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CryptoKitties craze slows down transactions on Ethereum

231 points by scaryclam 9y ago

glorkk 9y ago
Are there currently any alternatives to Ethereum? (turing-complete programmable cryptocurrency)
- etr-strike 9y ago
  Yes: Rootstock ( https://www.rsk.co/ https://www.rsk.co/ ). This exists as a sidechain to the bitcoin network and implements the Ethereum virtual machine. It launched on mainnet yesterday.
  - shazow 9y ago
    s/mainnet/testnet/ according to https://media.rsk.co/announcement-upcoming-rsk-testnet-reset/ https://media.rsk.co/announcement-upcoming-rsk-testnet-reset...
    - etr-strike 9y ago
      No, it's currently running on mainnet: https://media.rsk.co/getting-started-with-bamboo-rsk-mainnet-beta/ https://media.rsk.co/getting-started-with-bamboo-rsk-mainnet...
  - drcode 9y ago
    Keep in mind that rootstock currently is a federated sidechain, so it is decentralized only insofar as you consider federated cryptocurrency systems to be "decentralized" (and different folks disagree about this)
- aerodog 9y ago
  eos.io just released alpha ahead of schedule https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-development-update https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-...
- mtgx 9y ago
  Quite a few: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6b64if/list_of_ethereum_competitors/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6b64if/list_of_e...
- anonyx69 9y ago
  If Tezos ever arrives it might be a viable alternative for certain use cases.
  - ActsJuvenile 9y ago
    Look at Tezos Github commits: https://github.com/tezos/ https://github.com/tezos/ Most of them are shallow changes or "busy work" to show activity. I have been watching FileCoin and Tezos Github, and I wouldn't expect much from either one of them.
- guiomie 9y ago
  NEO, Stratas, NXT and QTUM are the ones I've been following.
derefr 9y ago
Seems like a good thing: "using up" the (currently very small) available transaction space per block, will put pressure on the Ethereum network to move more quickly to Proof-of-Stake (which will have the same blocks, but a much faster mining rate, so it won't matter nearly as much); which will in turn put pressure on Ethereum clients to develop more space/bandwidth-efficient strategies for retrieving and storing those blocks (i.e. more things in line with Parity's "warp" sync.)
- etr-strike 9y ago
  There's no evidence Proof-of-Stake can work as a replacement for Proof-of-Work.
  - derefr 9y ago
    No, not yet. Bitcoin's "Lightning Network" is going to happen, though, so we'll see proof one way or the other soon enough.
    - JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
      How are you so certain LN will ever be implemented? I'm more confident Vitalik could get PoS working before LN ever gets here. LN is vaporware and was supposed to be here long ago, yet here we are.
      - anonyx69 9y ago
        Agree, but a game like crypo kitties is probably the best and only tolerable use case for LN.
      - ChrisClark 9y ago
        I'm actually very surprised at how slow the LN dev is going. There is actually a working version of Raiden (full, not just µRaiden) on an ethereum testnet, I'm really not sure why LN on bitcoin is going so slowly.
cableshaft 9y ago
Huh, this seems like a pretty interesting and different use of the technology, and probably a hint at what's to come. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually most virtual items in games were tied to a blockchain of some sort, with a free marketplace behind it. I bet there's probably an alt-coin or five out there that's planning on being the goto currency for exactly that purpose.
- AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
  Even more interesting with full-scale vertical integration IMO. Game developers can raise funds to build their games by pre-selling provably rare digital assets or doing ICOs for in-game currencies that can be used on betting markets etc...
- rmidthun 9y ago
  Like this one? https://blog.highfidelity.com/avatar-island-our-first-steps-to-a-distributed-digital-economy-d319b43b933c https://blog.highfidelity.com/avatar-island-our-first-steps-...
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    I don't mean specific to a single game. I mean a general one that can be hooked into any and all games, with an API and what not. Avatar Island doesn't seem any different than Cryptokitties according to that article. It's still cool, though.
JustAnotherPat 9y ago
Bitcoin enthusiasts in 2009: Bitcoin is for making currency transactions Bitcoin enthusiasts in 2017: Bitcoin is for storing value Ethereum enthusiasts in 2015: Ethereum is for making trustless currency transactions Ethereum enthusiasts in 2020: Ethereum is for storing cats
- DennisP 9y ago
