
CryptoKitties craze slows down transactions on Ethereum - scaryclam
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42237162
======
goodoldboys
The headlines are a bad look for Ethereum, but this is actually a really good
thing for the protocol overall I believe.

It's a very important stress test for the network on something less risky than
pure financial transactions, for example.

Also it's educating a lot of people across the entire spectrum of individuals
(in terms of cryptocurrency awareness).

For example, I'm a software developer with a high level knowledge of crypto,
but I'm now running an eth node locally in order to be able to breed cats more
reliably. I've learned a lot more about Ethereum in the past few days, which
is cool.

On the other end of the spectrum is my wife, who now has a cursory
understanding of the blockchain concept thanks to the fact that there's a
polished front-end on top of it as well as the fact that we're generating
Ether regularly by breeding cats (she's less enamored by the Cat aspect and
moreso by the dividend opportunities). I imagine plenty of
spouses/friends/colleagues/etc would be interested in the cute cat aspect,
however.

It may appear totally ridiculous (and parts of it absolutely are), but it's a
really great thing for cryptocurrency overall, imo.

~~~
krrrh
I agree that it’s generating interest amongst non-nerds, but I don’t see how
this can be positive for the core idea of Ethereum: a single blockchain that
many apps are run on simultaneously. The effective fees for all users have
gone up massively because of a relatively small number of people playing a
very simple game. Many other applications are being effectively ddos’ed if
they can’t produce enough value per transaction to justify the fees.
Cryptokitties had to increase the transaction fee to birth a cat from just
under a $1 to $6-7 [1], imagine how much it would cost to run any of the long-
promised distributed apps like a car-sharing service.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536](https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536)

~~~
Cyberdog
The market has decided that kitten Giga Pets is more interesting and valuable
than Etheriuber, at least for the time being. This possibility was always
present, and now it has come to fruition. I don't see the problem.

~~~
justinjlynn
Indeed. Welcome to capitalism.

------
flashdance
> The game's top cat brought in $117,712.12 (£87,686.11) when it sold on
> Saturday, 2 December.

Is it weird that I think that the cat that was sold for 100K was a wash trade
(someone trading with themself)? Who would honestly pay 100K for a 'rare'
digital cat? Just because something's rare doesn't mean it's valuable.

I think it's interesting foreshadowing that the developers are calling these
"breedable Beanie Babies".

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/beanie_babies_bubble_economics_and_psychology_of_a_plush_toy_investment.html)

~~~
elif
Well, I would say there are two things to consider:

1) it's not just an investment in the asset.

It pays dividends. The asset can breed once per week, so that could be $1k+
per week generated.. paying for itself over time. Since this is the lone
genesis kitty, its offspring could fetch a totally arbitrary value.

2) This is ethereum we are talking about. If the ether was bought 1 year ago
today, it would have cost $1,557.1. Someone could have made a $1.5k investment
1 year ago which is now paying for itself weekly.

~~~
flashdance
> It pays dividends

It doesn't pay dividends in ETH, it pays dividends in more kitties. Is that
really a dividend?

If apple shares could only pay dividends in more apple shares instead of USD
would they have any value?

> This is ethereum we are talking about. If the ether was bought 1 year ago
> today, it would have cost $1,557.1. Someone could have made a $1.5k
> investment 1 year ago which is now paying for itself weekly.

Ethereum at least has a purpose, cryptokitties do not seem to have one.
Besides, you can't just say that the price of one crypto asset will go up
because a different one has gone up in the past!

~~~
bufferoverflow
> _Ethereum at least has a purpose, cryptokitties do not seem to have one_

Neither do collectible stamps, yet people buy them regularly. The most
expensive one costing $200K, with the face value of 15 cents.

~~~
timthelion
$200K?

"On May 22, 2010, the yellow stamp was auctioned once again by David Feldman
in Geneva, Switzerland. It sold "for at least the $2.3 million price [that] it
set a record for in 1996"."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treskilling_Yellow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treskilling_Yellow)

------
derefr
Seems like a good thing: "using up" the (currently very small) available
transaction space per block, will put pressure on the Ethereum network to move
more quickly to Proof-of-Stake (which will have the same blocks, but a much
faster mining rate, so it won't matter nearly as much); which will in turn put
pressure on Ethereum clients to develop more space/bandwidth-efficient
strategies for retrieving and storing those blocks (i.e. more things in line
with Parity's "warp" sync.)

~~~
etr-strike
There's no evidence Proof-of-Stake can work as a replacement for Proof-of-
Work.

~~~
drcode
I'd be happy respond to this comment if it was a bit more fleshed out and
didn't sound like an attempt at trolling, for instance why you don't consider
existing POS currencies like NXT to be "evidence".

