People are so busy buying and breeding virtual cats on Ethereum blockchain

Have you already gotten bored mining digital currency and trading tokens? Well, there’s another weird but creative way for you to use the blockchain technology, buying virtual cats. There’s a new game called CryptoKitties on the Ethereum blockchain, which lets you buy, sell and breed a huge array of DNA-unique virtual cats with your digital money.

Developed by Axiom Zen, CryptoKitties is the first game built on blockchain technology. It is basically a 2017 version of Neopets, but unlike it, your pets aren’t going anywhere; they will live forever on the Etheruem blockchain. It’s more like a humorous approach to introduce the blockchain technology and transactions to the casual users.

“Our approach to brand and marketing is, in part, a tongue-in-cheek critique of the ICO market today,” said marketing director Elsa Wilk in a press release.

It seems the trick has worked successfully. Launched just a few days ago, the game has already at the top of the Ethereum network, according to ETH Gas Station.

How to start?

First of all, you’ll need a computer with a Chrome browser, the MetaMask wallet app, and some Ethereum to purchase your first cat. Each cat is one-of-a-kind and solely owned by you. You can breed two of cats and produce another cat, which is also unique.

How does CryptoKitties work?

Each of these cats is considered as a unique object or “token” on the Ethereum blockchain. Each of them is coded with a 256-bit genome that comprises a set of genotypes (genetic features) and phenotypes (visible features). When you breed two of your virtual cats, the appearance, biography, and traits of the newborn are the resulting combination of each of its parent’s attributes, which comes in four billion possible variations.

You may wonder why you would spend your hard earned cash on buying some virtual cats. Well, spending money to purchase any virtual stuff in games is nothing new. And benefits we are offered by blockchain are numerous, so why not use it in games? After all, you get to breed two unique virtual cats to produce a brand new offspring, which is genetically unique as well. As the website says, “It results in something special—just like you!”