  This was predictable to anyone who paid attention to Vitalik's t-shirts.
  - Atheros 9y ago
    https://www.vitalikwears.com/ https://www.vitalikwears.com/
nrhk 9y ago
Somebody turned cryptoPunks (https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks) into cryptoKitties and made bank, genius.
- ionwake 9y ago
  The question is why was cryptokitties more successfull EDIT> and thank you for linking that, fascinating
  - alexasmyths 9y ago
    Trends are hard to define. The entity behind Kitties has some other high profile projects and media contacts. If they have something interesting to talk about, they can get people talking about. And even with a large staff of their own + friends - their incidental social network alone is enough to start some yammering. I don't think a bad project can go viral, but many viral worthy projects simply don't go viral.
    - ionwake 9y ago
      I dont think thats it though. i think its something to do with the breeding
    - wrinkl3 9y ago
      Also collecting kitties appeals to more people than collecting punks.
      - paintchipluvr 9y ago
        Indeed I want one but all the ones I find cutest are expensive. I think https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitty/102 https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitty/102 this one should probably just be put out of its misery
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
jsmthrowaway 9y ago
The article points out that on Saturday, someone basically bought a 256-bit number for $117,712.12. Are we all in the wrong line of work, or what?
- gruez 9y ago
  as opposed to paying millions (billions?) for a chunk of carbon?
- wereHamster 9y ago
  I would gladly sell you a 256-bit number–that is actually the password to my swiss bank account–for 100k USD. For all you know, there might be a lot of gold in it.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  "someone basically bought a 256-bit number for $117,712.12" The same could be said of Bitcoin. At least with Kitties you get, well, a Kitty :)
- jmeyer2k 9y ago
  An Ethereum private key is 256 bits. I'd buy a 256-bit private key for an Ethereum account that holds $1m for $100k.
- AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
  It could have easily been the same person transferring money to themselves though, for either PR or money laundering purposes.
partycoder 9y ago
We are all all in 2017 while those guys are in 3017. What's wrong with going to the shelter and getting an actual cat.
- mirceal 9y ago
  the cat you get at the shelter keeps requiring ether forever
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    Forever?
    - partycoder 9y ago
      Technically speaking, a cat can continue to be an expense either directly or transitively, possibly forever, as long as the cat is fertile, has a fertile mating partner in reproductive age, and recursively produces successive generations of descendants, each one consisting of at least one live-birth of fertile cats surviving to reproductive age that you agree to be economically responsible of. This duration would have an upper bound equal the minimum between your own lifespan and the ownership period of the cat(s).
Lon7 9y ago
I think the cool thing about this idea is that "cats" is just one possibility. It can work just as well with nearly anything that requires proof of ownership or uniqueness. Maybe property or mineral rights, or stock and other securities, etc.
- ThomPete 9y ago
  I always looked at it as Pokemon cards. Because it's unique you can track it's history and that opens up for a whole slew of new interesting services. Ebook's could increase in price when sold second hand (owned by such and such), an open source gaming asset exchange allowing people to buy and sell no matter the game. Basically it crypto creates physical like scarcity in an otherwise abundant digital space. That's the biggest deal about crypto IMO.
  - nrhk 9y ago
    Yup, web of information into a web of value which more closely replicates the real world. Combine that with AR and VR tech among other wearables and sensors and we won't just be digital nomads anymore, our entire world will have become completely digitized.
  - Nursie 9y ago
    And how odd that in some situations that scarcity seems to breed value, in and of itself. Humans are weird.
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    How does blockchain technology keep people from copying the ebooks? Why would anyone care about an abstract idea of ownership of an eBook that you could read without owning?
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      The value isn't in the ebook it's in the history of the ebook. Why do you think people pay extra money for a physical book they can buy cheap on amazon. It's not the content of the book it's the affectional value of the book that's interesting.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
