Dapper Labs has announced that its popular Ethereum-based collectibles game CryptoKitties will be launched on its Flow blockchain.
Flow blockchain was built by Dapper Labs to address many of the challenges the team encountered in launching on and “breaking” Ethereum — with CryptoKitties causing unprecedented network congestion on the Ethereum network when it launched on mainnet.
Dapper also devised a new proprietary smart contract-oriented programming language designed for smart contracts for Flow called Cadence — which is currently being explored by Libra as part of a tech sharing deal between the two entities.
Dapper Labs’ chief executive Roham Gharegozlou told Cointelegraph that Flow comprises “a high throughput platform where developers can build applications for [non-fungible tokens] NTFs that millions of people can use.”
Flow to support greater CryptoKitties scalability
Roham recounts that with "CryptoKitties on Ethereum, as soon as a few thousand people start breeding, it totally falls over and congests the network."
"That’s why we built Flow. [...] We want to make sure that not just CryptoKitties, but any other NFT has a chance to be able to access a high throughput environment, have people build applications for them, and have high throughput marketplaces that can scale to billions of users."
Despite the hurdles, Gharegozlou revealed that CryptoKitties attracted over one million users within a month of launching CryptoKitties in November 2017.
During 2019, CryptoKitties generated more than 2 million transactions — the most of any consumer decentralized application on Ethereum. CryptoKitties also comprised the fourth-largest DApp on Ethereum overall, trailing only behind Tether (USDT) and the network’s two largest decentralized exchanges.
CryptoKitties on Ethereum to continue despite Flow
Gharagozlou likens CryptoKitties on Flow to a mechanic employed throughout the Pokemon series, where users are able to bring their Pokemon or CryptoKitties ”into the new environment and play with it, and access a whole new ball game.”
Flow will allow new features to be integrated into the game, including animations and third-dimensional capabilities.
‘Lola’ on Ethereum (‘Before’), ‘Lola’ on Flow (‘After’)
Despite his excitement for enhanced throughput and new functionalities that Flow will offer the game, Dapper Labs’ CEO emphasized that the firm’s “first priority is to take care of existing CryptoKitties owners,” adding that he hopes CryptoKitties on Ethereum will continue alongside Flow.
Nifty marketplace overwhelmed by surprise CryptoKitty launch
Last week, the surprise launch of a limited run of 100 new CryptoKitties designed by artist Momo Wang overwhelmed the Winklevoss-backed NFT marketplace Nifty — where the collectible cats were being auctioned.
All 100 kitties sold out within three seconds, one of which sold for $10,500 on a secondary market shortly after.
Two more Momo Wang kitties are being hidden throughout the CryptoKitties genome to be discovered by the community. Gharagazlou added that “they will be available for sale on the CryptoKitties marketplace as soon as people figure out the recipe and start breeding their own.”