Marketed as the first game built on the Ethereum blockchain, CryptoKitties went viral upon launch in 2017 and laid the groundwork for today’s maturing GameFi ecosystems. However, despite initial success, the game struggled with longevity, with players hit by high gas fees and unpredictable markets. Now, in 2024 CryptoKitties is back with a Telegram-based offering. Here’s everything you need to know about the history of CryptoKitties and the project’s value, significance, and potential future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
➤ CryptoKitties allows players to buy, sell, breed, and trade unique virtual cats represented as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, with rare cats fetching high prices based on their Cattributes, Mewtations, and generations.
➤ Due to scalability issues on Ethereum, such as high gas fees and network congestion, CryptoKitties is migrating to the Flow blockchain to improve transaction speeds and reduce costs.
➤ The “All The Zen” mini-game on Telegram offers a glimpse of the revamped ecosystem with egg-based mechanics, paving the way for its full launch on Flow, expanded gameplay, and a focus on community interaction.
What are CryptoKitties?
CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based game in which players collect, trade, and breed virtual cats, each represented as a non-fungible token (NFT) on the Ethereum blockchain.
Every CryptoKitty has unique attributes — called Cattributes — that influence its rarity and value. As a pioneer of NFT gaming, CryptoKitties introduced the ERC-721 token standard, ensuring that each digital collectible is unique and cannot be replicated or divided.
Did you know? In 2017, CryptoKitties became so popular that it clogged the Ethereum network, causing transaction delays and high gas fees. At its peak, 25% of all Ethereum transactions were related to CryptoKitties, demonstrating both the game’s success and the scalability challenges of early blockchain networks.
This decentralized game allows users to fully own their virtual pets, with transactions and ownership securely managed through smart contracts.
How does CryptoKitties work?
The CryptoKitties gameplay involves buying, breeding, and selling virtual cats. Each cat is represented by an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain, giving players full ownership. The goal is to collect or breed rare and valuable cats with unique Cattributes — traits like fur color, eye shape, or whisker type.
Besides Cattributes, other gameplay mechanics are involved. These include Mewtations, Purrstige traits, and more, all of which add layers of strategy to keep players engaged.
Each cat has its rarity, which influences both its market value and utility within the game.
Understanding kitty types and generations
Before delving deeper into the game, it is important we take a closer look at some kitty types and associated elements:
Gen 0 CryptoKitties: These are the earliest kitties released between Nov. 23, 2017, and Dec. 1, 2018. Due to their limited supply, they are highly valuable and rare.
Fancy Cats: These have unique designs and are created by achieving specific genetic combinations. Despite their visual uniqueness, they may not have rare underlying Cattributes.
Purrstige traits: Purrstige traits are exclusive features introduced through selective breeding. These traits boost the value of kitties with consistent gameplay strategies and have their own floor price.
Jargon buster: A floor price, when talking about NFTs, refers to the lowest price for any NFT in a given collection.
Making sense of kitty genes
Each kitty is a blend of genes that determine its appearance and traits. As mentioned earlier, players aim to breed cats with desirable Cattributes — combinations of traits like fur, color, and whiskers.
The genes follow a hierarchy (P, H1, H2, H3) to determine which ones get passed down, with mutations (Mewtations) introducing brand-new traits, adding unpredictability to breeding results.
Did you know? CryptoKitties introduced a siring feature, allowing players to breed their cat with another player’s cat for a fee. This unique mechanic encourages collaboration while expanding the genetic pool for rarer combinations.
Also, it is important to mention that lower-generation kitties are more valuable since they can breed more frequently. However, every breeding triggers a cooldown period, limiting how soon a cat can breed again. This mechanic ensures balanced gameplay.
The token involvement
Players can convert their CryptoKitties into WCK tokens for trading flexibility. This creates arbitrage opportunities, where players swap between WCK and CryptoKitties to maximize profits based on market fluctuations.
Understanding the Kittyverse
The KittyVerse is an extended ecosystem within the CryptoKitties universe, where players can enjoy community-built games, experiences, and customization tools using their CryptoKitties. This decentralized platform allows developers to create new games, such as KittyBattles and KittyHats, offering actionable experiences for users to engage with their digital cats beyond simple breeding and trading.
All of that covers almost every aspect of CryptoKitties.
Fact check: Only 50,000 Gen 0 kitties were ever minted, and they act as the genetic backbone for the entire game. These kitties cannot be reproduced, making them particularly sought after among collectors and investors.
What makes CryptoKitties valuable?
CryptoKitties hold value primarily due to their rarity, traits, and historical significance in the blockchain gaming space. Several factors influence the market value of these NFTs, with the interplay between generations, traits, and external market conditions driving price fluctuations.
The floor price of CryptoKitties has experienced significant highs and lows since its launch. At its peak, some individual kitties sold for over 600 ETH — notably, the Dragon CryptoKitty for about $170,000 in 2018.
During that period, CryptoKitties’ popularity surged, but market demand and Ethereum’s scalability issues caused significant fluctuations in floor prices. For example, the average floor price peaked at 1.17 ETH in early 2018 but dropped to around 0.4 ETH later as interest in the game waned.
Other profit-making opportunities
CryptoKitties offers several ways for players to generate profits, though each strategy requires understanding market trends and the unique dynamics of the game. Below are the primary profit opportunities available:
Siring auctions: Renting out your Kitties
Players can rent their male cats (sires) for breeding through public auctions. This process allows other players to pay a fee in ETH to breed their female cat (dame) with the rented sire.
The owner of the sire earns the breeding fee each time it is used in an auction. Siring becomes especially profitable if the male cat possesses rare Cattributes or low-generation genes, as players are willing to pay more for these qualities to increase the value of their offspring.
