TLDR: Cryptokitty Artwork is now live! Check out the collaboration between Dada.NYC and KittyHats through the KittyHats chrome extension😺

Why is it so much fun to play CryptoKitties? Why do those colorful little digital images resonate so profoundly? What drives a person to acquire ether, install MetaMask, and purchase a Gen 0?

The explanation for why humans choose to endure the challenges of this new technological ordeal lies buried in the furthest reaches of our history. For thousands of generations, our ancestors faced a incessant, unrelenting problem: scarcity. There’s never enough food to go around. When scarcity is your enemy, it feels good to acquire things. Our core nature has been shaped by the experience of our distant ancestors. The problem of scarcity has been substantially solved in the modern world, but the act of collecting still produces a vestigial endorphin response.

Consider for a moment our digital lives. In no other realm have we made such a complete victory against the enemy of scarcity. If a piece of information is scarce, I can duplicate with practically no effort, for negligible resources. In the digital world, the cost of beating that old rival rounds down to free.

However, duplicating information is not quite as good as duplicating tangible items because duplicated information can’t be owned in the same way that tangibles can. The first person to produce a copy of a spear was probably able to trade it for a heaping pile of mammoth meat. Or at least a few dozen clams. But a copy of a digital image usually doesn’t sell for a hill of beans. If ownership is merely about use or possession, then why is it so hard to find buyers for digital images? Others can still use and enjoy the duplicated image, much like a person could make use of the duplicate spear. So what explains the disparity? The difference lies in an often underestimated feature of ownership: the right to exclude.

Art owning art

When you own a toy, you get to play with it and that’s good. But you also get to prevent your brother from playing with it, which is great. The right to exclude, paired with a finite supply, results in scarcity. And wherever there’s scarcity, you’ll find happy humans collecting feverishly and hoarding whatever they acquire. So how do we create scarcity in the digital world? Blockchain.

Bitcoin uses blockchain tech to create scarcity in a distributed digital ledger by allowing its users to trustlessly exclude others from their piece of it. It’s kind of like a spreadsheet with 21 million spaces. If you pay for the privilege of writing your pseudonym on one of those spaces, you get to exclude others from it. And what’s more, the rest of the bitcoin community will agree to respect your rights as reflected on that ledger.

Ethereum expands on the ideas pioneered by bitcoin by allowing for true, full ownership of a much broader range of provably scarce digital property. Ethereum allows for trustless, distributed ownership of programs, libraries, and fungible tokens like REP and OMG.

The creative minds and technical experts at Dada.nyc used Ethereum to issue a series of limited edition runs of original artworks. Just as a photographer might create 70 prints from a single negative and sign them to prove their authenticity, the team at Dada creates a finite number of tokens from a single original artwork and uses Ethereum to prove their authenticity. When you buy a piece of Dada art and receive the corresponding token, you own a provably rare digital asset.

Sure, an impoverished enthusiast might make a digital copy of the image and set it as her desktop, but without the token, she doesn’t own an original. She can’t sell the image, because the image itself is not rare. It’s the token that’s rare. The Ethereum community has agreed to treat ownership of the token, not simple possession of the image, as a marker of property rights. Everyone gets to use and enjoy the image — that’s just the nature of the internet. But the token gives the holder a right to exclude others from asserting ownership and in turn, a right to the profits that result from the asset’s appreciation.

Each token produced from a single Dada original is identical. But Ethereum also enables the creation of a new type of nonfungible digital collectible. The supply of CryptoKitties is not just limited to a given supply. Each Kitty is unique. It’s got its own genetics, expresses its own visible cattributes, and can be identified on the blockchain by a unique ID. When you buy a CryptoKitty, you’re not just getting one of 70. You’re getting the only one. We like playing CryptoKitties because we like collecting scarce things. CryptoKitties showed the world what was possible: they gave us the ERC721 standard, demonstrated that real economics were achievable in the cryptocollectibles market, and set a UX standard for the rest of the industry to aspire to.