~~~
xorcist
Because those all require a trusted third party to make regular checkpoints of
the blockchain. The argument is not that it is impossible but that no one has
been able to design it trustless.

It is a reasonable argument and while you may not agree with the desire to
avoid trusted third parties but there's no reason to dismiss it as trolling.

~~~
drcode
Well, the precise criticism you're making is a bit unclear to me but I'll try
to respond:

Modern proof of stake systems have a concept of "finality" which I think is
what you're referring to when you say "checkpoint" (older POS systems also had
a more traditional checkpoint concept, but I assuming you're arguing against
modern implementations)

In order to determine whether a block has "finality" in a POS system you need
to either (A) have a computer running regularly on the network to determine
finality on your own or (B) trust a third party to give you a valid finality
designator.

So it is true that you have to trust a third party with these systems if (1)
you haven't connected to the network for a year or so or (2) you are launching
a brand new node.

Of course, with bitcoin #2 is also an issue since there's no way you can
install bitcoin software on a new node without getting it from a trusted
party.

~~~
xorcist
I have never heard of "finality" being used outside Ethereum, but maybe you
can point me at which existing PoS systems use the term? Or is it Ethereum
specifically which is the modern PoS system?

The Ethereum PoS system, which is still a prototype and may change before the
final version, uses checkpoints to guard against chain re-orgs. It is not
trustless in the same sense as the Ethash system is. It's not exactly a secret
but a calculated tradeoff.

The question here however was about how "currencies like NXT" work, which can
hardly be described as modern seeing it was one of the first together with
PPC. I believe they never fixed the fact that the optimum mining strategy is
not the altruistic one the reference client uses. As long as all participants
use the reference client they're safe, but it's not something you would want
to base a trillion dollar economy on.

In general the challenges with proof-of-stake systems are how to avoid
collusion, how to avoid exploratory mining on every possible chain, and
variants thereof. (There's also the related problem how to bootstrap a node
from scratch in face of equally probable views of history.) Different
blockchains have tried different ways to mitigate this, including hard coded
re-org limits and coin weights, but the only ones that have proven at scale
are the ones that regularly checkpoint the chain. But please correct me if you
know of any exceptions.

~~~
drcode
Tendermint and Ethereum are the ones I'm most familiar with- Both use the term
"finality" frequently.

In Ethereum POS, an arbitrary PC can use a deterministic algorithm to exactly
calculate the checkpointed/finalized block- There is no magical signature used
by the ethereum foundation that "blesses" blocks as being checkpoints.

> how to avoid exploratory mining on every possible chainges with proof-of-
> stake systems are how to avoid collusion

In both Ethereum POS and tendermint this is a solved problem, anyone can earn
a reward by providing proof that a user is mining multiple histories.

> There's also the related problem how to bootstrap a node from scratch in
> face of equally probable views of history

Yes, this is still an existing theoretical limitation of POS that is not
shared by POW and is a valid criticism of POS- But even on a POW chain you
still have to trust software from a third party to some degree in order
bootstrap your node.

~~~
xorcist
"Solved problem" is perhaps a bit strong. There's no reason to assume every
possible chain is visible to every client. An attacker would not release a
chain until they are certain to profit from it. There are likely bribes to be
taken for reversing transactions, and these add up at scale. There is the
suggestion that penalizing non-cooperating miners would be sufficient to
prevent this, but this has never been shown to hold theoretically and cover
all externalities such as the mentioned bribes.

If a such a blockchain is under the control of a mining cartel, it would be
rational to join that cartel instead of fighting it. When every participant
knows this it should be possible to bootstrap such cartels from scratch.

And Ethereum absolutely plans to implement some sort of checkpoints. As you
say, it's required to bootstrap new nodes anyway. The straightforward way to
do this would be to sign them, but I'm not sure what they're planning to do.

~~~
drcode
> An attacker would not release a chain until they are certain to profit from
> it.

There are two scenarios: If they release a new chain after they have released
a previous signature, their entire deposit gets slashed in both chains. If
instead they withhold all chains then this would only work if they are able to
mine multiple blocks in quick succession on different chains (since they would
lose the opportunity to validate a block within the timeout window) and this
is exactly equivalent to a POW selfish mining attack.

~~~
xorcist
Right, and there are many variants of this scenario that other people can
think of. It all stems from the same basic problems above. Punishing cheaters
is necessary, but not necessarily sufficient.

The difference from a PoW model is that when mining is essentially free the
incentives are different. If it doesn't cost you anything to try it makes game
theoretical sense to do it speculatively.