In all seriousness, this is a good stress test for the network.
aerodog 9y ago
eos.io released their alpha yesterday: https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-development-update https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-...
- tyrust 9y ago
  Without any other context your comment is irrelevant spam.
jerkstate 9y ago
I heard about this but send an ETH transaction in about 20 minutes this morning. I guess "slow" for ETH is a different standard than "slow" for BTC, or ACH (shudder)
- draw_down 9y ago
  That sounds pretty slow to me.
- lmm 9y ago
  20 minutes is very slow compared to, say, Paym.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
I guess one of the fastest and best way to get engagement is to do something cute .
flashdance 9y ago
> The game's top cat brought in $117,712.12 (£87,686.11) when it sold on Saturday, 2 December. Is it weird that I think that the cat that was sold for 100K was a wash trade (someone trading with themself)? Who would honestly pay 100K for a 'rare' digital cat? Just because something's rare doesn't mean it's valuable. I think it's interesting foreshadowing that the developers are calling these "breedable Beanie Babies". http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/beanie_babies_bubble_economics_and_psychology_of_a_plush_toy_investment.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
- bfuller 9y ago
  neopets.com
  - flashdance 9y ago
    That's an MMORPG for kids. You can go on quests, enter contests, chat with friends, post on their forums, make guilds, do battle against other pets, solve puzzles, trade on the NEODAQ, and make a little home. Pets cost a few bucks. Honestly from googling neopets it sounds an awful lot like a better version of club penguin. With cryptokitties we're talking about 100K for a picture of cat. From what I've read the platform is dedicated only to buying and selling these cats.
    - bfuller 9y ago
      It is a now pretty much dead fleshed out version of this. You can play all the features you mentioned of the game for free. Anything you can officially pay for is cosmetic, like clothing for your pet. There are also entire off site communities dedicated towards selling items and neopoints the site was bought from its founders by Viacom for 100m I used to trade digital assets on games like this exactly like people trade crypto currencies today. Both the interest in having a digital collectible and using electronic points as a store of value
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
djtriptych 9y ago
> The game's developers describe them as "breedable Beanie Babies", each with its own unique 256-bit genome. > The kitties' unique DNA can lead to four billion possible genetic variations. Erm 2^256 is juuuuust a bit more than 4 billion. This seems like an error.
- calvinlh 9y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=2^256 https://www.google.com/search?q=2^256 You're off by about 68 orders of magnitude; it's 2^32 that's approximately 4 billion.
  - rspeer 9y ago
    This is what the person you are replying to was pointing out, yes, using sarcastic understatement.
    - djtriptych 9y ago
      Really thought that 5th 'u' in juuuuust would have implied the sarcasm tag
      - shakestheclown 9y ago
        Six is the minimum.
guiomie 9y ago
Personally, the positive aspect I got out of cryptokitties is it exposed me to Metamask and how you can integrate blockchain in traditional web applications. It's not perfect (timeouts/slow x) but it's a cool insight at a potential future where ETH or other cryptos run financial transactions on the web.
teknopurge 9y ago
I don't see the slowness. I do see transactions backing up, but the ones with higher gas prices will get priority. This is how the network _should_ work....
ionwake 9y ago
does anyone here know how breeding works basically?
- kruhft 9y ago
  Using a variety of techniques you can create a 'crossover' between 2 genomes to breed the next generation. A simple crossover is to take the first half of one and the second half of the other and attach them together. Or any other way of combining the two to give a 'good' result, but that's the most basic way of crossover before putting the next generation into the growth chamber. For a better explanation, see Koza's[1] work. [1] http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html
  - devotedtoneu 9y ago
    I'm developing a monster-taming/breeding game that offers dynamic breeding and the "base" type of breeding interpolates values to create the new child. Items in-game of course can "nudge" the formula. Doing this on the block-chain is an interesting idea a few people have suggested to me, but ultimately it didn't mesh with my idea of what the game should be.
goodoldboys 9y ago
