CryptoKitties Launches

One of the earliest NFT projects and blockchain games that reached mania status was CryptoKitties, launching in November 2017 in the midst of a parabolic rise in the price of cryptocurrencies. Within a year, a kitty sold for 600 ETH, worth nearly $170,000 at the time but $2.2 million as of May, 2024. With over 50,000 thousand tokens selling in the first month, the game was so popular it slowed down the Ethereum network with spiking gas fees, presaging the upcoming NFT mania of 2021. Kitties played a critical role in the early adoption of NFTs—including Jason Bailey—and are of major interest to this story. The early NFT game used pieces of code (called “genes”) that defined the characteristics of a digital cartoon cat. Players could buy, collect, sell, and breed these cats, resulting in unique NFTs. The project, despite its status as an early project just months after CryptoPunks, has not maintained its value as of this writing in 2024, apparently due to an oversupply of millions of kitties bred—generatively—by enthusiastic community members. Yet CryptoKitties still played a crucial role in the story of generative art as they helped popularize, onboard and demonstrate the power of NFTs. With fewer barriers to entry and a more engaging dynamic than Punks, the project was initially more successful. It would take Jason Bailey’s, for instance, purchase of a CryptoKitty for him to understand and be convinced of the value of blockchains and NFTs.