Guide To Buying CryptoKitties (Ethereum Game)
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CryptoKitties launched in late Novand within a week it had taken the world by stormflooding the Ethereum transaction network and generally causing a ruckus as kitties are wont to do. Prepare to get your paws wet! There's tons to learn in this post. To help you remember, check out my app Harvest: Take Notes and Learn Passively.
It uses a memory algorithm called spaced repetition to help you remember notes just like this summary: CryptoKitties are digital cats that live purely on the Ethereum blockchain refresher on blockchain.
They are collectibles that you can buy, sell, and best of all, breed to create new kitties. When you own a kitty, no one can take it away from you not even the CryptoKitty company since your Ethereum address owns it and only you have the private key.
The whole point of CryptoKitties is not only that they are beautiful digital kitties that you can admire and collect maybe this is the whole point ; you can also breed any two kitties together and create an entire unique new kitty, with its own " cattributes " and name. These describe everything about your kitty, including color, eyes, eyebrows, mood, and patterns. It's important to remember that these are the phenotypes physically manifested of the kitty however; each kitty also carries genotypes not necessarily physically manifested in its DNA ie.
What this means is that just because two parents are "orangesoda" does not mean an offspring will necessarily be "orangesoda", and the offspring can even have cattributes that neither of its parents have! Various community resources have sprung up including one called CryptoKittydex. That page gives a great overview of the relative rarities of different cattributes; "totesbasic" is the most common, and "googly" is the least.
Generally the rarer the cattribute, the more valuable it will make your CryptoKitty. The last aspect of a CryptoKitty is its "Cooldown". The cooldown represents how long it takes for a kitty to recover once it breeds; the faster the cooldown, the sooner the kitty can breed again. Naturally if you want more kitties you would want a faster cooldown kitty. General wisdom is that the earlier Generation the kitty, the faster the genotype of its cooldown.
Kitty cooldown gets slower and slower the more it breeds; so if you start out as Fast, then each time your kitty breeds it becomes incrementally slower and may or may not drop a notch. Newborn kitty cooldowns start off based on the Gen of its parents. Here's a super handy guide courtesy of Reddit:. Alright now let's get our very own CryptoKitty! Remember that all of the CryptoKitties live on the Ethereum blockchain, so the only way to buy, sell, or breed them is through an Ethereum transaction.
Luckily we can use any browser to do this. We'll use Chrome browser as the example for this guide. The first thing we have to do is install the MetaMask extension. This extension allows us to access the Ethereum blockchain directly from our Chrome browser without having to deal with syncing the blockchain or any of that business. After you install the extension, open it up and accept your away through the terms of service and legal nonsense.
Who reads those anyway?? You'll have to scroll all the way down on one of them in order to proceed. If you have a MetaMask account from before, you can import your keys to restore the account. Otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account with a new password of at least 8 characters. Create that and keep it in a safe place. You will also get a bunch of random words after you create your account. Treat this string of words as your "seed" that can regenerate your account in case you lose your password.
So a password for your password if you will. Keep this in a safe place as well. The sales work in a decaying price format; each one starts at a certain price, and decays linearly over time to an end price over the duration of the sale. Once you've figured out how much ETH you need, it's time to get some. If you already have ETH, feel free to skip over this part. Help me help you! Once you buy some ETH, tab on over in your Coinbase account to "Send" and pop in your MetaMask account address that you created in the previous step.
It should start with "0x" and you can copy the address to clipboard directly from MetaMask from the dropdown menu. Wait a little bit of time for the transaction to process and you should now see some ETH in your MetaMask account! Now, while signed into MetaMask, you can navigate to the CryptoKitties site and the Sign In page where you'll have to create an account with email address and nickname for yourself.
Everyone will see your nickname! But you can change it later. The moment is here. Go back to the marketplace now and find the kitty of your dreams. Whether it's Gen 0 or Gen 18 everything is there for the taking.
Once you've found one, click "Buy" and you'll be prompted with a final confirmation page. Click "OK, buy this Kitty" to initiate the transaction. For the most part you can leave these as their default, and just make sure the "Max Total" is close to what the listed kitty price was for.
Per this reddit threadmany txs can fail because other people are bidding, which will cause you to lose some Gas. If you have enough Ether unlike my account herethen you click the big green button to "Submit" and initiate the transaction officially on the Ethereum blockchain. If all goes well, then you did it! You are now a proud owner of a CryptoKitty.
If you are having transaction issues, follow the fix from this reddit post which entails swapping out the MetaMask node for one that is less crowded. With a CryptoKitty in hand, you can now put it up for siring, breed it with another kitty, or just admire it and brag to your friends.
Treat it well and maybe one day your kitty will be worth many more ETH. Give Marshmeollow Gen 1 cloudwhite some love! Any tips are greatly appreciated! Table of Contents What are CryptoKitties? Cattributes for Founder Kitty 2. Founder Kitty 3 is fast!!