The headlines are a bad look for Ethereum, but this is actually a really good thing for the protocol overall I believe. It's a very important stress test for the network on something less risky than pure financial transactions, for example. Also it's educating a lot of people across the entire spectrum of individuals (in terms of cryptocurrency awareness). For example, I'm a software developer with a high level knowledge of crypto, but I'm now running an eth node locally in order to be able to breed cats more reliably. I've learned a lot more about Ethereum in the past few days, which is cool. On the other end of the spectrum is my wife, who now has a cursory understanding of the blockchain concept thanks to the fact that there's a polished front-end on top of it as well as the fact that we're generating Ether regularly by breeding cats (she's less enamored by the Cat aspect and moreso by the dividend opportunities). I imagine plenty of spouses/friends/colleagues/etc would be interested in the cute cat aspect, however. It may appear totally ridiculous (and parts of it absolutely are), but it's a really great thing for cryptocurrency overall, imo.
- krrrh 9y ago
  I agree that it’s generating interest amongst non-nerds, but I don’t see how this can be positive for the core idea of Ethereum: a single blockchain that many apps are run on simultaneously. The effective fees for all users have gone up massively because of a relatively small number of people playing a very simple game. Many other applications are being effectively ddos’ed if they can’t produce enough value per transaction to justify the fees. Cryptokitties had to increase the transaction fee to birth a cat from just under a $1 to $6-7 [1], imagine how much it would cost to run any of the long-promised distributed apps like a car-sharing service. [1] https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536 https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536
  - Cyberdog 9y ago
    The market has decided that kitten Giga Pets is more interesting and valuable than Etheriuber, at least for the time being. This possibility was always present, and now it has come to fruition. I don't see the problem.
mundo 9y ago
ETH noob here. I don't understand why load would be a problem. Isn't the point of ETH that "miners" provide the space/cpu to execute contracts, and get paid in gas? Why doesn't "too much load" translate to "greater gas rewards" and hence to "miners switching from other cryptos to mine eth"?
- kruhft 9y ago
  The issue is that ETH only can handle a certain amount of transactions per block (based on its block size). When the network gets overloaded, all of the potential transactions cannot be held in a single block and must be delayed until the next block, leading to higher fees for each transaction, giving it a higher priority and making it more likely to put in a block of a certain size. Same 'problem' as bitcoin; too many transactions are being fit into a finite space per block increasing competition to have your transaction in a block, but really it's just basic scarcity economics.
joering2 9y ago
The fact that their is someone out there that would 1) like cats 2) like digital cats 3) wanted to buy digital cat, AND 4) knew how to operate/buy/sell/trade crypto-currency just blew my mind! Everything I knew about targeting audience, sorting market, or leads databases in general just fell apart.
mchahn 9y ago
How could a 10% increase in traffic be a problem?
CryptoKitties 9y ago
So far I think CryptoKitties is cool as its fun to play. Get your first CryptoKitties set up free: http://cryptokitties.zohosites.com http://cryptokitties.zohosites.com
runeks 9y ago
> Some people are concerned that a frivolous game is now going to be crowding out more serious, significant-seeming business uses. That’s the point. The open platform of the blockchain is usable by whoever is willing to pay what it costs in fees; not by how significant-seeming their activity is.
juicyfroot 9y ago
Bitcoin Cash will have cheaper and faster smart contracts this time next year
sAbakumoff 9y ago
Interesting trend on crypto kitties : Virgin cats(ones who didn't have any kids) are more expensive than the..other ones..That's officially insane.
- ric2b 9y ago
  I'm not sure how this works but if the breeding depends on the "genes" of the parents and isn't completely random then virgin cats might be more valuable because they haven't yet made their genes more easily available via their children?
john543 9y ago
Ethereum wants to get into finance, but they have cryptokitties that slow down the network like crazy. Check out https://www.adjoint.io https://www.adjoint.io for a more legit blockchain. No crypto in the same sense as Bitcoin or Ethereum, but they have a serious smart contract solution and their blockchain is going to make a lot of companies really happy.

