When Did the First Major NFT project Cryptokitties Launch
Many quizzes include the question "When Did the First Major NFT project Cryptokitties Launch". The answer is usually given on November 28th, 2017. In general, this answer can be considered correct, it is even written on the official website.
The game launched on November 28, 2017, after a five-day closed beta test.
CryptoKitties is a game with characters tokenized through the NFT collection of the same name. Let's not argue what is more correct to consider the launch date, the drawing of the first characters, the writing of the white paper or the contract mint. This right we leave to you, we will only help you to look at the facts of the creation of one of the pillars of the NFT revolution.
What is a Cryptokitty
CryptoKitties is a blockchain game developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs. Dapper Labs was spun off from Axiom Zen.
Players buy, breed and trade virtual cats with different visual characteristics and varying degrees of rarity. Players must purchase the Ether cryptocurrency to join the game and spend it to complete each breeding and trading action in the game.
Each cat has a distinctive appearance (“phenotype”) determined by its unaltered genes (“genotype”) stored in the smart contract. CryptoKitties is a non-fungible token ERC 721 that is indivisible and unique, so they can be bought, sold or transferred.
Virtual cats can breed and carry a unique number and a 256-bit genome with DNA and various attributes (known as “catattributes”) that can be passed on to offspring. Several attributes can be passed from parent to offspring. There are a total of 12 attributes for any cat, including pattern, mouth shape, fur, eye shape, base color, accent color, highlight color, eye color, and optional wild, environment, 'purrstige' and 'secret'. Other attributes, such as cool downtimes, are not inherited, but depend on the “generation” of the offspring, which is one more than the “generation” of the highest attribute “generation”.
Generation 0 CryptoKitties were distributed automatically, via smart contract, at a rate of once every 15 minutes (672 per week) for one year.
Any two CryptoKitties can breed with each other to produce offspring that are a genetic combination of the two parents. In each pair, one CryptoKitty acts as the father and has a short recovery period (which increases each time) before it can join a new pair. The other Сryptokitty carries the new kitten, and during this time it can't participate in other breeding. After this gestation period, the Cryptokitten will be born and its genotype and phenotype will be revealed. The new Cryptokitten will be automatically assigned to the owner of the dame cat at the time of birth. Both the mother and the new Cryptokitten will be available for further breeding immediately after birth.
Cryptokitties don't have a permanent gender. Although they can only participate in one breeding session at a time, each cat can act as both mother and father. It is the owner's choice at each breeding session.
The Core Contract is responsible for the following activities:
- Keeping track of ownership and ownership transfers for all extant CryptoKitties (including newly bred cats)
- Keeping track of approved transfers and approved siring
- Providing a mechanism for transferring all information to a future Core Contract version (if some critical bug is discovered).
- Maintaining pointers to the current versions of all library contracts (which can be dynamically updated).
The day-one functionality of the library contracts includes:
- Keep track of the genes of upcoming gen0 CryptoKitties
- Introducing the genes of gen0 CryptoKitties to the Core Contract
- Launching the auctions for gen0 CryptoKitties (including price determination)
- Combining the genotypes of two parent CryptoKitties to determine the genotype of the new CryptoKitten
- Combining the genotypes of two parent CryptoKitties to determine the genotype of the new CryptoKitten
- Combining the genotypes of two parent CryptoKitties to determine the genotype of the new CryptoKitten
All functionality for breeding, buying, selling, and transferring cats will be possible for any user by interacting directly with the smart contracts on the blockchain. Any auctions or sales conducted through the auction contract will include a 3.75% commission (no minimum) taken from the seller’s portion.
Users can interact with their CryptoKitties by buying, selling, and breeding them. However, CryptoKitty art is not included in the blockchain and is owned by Axiom Zen. The company has released some of the art under a new “Nifty” license that allows players to use an image of their CryptoKitty in a limited way.
First NFT Meme
"We're not trying to build the future," states the final words of the CryptoKitties catifesto, "we're trying to have fun with it. The future is meow."
On October 17, 2017, CryptoKitties launched alpha at the world's largest Ethereum hackathon in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. CryptoKitties are 256-bit genomes. That's exactly what they wrote in the press release. Even now after 7 years it's hard to take it in. It's essentially an NFT with a set of traits. The smart contracts have over 4-billion variations of phenotypes (what you see) and genotypes (what you don't see).
Each CryptoKitty can reproduce and has traits that can only be unlocked by breeding with another CryptoKitty.
Every registered ETHWaterloo participant received two CryptoKitties as a gift, and 50 CryptoKitties were distributed at the beginning of the event. Users were then able to trade and breed hundreds of collectible cats. Literally throughout the day, cryptocurrency enthusiasts and even casual users bred more than 1,500 CryptoKitties.
Rainbow-colored cat T-shirts and cat balloons denoted the CryptoKitties team at ETHWaterloo. The team also handed out modified Pokemon cards as business cards with stickers encouraging users to visit the CryptoKitties website. Сat posters with similar links hung in ETHWaterloo's bathroom stalls. The alpha launch culminated in a series of breeding tasks that stipulated specific traits of CryptoKitties offspring. In keeping with the spirit of the event, the winners were rewarded with Ethereum.
November 23, 2017, CryptoKitties launched a closed beta for 200 early access users. Within three hours, the decentralized application (dApp) became the third most active smart contract on the Ethereum network, accounting for about 2% of all Ether transactions.
November 28, 2017. CryptoKitties has announced the launch of the world's first game built on the Ethereum network. I love cats, but the truth is more precious.
One of the first NFTs on the Ethereum network was Etheria, a virtual isometric world where players can own tiles, farm them for blocks, and build things. The project was created in 2015.
Unlike most blockchain projects of the time, CryptoKitties ignored the traditional ICO approach, opting instead for a sustainable revenue model. A small percentage of each transaction on the trading platform goes to support the project, although users can avoid this small fee by operating outside of a CryptoKitties-backed marketplace.
Dmitri Buterin, founder of BlockGeeks and father of Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, was one of the early advocate of CryptoKitties. Buterin helped develop an exclusive CryptoKitty that the gaming community can unlock by breeding.
December, 2017. 150k+ registered users; $15M USD in transactions; 260k+ cats exist; CryptoKitties accounts for roughly 25% of Ethereum traffic. Ethereum miners increased their gas limit in response to CryptoKitties, which increased the amount of data in a block and increased the number of transactions per second. Marketplace site OpenSea was created as a response.
January 2018. CryptoKitties hits 250,000 users.
It was a Cambrian explosion that not only started entire industries such as NFT and blockchain games, but also seriously raised the question of Ethereum's scalability.
The game is still active, but it is far from its former dominance. Nevertheless, many current bluechip owners continue to hold Cryptokitties.
You can learn more about onchain analytics on the Dune dashboard.
Why cats?
Cats are the ambassadors of pharaohs, memes and most social media pages. They powered the internet and may do the same for blockchain.
Cats are adaptable, adorable, and while they may be hard to understand, they are easy to appreciate.
CryptoKitties is not holding an ICO, and early investment is not a requirement to participate. You don't need to understand the finer points of the token economy to participate: you just need to find CryptoKitties cute.
