What is Cryptokitties, and how do they Work?

By Clinton Courier | July 12, 2022 |

Cryptokitties is a well-known blockchain game, where game players gather and then breed unique kitties. It is the digital genome that describes the physical appearance of the kitties to visit at: https://bitcoin-era.pl/

The whole mechanism is under the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum blockchain is a cryptocurrency almost identical to Bitcoin, and only the transactions might consist of executable code. It means that a player can develop a Distributed Application (DApp) with the help of crypto’s decentralized structure. A player can utilize complicated logic inside a transaction.

Basic knowledge of Genetic Algorithm (GA)

In CryptoKitties, a player uses a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to make the Kitties. It’s identical to how the actual phenomenon of biological genetics works, where genes (DNA) store the body information and how it will work.

In a human body, people’s genes present for eye/hair/skin color, straight/curly hair, or how much his height would be. The same happens in CryptoKitties, where the genes exist for color, body stripes, and patterns for the fur or facial expressions. This process involves getting genes from two parents & mixing them. The male sperm and the female egg each donate half the total numbers of DNA to their offspring; some traits belong to the father, and some traits belong to the mother, but the ratio is never equal.

In GA terms, we named it a crossover. It works as the same human being principle too. A unique offspring genome comes having one-half of the male’s genome, and the other half belongs to the mother’s genome.

Genetic Algorithm on Ethereum

This is the point where things become exciting. A Genetic Algorithm is an essential tool for solving a few kinds of problems (and developing cute kitties). Still, the question is that how a player represents genomes and can perform crossover through a cryptocurrency.

On the Ethereum blockchain, the player can accumulate data (like genome) and do data calculations using Smart Contracts.

What is a Smart Contract?

A transaction can be transferred from one client to another on the Bitcoin Trading Platform. External accounts are the only type of account present in bitcoin.

While Ethereum carries two types of accounts:

External Accounts and
Contract Accounts

A contract account is a particular type of account. Like with an external account, a contract account holds a specific address so a player can transact with it. While, unlike external accounts, it is not necessary for someone to own it and include some code.

Each time a player does a transaction with it, the code runs (computer running any program). If we explain briefly, we can say that a miner runs the code, which is part of transaction verification. Contract accounts are also known as Smart Contracts. Therefore, many smart contracts are calculated when the transactions are verified on the blockchain.

How Smart Contracts have linked with CryptoKitties?

KittyBase

The blockchain is available publicly, which stands that all the code linked to the DAPP is publicly known and every person can see the ‘codes of the kitties’. These codes are stored in smart contracts, and that storage itself is called KittyBase.

Ownership of a Kitty

Unless you don’t change your value of inventory, kittens are irreplaceable as all kittens are rare. This smart contract carries a job to keep the worth of every kitten unique. However, it is possible that two cats can have similar value, though.

Breeding of the Kitty

Another smart contract is named as KittyBreeding, and here you can do a crossover. The code in the smart contract combines the genes of two different cats into one newly created.

Kitty Auction

It is also a smart contract that helps sell your kittens to another player, and you can ‘lend “your kittens to another player’ to breed.

Kitty Minting

The last smart contract is Kitty Minting. Same as ICOs, it helps to let the community go. Due to this, the developers made the first-generation cats, also known as gen 0. These cats are free so that the community can take start from somewhere.

CryptoKitties & Ethereum

CryptoKitties was first built on the Ethereum blockchain. After one week of launching the game, CryptoKitties reported that 13% of all transactions happened on Ethereum. In October 2020, the sales of crypto kitties reached more than 61,000 ETH ($21m). Due to transaction load at the same time, the queue started to build. Because of this delay, CryptoKitties announced a few plans to change the Flow blockchain soon.