Cute cats have almost become synonymous with the internet as a whole. To that effect, a lot of developers have embraced various platforms that make use of man's feline friend in their interface.
Image Source : https://www.cryptokitties.co/
What is CryptoKitties?
One of such venture is CryptoKitties – a blockchain-based game that gives you the opportunity to breed, collect and hold on to kittens that are created over the Ethereum blockchain. These digital feline animals (or cryptokitties) are no unlike humans. They are unique, they cannot be counterfeited, they cannot be taken away or even destroyed by anybody. You can as well refer to these cryptokitties as a form of collectibles called “cryptocollectibles”.
How It Works
As we've already mentioned, these cryptokitties are cryptocollectibles that you can trade, sell, buy and collect – just like traditional collectibles. Unlike traditional collectibles, though, the unique thing here is that you can breed this form of cryptocollectibles. What you will get is a totally new and unique offspring – almost exactly like humans.
Additionally, the ownership of these cryptokitties is securely tracked on the blockchain platform. What this means is that you do not need to worry about ownership or the issue of fraud because everything is logged on Ethereum's transparent blockchain.
Requirements Needed To Play Cryptokitties
I know that you're excited to play this game. I wouldn't blame you, because I was excited too. But before you start to enjoy this game, there are certain prerequisites that are needed to play the game.
Here's what you need to start playing:
- A laptop or computer that has the desktop version of Firefox or Chrome.
- MetaMask. This is Ethereum's digital wallet that is specifically used with web apps.
- Ether – a form of digital payment capable of powering CryptoKitties.
Start CryptoKitties
You are good to go as soon as you have installed MetaMask on your browser and saved its seed phrase.
- After this, you need to transfer ETH (Ether) to the address of your MetaMask wallet.
- If you already own Ether, that's good. If you don't, you can buy from a trusted source.
- Transfer your Ether tokens to your MetaMask wallet.
Once you've done all these, you can start the CryptoKitties game.
Play CryptoKitties
This game isn't free and before you can play it, you are expected to pay in terms of Ether tokens. To start playing CryptoKitties, you can buy and sell existing kitties or breed with another kitty to create a new and unique kitty.
A) Buying & Selling
After logging in to MetaMask and moving to the marketplace, you will see a sale of kitties. Here, you can then decide to purchase one of the kitties. If you don't fancy buying here, there is another option available. In the ‘Gen 0’ section, the team at CryptoKitties releases a new ‘Gen 0’ kitty after every fifteen minutes. This will last until November 2018.
B) Breeding
You can also decide to breed one of your current kitties with another one if you want a new offspring.
- Go to “My Kitties”.
- Choose the Kitty who will act as the Dad.
- Click on the breeding button.
- Select one of your other kitties to act as the mother.
- Approve the Ether transaction.
This new offspring can then be kept or sold in the marketplace at a price of your choosing. This breeding process isn't free, however, and you will need to pay a fee of 0.3028 Ether.
Conclusion
CryptoKitties might not actually have the high ambitions of a lot of other cryptocurrency projects, but with the decision to devise a fun mechanism, it may come the closest to reaching those heights.