231 points by scaryclam 9y ago

glorkk 9y ago

Are there currently any alternatives to Ethereum? (turing-complete programmable cryptocurrency)

etr-strike 9y ago
Yes: Rootstock ( https://www.rsk.co/ https://www.rsk.co/ ). This exists as a sidechain to the bitcoin network and implements the Ethereum virtual machine. It launched on mainnet yesterday.
- shazow 9y ago
  s/mainnet/testnet/ according to https://media.rsk.co/announcement-upcoming-rsk-testnet-reset/ https://media.rsk.co/announcement-upcoming-rsk-testnet-reset...
  - etr-strike 9y ago
    No, it's currently running on mainnet: https://media.rsk.co/getting-started-with-bamboo-rsk-mainnet-beta/ https://media.rsk.co/getting-started-with-bamboo-rsk-mainnet...
- drcode 9y ago
  Keep in mind that rootstock currently is a federated sidechain, so it is decentralized only insofar as you consider federated cryptocurrency systems to be "decentralized" (and different folks disagree about this)
aerodog 9y ago
eos.io just released alpha ahead of schedule https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-development-update https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-...
mtgx 9y ago
Quite a few: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6b64if/list_of_ethereum_competitors/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6b64if/list_of_e...
anonyx69 9y ago
If Tezos ever arrives it might be a viable alternative for certain use cases.
- ActsJuvenile 9y ago
  Look at Tezos Github commits: https://github.com/tezos/ https://github.com/tezos/ Most of them are shallow changes or "busy work" to show activity. I have been watching FileCoin and Tezos Github, and I wouldn't expect much from either one of them.
guiomie 9y ago
NEO, Stratas, NXT and QTUM are the ones I've been following.

derefr 9y ago

Seems like a good thing: "using up" the (currently very small) available transaction space per block, will put pressure on the Ethereum network to move more quickly to Proof-of-Stake (which will have the same blocks, but a much faster mining rate, so it won't matter nearly as much); which will in turn put pressure on Ethereum clients to develop more space/bandwidth-efficient strategies for retrieving and storing those blocks (i.e. more things in line with Parity's "warp" sync.)

etr-strike 9y ago
There's no evidence Proof-of-Stake can work as a replacement for Proof-of-Work.
- derefr 9y ago
  No, not yet. Bitcoin's "Lightning Network" is going to happen, though, so we'll see proof one way or the other soon enough.
  - JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
    How are you so certain LN will ever be implemented? I'm more confident Vitalik could get PoS working before LN ever gets here. LN is vaporware and was supposed to be here long ago, yet here we are.
    - anonyx69 9y ago
      Agree, but a game like crypo kitties is probably the best and only tolerable use case for LN.
    - ChrisClark 9y ago
      I'm actually very surprised at how slow the LN dev is going. There is actually a working version of Raiden (full, not just µRaiden) on an ethereum testnet, I'm really not sure why LN on bitcoin is going so slowly.

cableshaft 9y ago

Huh, this seems like a pretty interesting and different use of the technology, and probably a hint at what's to come. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually most virtual items in games were tied to a blockchain of some sort, with a free marketplace behind it. I bet there's probably an alt-coin or five out there that's planning on being the goto currency for exactly that purpose.

AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
Even more interesting with full-scale vertical integration IMO. Game developers can raise funds to build their games by pre-selling provably rare digital assets or doing ICOs for in-game currencies that can be used on betting markets etc...
rmidthun 9y ago
Like this one? https://blog.highfidelity.com/avatar-island-our-first-steps-to-a-distributed-digital-economy-d319b43b933c https://blog.highfidelity.com/avatar-island-our-first-steps-...
- cableshaft 9y ago
  I don't mean specific to a single game. I mean a general one that can be hooked into any and all games, with an API and what not. Avatar Island doesn't seem any different than Cryptokitties according to that article. It's still cool, though.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

