The genome of each cat consists of a 256-bit number and breeding basically involves mashing these numbers together to produce a new 256-bit number that represents a new cat with unique physical characteristics. Although I could breed either of my crypto cats with any of the thousands of other cats that have been generated on CryptoKitties, I opted to breed Mother and Board with each other. Starting with these two cats-which I have named Mother and Board-I was ready to begin breeding. Unfortunately, all the cats generated for the hacking competition had already been given away so I had to ask some people in the CryptoKitties chatroom to send two of their own cats to my Ethereum wallet. After generating a wallet and filling it with some free Ether from the Rinkeby faucet, I was ready to breed. This network functions just like the real Ethereum network, except for the Ether generated on Rinkeby is worthless and only used to test the functionality of apps before they're released.īefore I could begin breeding cats, I had to download Metamask, a plugin for the Chrome Browser that enables users to interact with apps on the Ethereum blockchain. For now, however, anyone can try out the game for free using the Rinkeby test network. It was accompanied by a breeding competition that challenged participants to breed digital kittens with certain physical traits and rewarded breeders with real Ether (the digital money that powers apps on the Ethereum network).Īs a cat-lover with an interest in Ethereum, when I heard about the project I thought I'd try my hand at breeding a few crypto kitties of my own.ĬryptoKitties will be officially released on November 1, meaning players can spend real money (in the form of Ether, of course) to breed, collect, and sell digital cats. We're the flag bearer for the rest of this ecosystem in terms of getting celebrities to associate with kitties and the Ethereum network.'Ī test version of CryptoKitties was unveiled last weekend at ETH Waterloo, the largest Ethereum hackathon in the world. 'So many great companies are building awesome technology that the world won't care about or understand. 'Kitties should be a part of this revolution of bringing blockchain technology to the masses,' Benny Giang, a product manager at Axiom Zen told me in an email.

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