The success of CryptoKitties is tied to our community

Our community has been our best source of feedback and direction since CryptoKitties was a twinkle in our founding team’s eyes.

Our alpha launch at ETHWaterloo helped introduce us to the two extremes of our audience: people completely new to crypto, and power users with incredible insights. Both provided crucial feedback that ultimately shaped CryptoKitties as you know it. And if it weren’t for the efforts of the Bug Hunting team, hackers might be able to predict and re-roll the birth algorithm until they got exactly the cat they wanted!

The power of our community is why we were running community events before we launched a product; it’s why we nurtured alpha participants into beta users who remain active community members today; and it’s why we’re so pleased to announce that our most active community members are joining the team!

Welcoming Alan Carr of KittyCalc.co

Alan Carr #nofilter

You may not know the name Alan Carr, but you probably have heard of @Alanfalcon, and you’ve for sure heard of KittyCalc.co, the breeding calculator he helped create!

When Alan visited our offices — officially, to share his ideas, but unofficially, to see if he merited hiring (spoiler alert: he did!) — he proved to have such a deep knowledge of our genetic algorithm that CryptoKitties co-founder, technical architect, and Axiom Zen’s Director of Blockchain Technology was genuinely floored he didn’t have reference material on hand.

Alan’s joining CryptoKitties as a Product Designer.

Welcoming Jordan Castro of KittyCalc.co

Jordan’s sunglasses betray his selfie game.

Jordan Castro worked with Alan to make the KittyCalc.co. He also streams CryptoKitties and hosted the longest running CryptoKitties’ giveaway.

Jordan is better known by his alias, Poopie.cat. You can see why we didn’t lead with this fun fact.

When Jordan visited our offices with Alan, he offered kind-but-critical feedback for how we could do better, outlining numerous ideas and actionable steps for implementing them.

Jordan is joining the team as Community Lead, providing support and tools for creators like him.

Welcoming Ralf, mod turned Community Manager

Ralf is better known in the community by his alias, Derpybastard. The alias is misleading: Ralf moderated our subreddit and set up the Discord community with kindness and grace.

Ralf makes sure community concerns are addressed, users get the support they need, and feature suggestions make their way to developers — all while collecting community feedback, arranging to get it addressed, and doing it all with a positive attitude.

When we needed a full-time Community Manager, we didn’t have to think twice about having Ralf officially join the team.

We’re also working with Jody Henrie of CryptoKitties411

[witty text goes here]

Jody Henrie founded the most popular and extensive CryptoKitties fan site with CryptoKitties411.

CryptoKitties411 has been the best way to learn more about the game since we launched, which made working with Jody an obvious idea. Jody has been contracted to bring more content to our official blog, complementing her existing contributions.

We’ll also be working with Jody on more community events, contests, and giveaways. Expect some exciting updates soon!

Why we’re working with community contributors

We want to empower our community and the best in blockchain talent. Our new funding gives us the ability to do that in a way we couldn’t before, and lets us take advantage of a phenomenon we’re already seeing. Within months of launching, CryptoKitties has had over a dozen projects building on top of our platform and concept. That’s something that could only happen with blockchain.

In a non-distributed world, platform owners need to put in safeguards to ensure people building extensibility play by the rules; thankfully, the nature of blockchain keeps protections in place on the core concept while still empowering developers to build upwards and outwards. That essentially turns into a sandbox where developers can test their skills, and gives us a great way to find the next generation of talent.