Bitcoin enthusiasts in 2009: Bitcoin is for making currency transactions Bitcoin enthusiasts in 2017: Bitcoin is for storing value Ethereum enthusiasts in 2015: Ethereum is for making trustless currency transactions Ethereum enthusiasts in 2020: Ethereum is for storing cats

DennisP 9y ago
This was predictable to anyone who paid attention to Vitalik's t-shirts.
- Atheros 9y ago
  https://www.vitalikwears.com/ https://www.vitalikwears.com/

nrhk 9y ago

Somebody turned cryptoPunks (https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks) into cryptoKitties and made bank, genius.

ionwake 9y ago
The question is why was cryptokitties more successfull EDIT> and thank you for linking that, fascinating
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  Trends are hard to define. The entity behind Kitties has some other high profile projects and media contacts. If they have something interesting to talk about, they can get people talking about. And even with a large staff of their own + friends - their incidental social network alone is enough to start some yammering. I don't think a bad project can go viral, but many viral worthy projects simply don't go viral.
  - ionwake 9y ago
    I dont think thats it though. i think its something to do with the breeding
  - wrinkl3 9y ago
    Also collecting kitties appeals to more people than collecting punks.
    - paintchipluvr 9y ago
      Indeed I want one but all the ones I find cutest are expensive. I think https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitty/102 https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitty/102 this one should probably just be put out of its misery
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

jsmthrowaway 9y ago

The article points out that on Saturday, someone basically bought a 256-bit number for $117,712.12. Are we all in the wrong line of work, or what?

gruez 9y ago
as opposed to paying millions (billions?) for a chunk of carbon?
wereHamster 9y ago
I would gladly sell you a 256-bit number–that is actually the password to my swiss bank account–for 100k USD. For all you know, there might be a lot of gold in it.
alexasmyths 9y ago
"someone basically bought a 256-bit number for $117,712.12" The same could be said of Bitcoin. At least with Kitties you get, well, a Kitty :)
jmeyer2k 9y ago
An Ethereum private key is 256 bits. I'd buy a 256-bit private key for an Ethereum account that holds $1m for $100k.
AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
It could have easily been the same person transferring money to themselves though, for either PR or money laundering purposes.

partycoder 9y ago

We are all all in 2017 while those guys are in 3017. What's wrong with going to the shelter and getting an actual cat.

mirceal 9y ago
the cat you get at the shelter keeps requiring ether forever
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Forever?
  - partycoder 9y ago
    Technically speaking, a cat can continue to be an expense either directly or transitively, possibly forever, as long as the cat is fertile, has a fertile mating partner in reproductive age, and recursively produces successive generations of descendants, each one consisting of at least one live-birth of fertile cats surviving to reproductive age that you agree to be economically responsible of. This duration would have an upper bound equal the minimum between your own lifespan and the ownership period of the cat(s).

Lon7 9y ago

I think the cool thing about this idea is that "cats" is just one possibility. It can work just as well with nearly anything that requires proof of ownership or uniqueness. Maybe property or mineral rights, or stock and other securities, etc.

ThomPete 9y ago
I always looked at it as Pokemon cards. Because it's unique you can track it's history and that opens up for a whole slew of new interesting services. Ebook's could increase in price when sold second hand (owned by such and such), an open source gaming asset exchange allowing people to buy and sell no matter the game. Basically it crypto creates physical like scarcity in an otherwise abundant digital space. That's the biggest deal about crypto IMO.
- nrhk 9y ago
  Yup, web of information into a web of value which more closely replicates the real world. Combine that with AR and VR tech among other wearables and sensors and we won't just be digital nomads anymore, our entire world will have become completely digitized.
- Nursie 9y ago
  And how odd that in some situations that scarcity seems to breed value, in and of itself. Humans are weird.
- jcoffland 9y ago
  How does blockchain technology keep people from copying the ebooks? Why would anyone care about an abstract idea of ownership of an eBook that you could read without owning?
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    The value isn't in the ebook it's in the history of the ebook. Why do you think people pay extra money for a physical book they can buy cheap on amazon. It's not the content of the book it's the affectional value of the book that's interesting.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

