STEEM CRYPTO ACADEMY SEASON 2, WEEK 2 HOME WORK POST FOR @levycore – AN INTRODUCTION TO NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS (NFTs)

Thank you so much professor @levycore for the lesson. It was helpful. Below is my homework post for this week.

INTRODUCTION

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a part or unit of data that cannot be interchanged, rather, is uniquely stored in a blockchain. These Non-fungible tokens in the blockchain provides a proof of ownership other than copyright.

NFTs now are being used as a commodity to represent music, art, etc. The point here is that the item represented must be one of its kind.

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Today about Non-fungible tokens, I'll be writing about the cryptokitties project on the Ethereum blockchain.

CRYPTOKITTIES

Cryptokitties is a blockchain game which is used to create new virtual kitties, breed, trade on them, etc and they are represented by Non-fungible tokens that meet up to the standard of ERC-721.

Cryptokitties enables participants to buy and sell virtual cats as well as purchase or breed them.

This project became popular in late 2017 and shooting the transaction higher than ever.

Cryptokitties was popular for a very short while due to the existing trend at the time it was released.

The trend was that Blockchain games lacked playability as developers didn't pay attention to player's experience and we're also restricted from implementing some complex functions of such games.

Cryptokitties being a non-fungible token (NFT) cannot be transferred without an authorization by the user. Not even the developers are able to transfer it. The game was developed by Axiom Zen and the ownership of a cryptokitty is traced through Smart contracts.

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HOW TO PLAY WITH CRYPTOKITTIES AND EARN

In order to start playing, a user must get registered on cryptokitties.co and link his metamask wallet after which he can buy a cryptokitty and play or sell as well.

After this purchase, the value in NFT will be sent to the user's wallet. This user becomes the sole owner of such and can breed it.

To earn more, it us advised that the user makes the virtual cat more attractive with rare attributes. A kitty with rare attributes is worth more ETHs than the others.

Also, The lower the generation of such kitty, the higher it's worth. New kitties are generated through breeding.

However, it is not so easy to generate cryptokitties with rare attributes. But the game centers on how to generate kitties with rarer attributes so that they would be worth more than their parents and thus, money can be earned.

THE GENETIC ALGORITHM OF THE CRYPTOKITTY PROJECT

CryptoKitties makes use of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) in creating Kitties. Just like the genetics we know in biology, where the DNA give details about the rest of the body, the genes in this project gives details about the kitties or cats. This information may be about fur, background color, stripes, etc. Here, numbers are used in place of those Gene components.

In a generic algorithm, crossbreeding is done by taking genes (genome) from both the father and mother and then mixing them together. Here, the infant will have some traits of the father and mother but with an entirely unique genome. This process is called crossover.

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RUNNING A GENERIC ALGORITHM ON ETHEREUM

The major problem of carrying out a crossover with cryptoalcurrency lies here. But it is quite simple. Here, the process is that of providing solutions to some problems thereby creating a new kitty. Two numbers are used to represent the parents (father and mother) and the end product would be a single number which is the baby (new kitty).

Smart contracts can also be used to store data. This data may be that of a genome. Calculations can also be carried out.

Thank you so much for having me here! I really appreciate.

Cc:
@steemitblog
@steemcurator01
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@levycore