A digital cat collection game that runs on the Ethereum blockchain might just be the hottest property in crypto. Crypto Kitties, a simple distributed app (dapp) that allows users to buy, trade, and breed virtual cats, is in the middle of a viral explosion. In the past 24 hours alone, users have spent nearly $3 million on the game, and the rarest cats are fetching remarkable prices: five cats have already sold for more than $50,000, and one broke the $100,000 barrier.
In fact, Crypto Kitties is now the top transaction generator on the Ethereum blockchain, accounting for more than 10% of the network’s total transactions (as of this writing). It has become popular enough that the developers have been forced to raise the cat “birthing fee” repeatedly in an attempt to stem the tide:
🔥🔥🔥 DUE TO CONGESTION ON THE NETWORK WE ARE INCREASING THE BIRTHING FEE FROM 0.002 ETH –> 0.015 ETH. WE HOPE THIS WILL ALLOW MORE KITTENS TO BE BORN ON TIME AS THERE HAVE BEEN SIGNIFICANT DELAYS 🔥🔥🔥
DETAILS: https://t.co/dCXyDIrT1f
— CryptoKitties (@CryptoKitties) December 4, 2017
Even that may not be enough. As of this writing, users are still complaining about congestion, and thousands of dollars in Ether are still pouring into the dapp each minute.
Is this for real?
It would be easy to dismiss Crypto Kitties as a silly fad – and it could prove to be just that – but the game has the potential to be a mainstream breakout moment for the cryptocurrency community. Yes, it’s a game about trading cat pictures, but no less an authority than the New York Times once called cat pictures an “essential building block of the internet.” And Crypto Kitties has a lot going for it that could help it appeal to mainstream internet users in a way that most esoteric cryptocurrency projects simply can’t. Consider:
* It’s simple. The game allows you to buy, sell, and breed cats. That’s about it. You don’t need to read a 40-page white paper to grasp the basic concept.
* There’s a low barrier of entry. All you need to play Crypto Kitties is Metamask (an easy-to-install Firefox and Chrome extension) and some Ether, which anybody with a credit card can purchase in minutes via Coinbase.
* The cats are cute. The internet loves cats, and similar “virtual pet” games like Neopets have proved immensely popular.
Whether Crypto Kitties can continue on its current trajectory is an open question – its developers will have to find a way to quickly reduce congestion and delays on the network if they want to maintain the dapp’s frenetic growth pace. But it has the potential to be Ether’s first real “killer dapp”, and if it drives more mainstream adoption of Ether, in the long run these silly kitties are likely to be a boon to everybody operating a distributed app on the Ethereum blockchain.
