CryptoKitties, the massively popular Ethereum-based digital kitten breeding app and collectibles marketplace, has surpassed major decentralized cryptocurrency exchange EtherDelta to become the largest decentralized application (dapp) on the Ethereum protocol by gas consumption.

According to ETH Gas Station, the CryptoKitties Ethereum smart contract accounted for 13.94 percent of Ethereum’s transaction volume over the last 1,500 blocks, surpassing non-custodial cryptocurrency exchanges EtherDelta and ShapeShift.

Reason behind the success of CryptoKitties

CryptoKitties allows anyone within the Ethereum network to purchase or sell breedable cartoon kittens. The decentralized structure of the Ethereum network disallows the alteration of ownership or production of fraudulent kittens, providing value to the kittens as collectibles with scarcity and rarity.

ProductHunt founder Ryan Hoover explained that CryptoKitties is essentially the first Ethereum-based decentralized Pokemon-like game, in which users can collect and breed digital kittens. The key difference between CryptoKitties and other games like Pokemon and Tamagotchi is that through a decentralized marketplace, users can purchase or sell breedable kittens with Ether.

As shown by Crypto Kitty Sales, three of the rarest and expensive digital kittens on CryptoKitties were sold for $114,573, $81,549, and $69,600 respectively, amounting more than 572 Ether.

The CryptoKitties dapp gained popularity amongst Ethereum users and members of the global cryptocurrency community primarily due to its unique model and its strategy. The CryptoKitties development team noted that the platform was created for everyone in the cryptocurrency sector, and it is not limited or exclusive to a handful of users and organizations.

“The future is exciting. And we believe that Blockchain is the future—but Blockchain is about as approachable as a bunch of ones and zeroes. We want a future for everyone, not one exclusive to Bitcoin miners, VCs, ICOs, and other equally fun acronyms,” said the CryptoKitties team.

Is CryptoKitties sustainable?

Techcrunch reported that $1.3 mln worth of cartoon kittens on the dapp have been traded. Users have spent more than a million dollars on purchasing cartoon kittens on the platform over the past few weeks. The growth rate of the CryptoKitties platform has increased to a point in which it had led to an Ethereum network congestion.

“Due to network congestion, we are increasing the birthing fee from 0.001 ETH to 0.002 ETH. This will ensure your kittens are born on time! The extra is needed to incentivize miners to add birthing txs to the chain. Long-term solution will be explored very soon,” said CryptoKitties on Dec. 4.

As Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam stated, Ethereum-based dapps like EtherDelta have the potential to target and penetrate a multi-trillion dollar industry in the long-term, given that Ethereum’s scaling issues can be solved within the next few years. The cryptocurrency exchange market alone is already a multi-billion dollar industry. Soon, Ethereum-based exchange protocols will be able to provide infrastructures to compete with leading financial institutions in the global market.

In contrast to such ambitious projects, dapps like CryptoKitties serve a much smaller purpose, to simply entertain the cryptocurrency community with a collectibles-based game. But, CryptoKitties has utilized the Ethereum Blockchain network to create the first successful decentralized game, and in the long-term, developers in the traditional gaming industry could explore and evaluate the success story of CryptoKitties.