In all seriousness, this is a good stress test for the network.

aerodog 9y ago

eos.io released their alpha yesterday: https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-development-update https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-dawn-2-0-released-and-...

tyrust 9y ago
Without any other context your comment is irrelevant spam.

jerkstate 9y ago

I heard about this but send an ETH transaction in about 20 minutes this morning. I guess "slow" for ETH is a different standard than "slow" for BTC, or ACH (shudder)

draw_down 9y ago
That sounds pretty slow to me.
lmm 9y ago
20 minutes is very slow compared to, say, Paym.

zitterbewegung 9y ago

I guess one of the fastest and best way to get engagement is to do something cute .

flashdance 9y ago

> The game's top cat brought in $117,712.12 (£87,686.11) when it sold on Saturday, 2 December. Is it weird that I think that the cat that was sold for 100K was a wash trade (someone trading with themself)? Who would honestly pay 100K for a 'rare' digital cat? Just because something's rare doesn't mean it's valuable. I think it's interesting foreshadowing that the developers are calling these "breedable Beanie Babies". http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/beanie_babies_bubble_economics_and_psychology_of_a_plush_toy_investment.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

bfuller 9y ago
neopets.com
- flashdance 9y ago
  That's an MMORPG for kids. You can go on quests, enter contests, chat with friends, post on their forums, make guilds, do battle against other pets, solve puzzles, trade on the NEODAQ, and make a little home. Pets cost a few bucks. Honestly from googling neopets it sounds an awful lot like a better version of club penguin. With cryptokitties we're talking about 100K for a picture of cat. From what I've read the platform is dedicated only to buying and selling these cats.
  - bfuller 9y ago
    It is a now pretty much dead fleshed out version of this. You can play all the features you mentioned of the game for free. Anything you can officially pay for is cosmetic, like clothing for your pet. There are also entire off site communities dedicated towards selling items and neopoints the site was bought from its founders by Viacom for 100m I used to trade digital assets on games like this exactly like people trade crypto currencies today. Both the interest in having a digital collectible and using electronic points as a store of value
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

djtriptych 9y ago

> The game's developers describe them as "breedable Beanie Babies", each with its own unique 256-bit genome. > The kitties' unique DNA can lead to four billion possible genetic variations. Erm 2^256 is juuuuust a bit more than 4 billion. This seems like an error.

calvinlh 9y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=2^256 https://www.google.com/search?q=2^256 You're off by about 68 orders of magnitude; it's 2^32 that's approximately 4 billion.
- rspeer 9y ago
  This is what the person you are replying to was pointing out, yes, using sarcastic understatement.
  - djtriptych 9y ago
    Really thought that 5th 'u' in juuuuust would have implied the sarcasm tag
    - shakestheclown 9y ago
      Six is the minimum.

guiomie 9y ago

Personally, the positive aspect I got out of cryptokitties is it exposed me to Metamask and how you can integrate blockchain in traditional web applications. It's not perfect (timeouts/slow x) but it's a cool insight at a potential future where ETH or other cryptos run financial transactions on the web.

teknopurge 9y ago

I don't see the slowness. I do see transactions backing up, but the ones with higher gas prices will get priority. This is how the network _should_ work....

ionwake 9y ago

does anyone here know how breeding works basically?

kruhft 9y ago
Using a variety of techniques you can create a 'crossover' between 2 genomes to breed the next generation. A simple crossover is to take the first half of one and the second half of the other and attach them together. Or any other way of combining the two to give a 'good' result, but that's the most basic way of crossover before putting the next generation into the growth chamber. For a better explanation, see Koza's[1] work. [1] http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html
- devotedtoneu 9y ago
  I'm developing a monster-taming/breeding game that offers dynamic breeding and the "base" type of breeding interpolates values to create the new child. Items in-game of course can "nudge" the formula. Doing this on the block-chain is an interesting idea a few people have suggested to me, but ultimately it didn't mesh with my idea of what the game should be.

