’s ability to handle more transactions with lower fees.
Back in 2017, the Ethereum network got clogged because of CryptoKitties’ high volume of transactions. In August 2021, the most popular blockchain for NFTs implemented EIP-1559 which changed Ethereum’s fee market mechanism. It was one of the most significant upgrades since the protocol’s genesis in 2015, and now it is preparing for another one called “the Merge.” “The Merge” is an upcoming event that will swap Ethereum’s current proof of work (PoW) consensus algorithm for a proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. While ETH 2.0, which aims for scalability, is on the horizon with the potential timing in Q2 or Q3 of this year, there is still uncertainty around the exact date.
In the meanwhile, several alternative layer 1s like Solana, Avalanche, and Terra have emerged, which are hailed as “Ethereum Killers.” These alternatives, which promise low cost and fast processing, also gained traction and adoption last year. Amidst this, Dapper Labs, the Axiom Zen startup, credited with popularizing the concept of NFTs with CryptoKitties, has created its own blockchain Flow. The Flow blockchain is purpose-built to support NFT collectibles and large-scale crypto games. It is designed for extensive scaling, without using sharding, to provide fast and low-cost transactions.
The blockchain uses a proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism that requires validators to stake a certain number of FLOW tokens to participate in the network. The validation, however, is split into four separate types of nodes: consensus, verification, execution, and collection. And all four participate in the validation of each transaction. Additionally, Flow features upgradeable smart contracts, allowing smart contracts to be fixed or enhanced before being made immutable.
Besides CryptoKitties, Dapper Labs is also behind another popular NFT project NBA Top Shot. Launched in 2020, NBA Top Shot further helped take crypto-collectibles into the mainstream. This project, which runs on Dapper’s bespoke Flow blockchain, has generated more than $868.5 million in trading volume to date.
How to Buy CryptoKitties NFTs?
On its first day, when about 100 CryptoKitties were created, less than $350 worth of ETH was spent on these NFTs. Today, one of these NFTs is being sold for multiples of it. The most expensive kitten today is CryptoKitties Dragon, which was sold for 600 ETH. CryptoKitty #18, one of the Founder Cats, was also among the expensive ones with 253 ETH paid by someone to acquire it. Genesis meanwhile is the rarest CryptoKitties thanks to being the very first one, which features a diamond on its belly and forehead. Born on November 22, 2017, Genesis was sold a few weeks later and hasn’t been put up for sale since then.
So, where can you buy one too?
CryptoKitties are accessible across the Ethereum ecosystem, including the platforms like Decentraland, KotoWars, and Heaven.cat. To get a CryptoKitties, you can go to an NFT marketplace and just buy one. These marketplaces are used to flip collectibles and make money trading them. For instance, to buy CryptoKitties on OpenSea, you have to go to the website and look for the NFT using the “Search” tab. As you find the CryptoKitties collection, find the one you like and click on it. This will provide you the option to ‘buy now’ or ’make offer’. Once an option is chosen, connect your wallet, make payment, and confirm. If you don’t want to buy from special NFT marketplaces, you can play the game, which will cost you to get started as you would have to first either buy a Kitty or breed two Kitties. You would also have to pay a gas fee to process the transaction on the blockchain.
To start playing with CryptoKitties, you would need a digital wallet. And while the game supports “all” digital wallets, the popular MetaMask is recommended. Once you have a wallet, fund it with some Ether. Ether (ETH) is the native currency of the Ethereum network, on which CryptoKitties is built, and it is the currency in which the gas fees and other payments are made.
On CryptoKitties’ official site, there are currently more than 160k NFTs for sale with prices as low as 0.005 ETH and extremely high as well. So, go to the marketplace, look around and find one you like. Once you’ve found the one, click on the kitten and hit the “buy now” button. A new page will open to double-check the kitty you want to purchase and if everything is in order, just click “ok.” Now, you’ll be prompted with a transaction page, just click submit, and after a couple of minutes, you will have your CryptoKitties on your profile.
There is also an option of offers instead of ‘buy now’ where players can make a bid in ETH for any kitty in the game even if they’re not for sale. It is up to the owner of the CryptoKitties to accept or decline the offer. Offers, however, expire after three days. If you want to breed a kitten, it involves a birthing fee every time you breed your Kitties. To breed two of your own Kitties, just go to your litter, click on the Kitty you want to make the father, then first click on the “Breed” button, then click on “Sire with my Kitties.” Then choose the mother for the breeding, hit OK, and let them do the rest of the work. Remember that breeding two Kitties of the same generation with birth the highest generation.
In case you want to Sire a Kitty from the Marketplace, instead of breeding two of your own Kitties, you would have to pay a Siring fee as well, which is set by Kitty’s owner. You can also Sire your CryptoKitties to the public by clicking on “breed,” which lets you create a Siring auction. You can also put them up for sale. For it, just click on your kitties, which will take you to a page where you can create a sale auction. Now see the bids come in.
Conclusion
CryptoKitties were one of the original NFTs whose historical value continues to grow to collectors. It started as a fun way to access blockchain-based games and educate the masses but has since then become extremely valuable as NFTs continue to gain mainstream adoption. A pioneer in NFTs and Ethereum gaming, CryptoKitties will continue to be more and more of value, as we advance into the virtual world and NFTs see their application beyond just collectibles and artwork to the metaverse, digital identity, financialization, streaming, and more.
The popularity of NFTs is also seeing their application in games, leading to GameFi gaining the limelight and surpassing decentralized finance (DeFi) in adoption. In fact, nearly half of active crypto wallets connected to decentralized applications (Dapp) were for playing games, while those linked to DeFi fell to 45% during the same period, according to Dapp Radar. Known for their ability to be unique, NFTs allow for provable digital ownership, and their addition to the gaming world has opened up monetization opportunities.
In NFT gaming, besides providing the opportunity to earn while playing, transparency is an important factor that will help establish trust among players who have a great distrust for big gaming companies. Ownership of in-game items is another key factor while the blockchain network takes care of the security aspect of these games. CryptoKitties allows users to have fun breeding and trading virtual cats, and as an OG blockchain game, their value continues to increase as more time passes.
