Steemit Crypto Academy – Season 2 - Week 2 - Post for @levycore

Genesis of CryptoKitties

How can you define NFT?
Non-fungible tokens define unique ownership, such as land.
The first truly mainstream project for NFT was CryptoKitties . The gameplay of this rather primitive multiplayer game, launched at the end of 2017 at the ETH Waterloo hackathon, was to breed digital tokens in the form of cats to produce new cats of various rarities and values.
While some do not even consider CryptoKitties to be a game, the team had to go to great lengths to create a game mechanic with the fundamental constraints of the blockchain architecture in mind.

source

CryptoKitties

CryptoKitties It is an Ethereum-based game, which deals with user-collecting and raising online [Digital] cats. The tokens used are non-fungible because each of the game's tokens on the blockchain represents a single digital cat. Due to the existence of these tokens, each NFT digital cats are of a different format and characteristics, which can not be reproduced, destroyed, or removed.

The essence cryptoKitties is the purchase and breeding of virtual kittens. The game is gaining momentum at an incredible speed.
Now 11% of all transactions on the Ethereum network are accounted for by the purchase of these pets.

How CryptoKitties works

CryptoKitties is a collectible blockchain game created by the Canadian-American studio Axiom Zen. Information about animals is stored on the Ethereum network, and the rules of the game are spelled out in a smart contract. The bottom line is quite simple: you are offered to have a virtual kitten and cross it with another in order to get a new pet with unique characteristics as a result and sell it.

The first 100 cats were named generation # 0 and belonged to the developers. It is their offspring that are now being bought up by enthusiasts all over the world.

What happens after crossing two unique kittens.

• One new cat appears with a unique 256-bit DNA derived from a mixture of parental DNA and random mutations.
• The DNA of a new cat sets its appearance according to the rules defined by the developers.
• After crossing, the parents cannot produce new offspring for some time.
• The rate of occurrence of new offspring in the future for each parent is reduced.

What else can you do with cats?

• Put up for sale.
• Offer for mating for the desired amount and get money by giving the kitten.
• Cross your cat with another from the previous point, pay money and get a kitten.

There is also a commercial component in the game. The virtual pet can only be purchased for ether, the internal currency of the Ethereum network.

Shortcoming of CryptoKitties

The game is simple, the cats are cute, but some moments cause concern.

For example, the demand for cats turned out to be so great that in less than a week, the game began to consume 11% of the resources of the Ethereum network instead of the initial four percent.

This means that the queue of transactions waiting to be included in the block is growing, and the owners of cats are willing to pay a commission 20 times more than usual so that their transactions receive higher priority and go first. This forces the rest of the Ethereum network to raise the price of gas in transactions as well.

How to go about CryptoKitties

But economically absurd aside, CryptoKitties is a really good way to get to know the Ethereum blockchain. The game runs on five Ethereum smart contracts, and users interact with it through their Ethereum address. Right now, the easiest way to do this is through the MetaMask Chrome extension, which allows you to exchange Ethereum right in your browser. Then you need to go to the CryptoKitties website, which is essentially an interface for interacting with smart contracts for selling and breeding kittens.

Thanks to @levycore