------
nrhk
Somebody turned cryptoPunks
([https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks](https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks))
into cryptoKitties and made bank, genius.

~~~
ionwake
The question is why was cryptokitties more successfull

EDIT> and thank you for linking that, fascinating

~~~
alexasmyths
Trends are hard to define.

The entity behind Kitties has some other high profile projects and media
contacts. If they have something interesting to talk about, they can get
people talking about. And even with a large staff of their own + friends -
their incidental social network alone is enough to start some yammering.

I don't think a bad project can go viral, but many viral worthy projects
simply don't go viral.

~~~
wrinkl3
Also collecting kitties appeals to more people than collecting punks.

~~~
paintchipluvr
Indeed I want one but all the ones I find cutest are expensive.

I think
[https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitty/102](https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitty/102)
this one should probably just be put out of its misery

------
Lon7
I think the cool thing about this idea is that "cats" is just one possibility.
It can work just as well with nearly anything that requires proof of ownership
or uniqueness. Maybe property or mineral rights, or stock and other
securities, etc.

~~~
ThomPete
I always looked at it as Pokemon cards. Because it's unique you can track it's
history and that opens up for a whole slew of new interesting services.

Ebook's could increase in price when sold second hand (owned by such and
such), an open source gaming asset exchange allowing people to buy and sell no
matter the game.

Basically it crypto creates physical like scarcity in an otherwise abundant
digital space.

That's the biggest deal about crypto IMO.

~~~
jcoffland
How does blockchain technology keep people from copying the ebooks? Why would
anyone care about an abstract idea of ownership of an eBook that you could
read without owning?

~~~
ThomPete
The value isn't in the ebook it's in the history of the ebook. Why do you
think people pay extra money for a physical book they can buy cheap on amazon.

It's not the content of the book it's the affectional value of the book that's
interesting.

------
JustAnotherPat
Bitcoin enthusiasts in 2009: Bitcoin is for making currency transactions

Bitcoin enthusiasts in 2017: Bitcoin is for storing value

Ethereum enthusiasts in 2015: Ethereum is for making trustless currency
transactions

Ethereum enthusiasts in 2020: Ethereum is for storing cats

~~~
DennisP
This was predictable to anyone who paid attention to Vitalik's t-shirts.

~~~
Atheros
[https://www.vitalikwears.com/](https://www.vitalikwears.com/)

------
em3rgent0rdr
In all seriousness, this is a good stress test for the network.

------
jsmthrowaway
The article points out that on Saturday, someone basically bought a 256-bit
number for $117,712.12. Are we all in the wrong line of work, or what?

~~~
wereHamster
I would gladly sell you a 256-bit number–that is actually the password to my
swiss bank account–for 100k USD. For all you know, there might be a lot of
gold in it.

------
runeks
> Some people are concerned that a frivolous game is now going to be crowding
> out more serious, significant-seeming business uses.

That’s the point. The open platform of the blockchain is usable by whoever is
willing to pay what it costs in fees; not by how significant-seeming their
activity is.

------
jerkstate
I heard about this but send an ETH transaction in about 20 minutes this
morning. I guess "slow" for ETH is a different standard than "slow" for BTC,
or ACH (shudder)

~~~
lmm
20 minutes is very slow compared to, say, Paym.

------
cableshaft
Huh, this seems like a pretty interesting and different use of the technology,
and probably a hint at what's to come. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually
most virtual items in games were tied to a blockchain of some sort, with a
free marketplace behind it. I bet there's probably an alt-coin or five out
there that's planning on being the goto currency for exactly that purpose.

~~~
rmidthun
Like this one?

[https://blog.highfidelity.com/avatar-island-our-first-
steps-...](https://blog.highfidelity.com/avatar-island-our-first-steps-to-a-
distributed-digital-economy-d319b43b933c)

~~~
cableshaft
I don't mean specific to a single game. I mean a general one that can be
hooked into any and all games, with an API and what not. Avatar Island doesn't
seem any different than Cryptokitties according to that article. It's still
cool, though.

------
guiomie
Personally, the positive aspect I got out of cryptokitties is it exposed me to
Metamask and how you can integrate blockchain in traditional web applications.
It's not perfect (timeouts/slow x) but it's a cool insight at a potential
future where ETH or other cryptos run financial transactions on the web.

------
djtriptych
> The game's developers describe them as "breedable Beanie Babies", each with
> its own unique 256-bit genome.

> The kitties' unique DNA can lead to four billion possible genetic
> variations.

Erm 2^256 is juuuuust a bit more than 4 billion. This seems like an error.