goodoldboys 9y ago

The headlines are a bad look for Ethereum, but this is actually a really good thing for the protocol overall I believe. It's a very important stress test for the network on something less risky than pure financial transactions, for example. Also it's educating a lot of people across the entire spectrum of individuals (in terms of cryptocurrency awareness). For example, I'm a software developer with a high level knowledge of crypto, but I'm now running an eth node locally in order to be able to breed cats more reliably. I've learned a lot more about Ethereum in the past few days, which is cool. On the other end of the spectrum is my wife, who now has a cursory understanding of the blockchain concept thanks to the fact that there's a polished front-end on top of it as well as the fact that we're generating Ether regularly by breeding cats (she's less enamored by the Cat aspect and moreso by the dividend opportunities). I imagine plenty of spouses/friends/colleagues/etc would be interested in the cute cat aspect, however. It may appear totally ridiculous (and parts of it absolutely are), but it's a really great thing for cryptocurrency overall, imo.

krrrh 9y ago
I agree that it’s generating interest amongst non-nerds, but I don’t see how this can be positive for the core idea of Ethereum: a single blockchain that many apps are run on simultaneously. The effective fees for all users have gone up massively because of a relatively small number of people playing a very simple game. Many other applications are being effectively ddos’ed if they can’t produce enough value per transaction to justify the fees. Cryptokitties had to increase the transaction fee to birth a cat from just under a $1 to $6-7 [1], imagine how much it would cost to run any of the long-promised distributed apps like a car-sharing service. [1] https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536 https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  The market has decided that kitten Giga Pets is more interesting and valuable than Etheriuber, at least for the time being. This possibility was always present, and now it has come to fruition. I don't see the problem.

mundo 9y ago

ETH noob here. I don't understand why load would be a problem. Isn't the point of ETH that "miners" provide the space/cpu to execute contracts, and get paid in gas? Why doesn't "too much load" translate to "greater gas rewards" and hence to "miners switching from other cryptos to mine eth"?

kruhft 9y ago
The issue is that ETH only can handle a certain amount of transactions per block (based on its block size). When the network gets overloaded, all of the potential transactions cannot be held in a single block and must be delayed until the next block, leading to higher fees for each transaction, giving it a higher priority and making it more likely to put in a block of a certain size. Same 'problem' as bitcoin; too many transactions are being fit into a finite space per block increasing competition to have your transaction in a block, but really it's just basic scarcity economics.

joering2 9y ago

The fact that their is someone out there that would 1) like cats 2) like digital cats 3) wanted to buy digital cat, AND 4) knew how to operate/buy/sell/trade crypto-currency just blew my mind! Everything I knew about targeting audience, sorting market, or leads databases in general just fell apart.

mchahn 9y ago

How could a 10% increase in traffic be a problem?

CryptoKitties 9y ago

So far I think CryptoKitties is cool as its fun to play. Get your first CryptoKitties set up free: http://cryptokitties.zohosites.com http://cryptokitties.zohosites.com

runeks 9y ago

> Some people are concerned that a frivolous game is now going to be crowding out more serious, significant-seeming business uses. That’s the point. The open platform of the blockchain is usable by whoever is willing to pay what it costs in fees; not by how significant-seeming their activity is.

juicyfroot 9y ago

Bitcoin Cash will have cheaper and faster smart contracts this time next year

sAbakumoff 9y ago

Interesting trend on crypto kitties : Virgin cats(ones who didn't have any kids) are more expensive than the..other ones..That's officially insane.

ric2b 9y ago
I'm not sure how this works but if the breeding depends on the "genes" of the parents and isn't completely random then virgin cats might be more valuable because they haven't yet made their genes more easily available via their children?

john543 9y ago

Ethereum wants to get into finance, but they have cryptokitties that slow down the network like crazy. Check out https://www.adjoint.io https://www.adjoint.io for a more legit blockchain. No crypto in the same sense as Bitcoin or Ethereum, but they have a serious smart contract solution and their blockchain is going to make a lot of companies really happy.