Example: A sire with rare traits, such as a Gen 0 kitty, might fetch higher siring fees since its genetic traits will pass down to the offspring, making them more desirable in the marketplace.
Arbitrage with Wrapped Kitties (WCK)
Wrapped Kitties (WCK) tokens represent CryptoKitties on other decentralized platforms. This tokenization allows players to trade CryptoKitties better and take advantage of arbitrage opportunities. When there is a price discrepancy between the WCK token value and CryptoKitty prices on platforms like OpenSea, players can buy low on one platform, convert their asset into WCK, and sell high on another.
Example: If the value of a CryptoKitty drops on OpenSea but remains high in WCK, players can acquire the discounted kitty, wrap it into a WCK token, and sell it for a higher profit on a decentralized exchange.
Breeding rare kitties for resale
Breeding two high-value kitties can produce offspring with rare traits or mutations (Mewtations) that command higher prices. If the offspring inherits rare Cattributes or becomes a Fancy or Purrstige Kitty, its value increases substantially.
The goal is to breed and sell these rare cats in the marketplace before similar traits become common through subsequent breeding.
Participating in limited-edition events and auctions
CryptoKitties occasionally launches limited-edition kitties or events like the Kitty Cup, which reward players with exclusive breeding opportunities.
These events create demand spikes for certain traits, enabling players to breed or sell kitties at inflated prices during the event period.
Example: Players who anticipate these events and collect relevant traits beforehand can benefit from short-term price surges as other players scramble to acquire the necessary kitties for breeding challenges.
The CryptoKitties marketplace and ERC-721 token standard
The CryptoKitties marketplace operates on OpenSea, a primary platform for trading NFTs, leveraging the ERC-721 token standard. This standard, initially pioneered by CryptoKitties, formalized the concept of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), allowing each digital asset to be unique and indivisible.
With newer NFT standards like ERC-1155 gaining traction, the ERC-721-backed CryptoKitties maintain their relevance as cultural artifacts in the NFT space.
Do note that before ERC-1155, sending multiple NFTs required separate transactions for each item, which significantly increased gas fees.
ERC-1155 now allows bulk transfers and simplifies asset management, becoming the go-to standard for gaming platforms and marketplaces seeking more scalability and flexibility.
Did you know? CryptoKitties occasionally featured in OpenSea’s curated events. These campaigns foster re-engagement and help older collections stay visible amidst competition from newer NFT projects.
Challenges: Scalability, gas fees, and market dynamics
CryptoKitties, being one of the first blockchain-based games, highlighted several scalability challenges faced by applications running on Ethereum. Some of the key issues include:
- Network congestion: At its peak, CryptoKitties consumed 25% of Ethereum’s network, causing severe delays.
- High gas fees: As transaction volume surged, gas fees became prohibitively expensive for small trades.
- Low throughput: Ethereum’s early infrastructure allowed only 15 transactions per second, slowing down gameplay.
- Market shifts: Frustrated by delays and fees, users began migrating to more efficient games like Axie Infinity.
All of these issues totaled to CryptoKitties, despite remaining operational, essentially fading in relevance by 2022. As put in one research paper examining the rise and fall of the blockchain-based game:
A large number of players poured in during the 10th and 18th days since the game release and quickly exited in the following month. Since then, a few big players have gradually dominated the game, concentrating the game resources.
Through further analysis, we find that the main reason for the rapid increase in the game popularity was the increase of public attention by media outlets, while the reasons for the rapid decline in the game popularity include the oversupply of kitties, the decreasing of player income, a widening gap between the rich and poor players, and the limitations of blockchain systems.
CryptoKitties Transaction Network Analysis: The Rise and Fall of the First Blockchain Game Mania: Published in Frontiers in Physics via Research Gate
CryptoKitties: The Telegram game
In October 2024, CryptoKitties announced a Telegram-based game titled “All The Zen.” This marked the brand’s first major product release since its 2017 debut.
Designed as a “play-to-eggdrop” Cryptokitties game, the Telegram version serves as a sneak peek into the larger Flow blockchain relaunch, promising enhanced features like interoperability and animated Kitties.
Why the shift to Telegram?
Telegram provides a platform with low barriers to entry and broad community engagement, enabling CryptoKitties to attract a new audience while also reconnecting with its original fans.
The simplicity of the messaging platform allows casual users to participate without the complexities of blockchain onboarding. This move also aligns with the recent surge in Telegram gaming popularity, following in the footsteps of viral web3 clicker games such as Hamster Kombat and Catizen.
How All The Zen works
The “All The Zen” game on Telegram focuses on “egg drop” mechanics, where players can collect eggs that eventually hatch into Kitties. Players earn rewards, trade, or hatch eggs over time, leading to the possibility of unlocking limited-edition Kitties. This approach ensures continued player interaction and introduces gamified rewards, keeping the gameplay fresh until the full relaunch on Flow.
Did you know? This mini-game also represents a shift from Ethereum to the Flow blockchain.
What’s next for CryptoKitties?
While the original CryptoKitties game was groundbreaking back in 2017, high gas fees on the Ethereum network led many players losing out on profits. Players had to time their transactions during periods of low network activity to avoid excessive fees.
In 2024, CryptoKitties is integrating its future gameplay seamlessly with Flow’s ecosystem, offering interoperability with other NFT-based projects. Community events, new collectibles, and potential airdrops tied to the Telegram game hint at a more engaging future. With this multi-platform strategy, CryptoKitties may be able reclaim its relevance in the growing world of blockchain gaming.
Frequently asked questions
How do CryptoKitties work?
Why is CryptoKitties moving to the Flow blockchain?
What is the purpose of the Telegram game “All The Zen”?
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