Collectible. Breedable. Adorable.
CryptoKitties, Launching November 28th on the Ethereum Main Net
CryptoKitties will be launching today, the collector in you just found a new way to engage with the blockchain and feed your crypto and collecting obsessions in one go. I had a chance to send the community manager a few questions and he was gracious enough to send me lots of info about the project, you can find some of the questions and answers down below, enjoy!
I had a chance to test out CryptoKitties earlier in the month when the project was in Alpha testing on the Rinkeby Test Net. It was fun, I had missed the initial release of kitties so I had no cats to breed in order to create my own kitties, but the community was quick to help out and after asking if anyone could spare a kitty I was gifted a handful,..or two, of cats. Have to say, a very friendly and supportive community, really got the sense everyone was excited to see this project take off and wanted to see more and more people get involved at the initial stages. Kudos!
After obsessively breeding the few cats i had, my collection of kitties had grown immensely! Here's a peek at a few of them,...that's a lot of breeding!
Based on my experience with the Alpha test I'm excited to participate in the live event and see where this project goes. I have to say this could be a great way for people who are curious about crypto and the blockchain to take their first steps. You'll need to buy some ETH, create a wallet and MetaMask account which are all standard things anyone interested in crypto should get around to doing at some point. This should also help draw a younger audience into crypto and serve as an introduction for them. Wishing the Team and community all the best with their live launch!
Interview with CryptoKitties CM
What inspired the Team to create CryptoKitties?
We created CryptoKitties as a way to counteract the news coming out of the crypto community. Especially around ICOs and some of the scammers involved. Blockchain as a technology is incredible and has so many great use cases however, it seems like everyone is invested (literally) in get rich schemes and barely anyone is building functional usable dapps for the general public to use. Firm believer that we need to invest as much time in development and empowering the community with tools so that they can create a sustainable ecosystem. Otherwise everyone will just hodl their coins and never use it for anything useful. Though I should highlight that there are a ton of legit projects aimed to solve big problems, the only issue is the roadmaps are quite far aways. Some of them are multi-year promises and could very well fail or implode by that time. All of that gave us the fuel to build CK with the premise of exposing the rest of the world to the world of blockchain and get even our grandma’s to interact with a smart contract (and from my knowledge no one is doing this).
Without revealing too many secrets, from a tech standpoint what is the Team looking to achieve with this project?
Our team has contributed to Ethereum by establishing the fundamentals of an ERC 721 token ethereum/EIPs#721 technically we want to be able to create a non-fungible token that is unique and indivisible. We took some core learnings from Rare Pepe, CryptoPunks, etc and wanted to push it to a whole new level. Collectibles are a fairly new category within the blockchain space but felt more of an experiment at this point. We think a combination UI and gamification will be able to make these collectibles a more enticing game to play.
What can you tell us about the “genes” or genetic traits behind the kitties? Are some traits more rare than others?
There are over 4 billion possible variations just from breeding. We will be releasing a fixed number of gen 0 kitties a week for a limited time. Any succeeding generations (gen 1, 2, 3, etc) can only be achieved via breeding. There are certainly a ton of surprises in the genetic model that we created. We ran a ton of simulations in order to ensure that the probabilities are extremely difficult (thus more worth it). The alpha was a encapsulated test with only a small percentage of the genes released along with no cool down. In the real game, cool downs for siring kitties will be exponential so players can’t breed 100 kitties in just one sitting. This is crucial in ensuring the scarcity of rare kitties and making it a long-lasting experience for players. When you get a rare kitty you will be over the moon! Not only that, these would be worth $$
CryptoKitties are scheduled to arrive on Nov 28th? How will people be able to get their hands on a kitty or two?
We are scheduled to launch on Nov 28th. Kitties will be availible on the main site for purchase, it will be a zero reserve auction. Meaning all the kitties will start off with a price of $0.00 and players can bid on the ones they want. Every week there will be a set amount of new gen 0 kitties released with new genes added in, so players who purchase kitties the first week will have an entirely genetic makeup vs ones bought 3 months later.
Connect with the Team.
This group is very approachable and the community is friendly so feel free to engage with them through Gitter, Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook. I'm sure they would be pumped to hear from you!Woke up this morning and found this message from CryptoKitties in my inbox, check it out;
Ciao for now
So exciting! :)
Cats dislike citrus scent.
Wow, do you have a spare kitty for me?
So how exactly does this work? Is it a really elaborate blockchain Tamagotchi? Is it there any luck involved?
Seems promising, as a cat person I gotta say that I'm intruieged