Each chunk of the game’s code (which it refers to as a “gene”) describes the attributes of a digital cat. Newer alternatives, such asĮthereum, gained popularity because they allow for complex “smart contracts”-executable code stored in the blockchain.ĬryptoKitties, if you were to say ‘blockchain,’ everyone would have assumed you’re talking about cryptocurrency”-Bryce BladonĬryptoKitties was among the first projects to harness smart contracts by attaching code to data constructs called tokens, on the Ethereum blockchain. Bitcoin, though popular as an asset and useful for money-like transactions, has limited support for doing anything else. The complexity comes in how blockchains keep the ledger stable and secure without a central authority the details of how that’s done vary among blockchains. At its core, a blockchain is a simple ledger of transactions placed one after another-not unlike a very long Excel spreadsheet. Blockchain technologyĪrguably began with a 1982 paper by the computer scientist David Chaum, but it reached mainstream attention with the success of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency created by the anonymous person or persons known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Has the world simply moved on to newer blockchain projects? Or is this the fate that awaits all NFTs?īlockchains, smart contracts, and cat genesĬryptoKitties, you have to start at the beginning. “The Merge,” a piece of digital art that sold for the equivalent of $92 million, left Dragon behind as the NFT market surged to record sales, totaling roughly $18 billion in 2021. But the sky-high transaction obscured a more difficult truth: CryptoKitties was dying, and it had been for some time.ĭragon was never resold-a strange fate for one of the most historically relevant NFTs ever.

And it was a headline-grabbing opportunity forĬryptoKitties, the world’s first blockchain gaming hit. It was by far the highest transaction yet for a nonfungible token (NFT), the then-new concept of a unique digital asset. On 4 September 2018, someone known only as Rabono bought an angry cartoon cat named Dragon for 600 ether-an amount of Ethereum cryptocurrency worth about US $170,000 at the time, or $745,000 at the cryptocurrency’s value in July 2022.

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