Here at KittyHats, we’re building on the CryptoKitties platform. We create ERC20-backed kitty fashion accessories that you can buy, trade, and apply to your kitties. Because CryptoKitties ownership records are publicly visible on the blockchain, we were able to build a value-adding system that operates on top CryptoKitties without permission from the CryptoKitties team.

KittyHats behave a lot like real-world stickers. Once a KittyHats sticker has been applied to a CryptoKitty, it stays with that kitty until the owner of the kitty decides to remove it. The sticker stays with the kitty through sales and through time, but when the owner decides to remove it, it’s gone for good. Each item is controlled by its own smart contract and a marketplace at 0xfc9ec868f4c8c586d1bb7586870908cca53d5f38 handles sales. A clever chrome extension injects the KittyHats experience straight into the main CryptoKitties site.

After meeting the Dada.nyc team at the first Rare Digital Art Festival, we had an idea. If a kitty can have a hat, why can’t it have a painting? So, we decided to collaborate with Dada.nyc on a project that allows users to purchase original Dada art through the KittyHats marketplace. We’re proud to announce the release of 21 limited edition Dada artworks. It’s a series that you can’t yet find for sale anywhere else. Right now, you can find them for sale only in the KittyHats marketplace. Access the marketplace by downloading our Chrome Extension or visiting our site at www.KittyHats.co.

When you buy a Dada artwork through the KittyHats marketplace, you’re purchasing an ERC-20 token that gives you ownership of that piece of art. You can hold the token, trade it, give it to a friend, or apply it to a kitty. When you apply it to a kitty, the token binds to the kitty and the corresponding painting becomes visible. Then, you can view your painting any time you check on your litter at CryptoKitties.co, send the painting-possessing-kitty to you mom as a gift, or put the kitty up for auction. Kitties with hats sell for more than their plain peers. Kitties with paintings will, too. In the words of Iris Apfel, “More is more and less is a bore.”

The series includes works inspired by some of the greatest artworks humanity has ever created. You’ll find vibrant echos of Michelangelo, Boticelli, and a familiar (yet mysterious) smile. You’ll see unexpected shades bringing fresh life to American Gothic, Whistler’s Mother, and Las Meninas. Rembrandt purists might be shocked at the anatomy lesson we’re offering, but fans of Frida and Degas will find much to love. And it turns out that the motifs of Van Gogh and Dali can get weirder, despite our intuitions.

This Dali Crpytokitty is finally complete

When you buy one of these revived masterpieces, you become a patron of the living, breathing artist that created the painting on Dada.nyc. In fact, our smart contracts automatically split out the revenue.

The prices range from .02 ETH to .1 ETH (about $14 to $70 at current rates) and the circulating supply of each painting ranges from 5 to 40. We’ve saved 5 or 10 of each for our own enjoyment and to share with our collaborators. The supply is capped, and since the owner can destroy a sticker by removing it from a kitty, they’ll only ever become more scarce. When they’re gone, they’re truly gone. Buy them while you can; you won’t get another chance.

Thanks to Dada.nyc for giving us permission to use their evocative, moving, original works (and for providing endless technical and creative support). Thanks to the artists who chose to create original pieces on Dada.nyc, a community where people speak to each other through drawings. Thanks to the CryptoKitties team for building on a platform that allows for rich, robust, permissionless collaboration. And thanks to all the users who have recognized the power of scarcity, battled through various buggy interfaces, and adopted the technology of the future. From the whole team at KittyHats, our co-conspirators at Dada, and our friends at CryptoKitties: thanks for playing!

https://dada.nyc/home Check out the Dada.NYC site to learn more about their pioneering role in the blockchain art world!

https://discord.gg/zvdpC23 Come Hang with KittyHats on Discord!

https://twitter.com/KittyHats_CK ! Follow KittyHats on Twitter for a steady stream of luxurious cats.