The digital platform is extending its reach with the introduction of Cryptokitties, the digital cats which take on the market with along with digital currencies for its transactions.
The digital currency, also known as cryptocurrencies takes a new role in buying and selling digital cats with people spending huge sums of real money for the transactions.
A new phase of gaming culture based on the cryptocurrency turns out to be a game changer as the digital cats introduce a new level of gaming and digital pet handling. This new game based on Ethereum blockchain cryptocurrency has opened a new world for the tech world.
AxiomZen, a San Francisco-based design studio built the first 100 cats which are being sold through digital auctions. The highest prize spent for a genesis kitten till the date is $117712.12 which accounts for the value of 246.9255 Ethereum. The average sale price of Cryptokitties ranges around $107.95 while the medium range prize stands around $9.27.
According to reports, the new game is regarded as a digital version of Pokemon cards based on Ethereum blockchain, a form of digital currency independent of any central banks or governments.This new game has given wide popularity to the less tangible currency by giving asset value to an intangible product.
The fact that the Cryptokitties are not entitled to any central control operator could either be a boon or a bane for it. The kitties are purely owned by the person who buys it. The coded cats can't be stolen or destroyed by anyone else.
The Cryptokittens could survive forever through codings in the Ethereum blockchain. Hence, it does not face any termination or deletion even if its parent company shuts down. A similar kind of game named as Neopets which had been stored in a centralized database was erased when its parent company faced a shutdown.
Another major feature of the Cryptokitties is that they could breed among themselves to create offsprings. These new Cryptokitties could be sold for the Etherium or bitcoins.
The digital payment made in the form of Ether is done using MetaMask, a digital wallet. Anyone who needs to buy the digital kitten needs to spend real money on the digital currency for its payment.
AxiomZens have written 5 small contracts for transactions through the e-currency. The CryptoKitties site acts as an interface between the sellers and buyers of the new breed kittens.
According to reports, about 15% of the network traffic of Ethereum has been dedicated to the game while only 8% of the network transactions go through the EtherDelta, the popular decentralized token exchange of the digital currency. This creates lags in the transactions.
How to play
The 100 "Gen 0" kittens which were originally produced during the beginning of the game has unique characteristics based on codings which are similar to the genomic sequence. They include features like background color, cooldown time, whiskers, beards, and stripes.
Features like golden background are given more importance to others. Certain features along with additional 'rare' traits pass on to the next generation. A 256-bit genome holds the key to the cat's traits.
"Gen 0" cats would be kept for auction in every 15 minutes during its starting phase of the game. They would be priced at an average of last five sold cats, plus 50% of the prize. The prize would decrease within 24 hours in the absence of a sale.
The progeny kittens would also be sold in similar ways. The kittens would be kept in an auction with a starting price and an end price. It would drop halfway in between if a person buys kitten 12 hours after the auction's start.
The cryptocurrency business would be profitable if it turns to be popular among masses. The owners could gain huge profits by selling their good breed kittens. But the loss would be huge with a market crash as it works in an intangible business world.
However, the game is considered one of the pioneers of its kind built on the blockchain technology.