~~~
calvinlh
[https://www.google.com/search?q=2^256](https://www.google.com/search?q=2^256)

You're off by about 68 orders of magnitude; it's 2^32 that's approximately 4
billion.

~~~
rspeer
This is what the person you are replying to was pointing out, yes, using
sarcastic understatement.

~~~
djtriptych
Really thought that 5th 'u' in juuuuust would have implied the sarcasm tag

~~~
shakestheclown
Six is the minimum.

------
teknopurge
I don't see the slowness. I do see transactions backing up, but the ones with
higher gas prices will get priority. This is how the network _should_ work....

------
joering2
The fact that their is someone out there that would 1) like cats 2) like
digital cats 3) wanted to buy digital cat, AND 4) knew how to
operate/buy/sell/trade crypto-currency just blew my mind!

Everything I knew about targeting audience, sorting market, or leads databases
in general just fell apart.

------
mundo
ETH noob here. I don't understand why load would be a problem. Isn't the point
of ETH that "miners" provide the space/cpu to execute contracts, and get paid
in gas? Why doesn't "too much load" translate to "greater gas rewards" and
hence to "miners switching from other cryptos to mine eth"?

~~~
kruhft
The issue is that ETH only can handle a certain amount of transactions per
block (based on its block size). When the network gets overloaded, all of the
potential transactions cannot be held in a single block and must be delayed
until the next block, leading to higher fees for each transaction, giving it a
higher priority and making it more likely to put in a block of a certain size.
Same 'problem' as bitcoin; too many transactions are being fit into a finite
space per block increasing competition to have your transaction in a block,
but really it's just basic scarcity economics.

------
sAbakumoff
Interesting trend on crypto kitties : Virgin cats(ones who didn't have any
kids) are more expensive than the..other ones..That's officially insane.

~~~
ric2b
I'm not sure how this works but if the breeding depends on the "genes" of the
parents and isn't completely random then virgin cats might be more valuable
because they haven't yet made their genes more easily available via their
children?

------
mchahn
How could a 10% increase in traffic be a problem?

------
glorkk
Are there currently any alternatives to Ethereum? (turing-complete
programmable cryptocurrency)

~~~
etr-strike
Yes: Rootstock ( [https://www.rsk.co/](https://www.rsk.co/) ). This exists as
a sidechain to the bitcoin network and implements the Ethereum virtual
machine. It launched on mainnet yesterday.

~~~
shazow
s/mainnet/testnet/ according to [https://media.rsk.co/announcement-upcoming-
rsk-testnet-reset...](https://media.rsk.co/announcement-upcoming-rsk-testnet-
reset/)

~~~
etr-strike
No, it's currently running on mainnet: [https://media.rsk.co/getting-started-
with-bamboo-rsk-mainnet...](https://media.rsk.co/getting-started-with-bamboo-
rsk-mainnet-beta/)

------
zitterbewegung
I guess one of the fastest and best way to get engagement is to do something
cute .

------
partycoder
We are all all in 2017 while those guys are in 3017.

What's wrong with going to the shelter and getting an actual cat.

~~~
mirceal
the cat you get at the shelter keeps requiring ether forever

~~~
dingo_bat
Forever?

~~~
partycoder
Technically speaking, a cat can continue to be an expense either directly or
transitively, possibly forever, as long as the cat is fertile, has a fertile
mating partner in reproductive age, and recursively produces successive
generations of descendants, each one consisting of at least one live-birth of
fertile cats surviving to reproductive age that you agree to be economically
responsible of.

This duration would have an upper bound equal the minimum between your own
lifespan and the ownership period of the cat(s).

------
ionwake
does anyone here know how breeding works basically?

~~~
kruhft
Using a variety of techniques you can create a 'crossover' between 2 genomes
to breed the next generation. A simple crossover is to take the first half of
one and the second half of the other and attach them together. Or any other
way of combining the two to give a 'good' result, but that's the most basic
way of crossover before putting the next generation into the growth chamber.

For a better explanation, see Koza's[1] work.

[1] [http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html](http://www.genetic-
programming.com/johnkoza.html)

~~~
devotedtoneu
I'm developing a monster-taming/breeding game that offers dynamic breeding and
the "base" type of breeding interpolates values to create the new child.

Items in-game of course can "nudge" the formula.

Doing this on the block-chain is an interesting idea a few people have
suggested to me, but ultimately it didn't mesh with my idea of what the game
should be.

------
aerodog
eos.io released their alpha yesterday: [https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-
dawn-2-0-released-and-...](https://steemit.com/eos/@eosio/eos-io-
dawn-2-0-released-and-development-update)

~~~
tyrust
Without any other context your comment is irrelevant spam.

