Steem Monsters Sunday!: A Look at CryptoKitties and How Steem Monsters is Evolving the Blockchain Gaming and Collecting Space

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Many say that CryptoKitties enabled the cryptocurrency hype in December 2017 that sent Altcoins to all time highs in January 2018 which have not been seen again. Other says that it led to the realization that the market went to far too quick as transactions from the DApp caused serious delays in the Ethereum blockchain that led to the complete opposite of the promise of cryptocurrencies; fast transaction confirmations and low transaction fees. However, I am not going to opine on that and instead show how CryptoKitties paved the way for Dapps on blockchains to provide a use case for leisure and entertainment while creating and economic system that support a business of said Dapp.

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At the peak of the CryptoKitties hype, the game generated 80,500 transactions in one day. Despite decreasing with the rest of the market by 98.4% in June, it has generated 3.2 million transactions since inception spanning over 50,000 ETH exchanged (approximately $26 million). The Dapp has clearly demonstrated the interest from its users as a business and use case for a decentralized platform. It even attracted a $12 million investment from Venture Capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.

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This has ushered a drive to find the next best DApp on many platforms. @steemmonsters has launched on the STEEM blockchain and has also provided some interestig results as they develop their game based on trading cards. They have repeatedly said that the intention is to take the traditional playing card games like Magic The Gathering and Pokemon and deploy them on a digital platform providing for complete ownership of the cards to the users which creates a decentralized platform for engagement. Given that STEEM is a social platform, it has been received positively as the 300,000 Alpha packs which contained 5 cards in each have been sold out leading to another 900,000 packs being offered in Beta.

Gameplay is set to release in the coming weeks but that has not avoided the demand that these cards have had. Like CryptoKitties, demand for certain cards are making prices be multiples of the original prices sold. One distiction between the two approaches is that Cryptokitties are based on ERC-721 tokens which are individually unique and never differ after issuance. While there is never more than one of the same CryptoKitty, @steemmonsters have a set of cards available for game play. Each card can have dozens to thousands of similar issued cards available but each is still unique on the STEEM blockchain. Given the uniqueness, the development team added a scarcity economy to the cards to distiguish them n rarity that are directly correlated to how they can be used ultimately in the game.

Given the uniqueness of the CryptoKitty approach, prices for these virtual digital assets have reached over $100,000 in some of the early and “special” tokens issued. However, average prices for newer versions have fluctuated from $5 - $60 in the past months.

From a @steemmonsters perspective, card values are more consistent as there is less differentiation amongst them as none of them are absolutely unique. However, this is due to expected use for them in the actual battling system which gives these digital assets a use case going forward. While cards range from common to legendary, prices are on a similar range whereas common cards are being sold for as little as $0.03 and as high as $13 each. Now these are for base cards as each cards also has a Gold Foil version that again adds the scarcity component into the economy. Here you can see the cards being exchanged on multiples of their base whereas the rarer Legendaries can fetch up to thousands of dollars given their scarcity.

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This market system is actually working great and in my opinion superior to the CryptoKitties as it leverages the STEEM blockchains fast and virtually free transfer system whereas Ethereum needs to pay GAS fees in ETH to transact. Therefore, the potential for @steemmonsters cards are almost limitless as markets can be created not only for sale but also for leasing and delegating given the way the STEEM ecosystem works! The team is seeing this potential as they continue to sell record numbers of packs on a daily basis and their recently announced Kickstarter campaign surpassed their goals. Interestingly, CryptoKitties have also announced a gaming components to their product as well: KittyBattles and KittyHats. It seems as a way to maintain the community engaged which is not a bad idea given the continued growth being seen by the @steemmonsters community in preparing for the actual battles.

While I may be biased given that I am an excited member of the community, I believe that the @steemmonsters project has and will continue to pave the path to new and engaging ways of social interaction on top of a blockchain. Its inclusion in the #STEEM blockchain makes the evolution of the #STEEM ecosystem expand to much more than what it has been and has the potential of bringing more users to it in the short term. I think that @steemmonsters could not only be the CryptoKitties of #STEEM, but also of blockchain in general given its potential to expand on the Brand. I look forward to seeing where this part of the journey takes us and how we will evolve with the learnings and engagement of the community.

Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/cryptokitties-blockchain-beanie-babies-transactions-plummet-2018-6

https://etherscan.io/token/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoKitties

https://www.cryptokitties.co/

https://medium.com/cryptokitties/herding-one-million-cats-7dbec6c77476

Follow me on Twitter: @NAICrypto

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