In November 2017, CryptoKitties, the world’s first blockchain game developed by the Dapper Labs team, was launched on Ethereum and quickly created a whirlwind of cyber cat breeding and cat petting in the blockchain industry. Players can participate in a virtual cat breeding game to buy, sell and breed different varieties of electronic pet kittens. Within just one week of its launch, 27,160 cats have been traded, with a total of 34,266 transactions taking place, reaching a transaction value of 8,449 ETH, or about $4.02 million. Ethereum has also been heavily congested by the emergence of CryptoKitties.
Another major innovation behind the success of CryptoKitties is that at a point when NFT was almost untouched in 2017, CryptoKitties not only made it easy for everyone to know what a crypto digital commodity is and what a non-homogenized token NFT is through a crypto pet cat of different and unique shapes, but also introduced the Digital Commodity Framework (ERC- 721) game.
DapperLabs’ development of blockchain projects does not stop at the “traditional” ICO, but explains to the general public in the form of a game – what blockchain, cryptocurrency, and chain tour look like. The simple operation, almost infinite possibilities and assets circulating on the chain gave users infinite reverie about this game, and some people even started to sell kittens for huge profits. The most expensive kittens can be sold for 1 million RMB in the late stage of the game’s boom. The boom is bound to decline, and the much-loved CryptoKitties is not immune to this law. From the statistical chart of DappTotal, it seems that CryptoKitties is a precipitous decline after its boom.
The reasons for these phenomena are the following three points. First, from the game itself, “CryptoKitties” is simple in gameplay, single in product, and it does not have a continuous feedback mechanism to attract users. “CryptoKitties” does not provide players with “the fun and interesting” as traditional games do. Second, in the eyes of many people, CryptoKitties is more speculative than entertaining. In other words, for a large part of the population, CryptoKitties is more of an investment product. As each CryptoKitties has its own value, many players speculate by buying and breeding cats, which eventually “inflate” their value and force small and medium-sized players to leave the game. Third, after the popularity of CryptoKitties, many teams have followed the trend of launching crypto dogs, crypto fish and crypto zoos, which also attracted some players.
For the blockchain industry, there are many imitators and followers of popular topics, but what the market really needs are innovators who can both fulfill their own development and lead the industry trend. After the great success of CryptoKitties, the enterprising Dapper Labs team started to think about the next step of development and discussed the following ideas.
1、Self-developed games
2、Game ecology development
3、Asset circulation intermediary
4、Public BlockChains
The final decision was dominated by the ideas of Roham, founder of Dapper Labs, and Mack Flavelle, Chief Creative Officer of CryptoKitties. Roham advocated continuing to develop his own games and launching the next moment of blockchain gaming. Mack Flavelle wanted to make a smart contract platform to cater to an extensible network of decentralized games and crypto collectibles that was open and inclusive, allowing third-party developers to build systems based on their needs.
After a long time of thinking and preparation, Mack Flavelle formed MetaTrads project team along with his pursuit in mind, focusing on the digital assetization and circulation trading of virtual items, driving the revaluation of digital assets. Mack Flavelle firmly believes that “In the future, more digital works, virtual land, game skins and equipment produced by content creators will be expected to become digital assets and be circulated and traded.”
Blockchain games themselves have far-reaching value, and with the explosion of CryptoKitties driving blockchain games to the public eye, chain games will embrace a historic development dividend.