TL;DR
CryptoKitties is a 2017 NFT game project from Dapper Labs that holds an important position in NFT and Web3 history. Recently, CryptoKitties released a new, open-edition NFT collection called Egg, which is connected to an incoming Telegram game. Egg has made significant price gains since launch, and has focused attention back onto CryptoKitties, and also towards Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain.
Can NFTs make a comeback thanks to a collection of Egg NFTs? There have been positive signs recently–you can read more about that in this article on NFTs with comeback potential–and now there is optimism around Egg, a drop connected to the very OG project CryptoKitties.
Egg has got off to a flying start so let’s look at what CryptoKitties is and why it matters, and then dive into the new drop, how it has performed so far, and what it might have planned from here.
What Is CryptoKitties?
While CryptoPunks, which launched in June 2017, set the standards for 10K PFP drops, another important NFT project launched that same year was CryptoKitties, which appeared that November and launched an experimental, NFT-centered game.
Created by Dapper Labs–which was at that time part of a studio called Axiom Zen–the CryptoKitties game is based around the idea of breeding cats that are owned as NFTs. Within a month after launch it had gone viral, and in 2018 CryptoKitties registered its most expensive ever sale: an item called Dragon that changed hands for 600 ETH (around $170,000 at the time).
CryptoKitties is also famous for, essentially, almost breaking Ethereum, as back then the blockchain was very early in its mission to scale effectively and it couldn’t efficiently manage a surge in NFT-gaming activity. The network slowed and gas fees to buy CryptoKitties exceeded the cost of the items themselves, but this real-time experiment actually produced long-term results as developers were compelled to produce scaling solutions.
Ultimately though, CryptoKitties didn’t stay on Ethereum: fast forward to 2020 and the project migrated to a new blockchain from Dapper Labs called Flow, although by that time CryptoKitties was already past its initial peaks.
However, Dapper Labs raised significant funding during this explosive period, and it’s worth keeping in mind some historical milestones that may be relevant right now: CryptoKitties coincided with ETH’s enormous bull run gains in 2017. Then in 2021, NBA Top Shot, which was built by Dapper Labs after the success of CryptoKitties, played a central role in kicking off the hugely profitable 2021/22 NFT bull run.
And now here in 2024, a new CryptoKitties-aligned expansion has dropped. So could this be a signal that NFTs might be about to pick up momentum again, just as CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot were positive markers before? That remains to be seen, but for now, let’s examine the details of the Egg collection.
Egg NFT Launch
Simply called Egg, the new collection was launched by CryptoKitties as an open-edition mint (meaning there was no fixed limit on supply) on August 30th. Minting took place through OpenSea, which is itself a suitably OG choice of platform, and Eggs were priced at just 0.008 ETH. During the 24-hour sales window, a total of 3,134 NFTs were minted, and these are divided into three tiers: Common, Uncommon, and Rare.
It was only after the mint ended that attention started to focus on these new items, amid speculation about what Dapper Labs and CryptoKitties might be cooking. From there, further information was limited until on September 2nd CryptoKitties tweeted the phrase P2E under an Egg-related GIF, thereby cluing holders in to the plan.
This was followed up with the announcement of an incoming Telegram game that appears to be titled CryptoKitties: All the Zen! This news is accompanied by a video featuring cats, eggs and a Telegram invite, and with that, anticipation has continued to ramp up.
It’s significant also that Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain has this week carried out an upgrade called Crescendo. This creates EVM equivalence on Flow, allowing for cross-chain compatibility with Ethereum apps. Whether or not this ties in directly with Egg developments is yet to be seen, but the timing between the blockchain upgrade and the NFT drop looks potentially significant.
Price Action and Prospects
Since launch, Eggs have seen huge price moves reminiscent of the way new mints would surge during the 2021/22 NFT bubble. From that initial 0.008 ETH mint cost, the floor price on secondary subsequently rose to a high of 0.37 ETH by September 3rd. Prices have dipped back–right now–to just over 0.18 ETH for Commons, while it’s 0.27 ETH for an Uncommon and 1.39 ETH for a Rare.
The project has done 925 ETH in trading volume over the course of less than a week, with 5,402 sales, while there are 1,168 unique holders, meaning 37% distribution, a figure that’s not bad, but still indicates that supply is overly concentrated among too few holders.
As for where the Egg collection goes from here, that depends on the Telegram game and whether it takes off, on the utility of Egg items and how they tie in with CryptoKitties, and also on the wider state of the NFT market.
None of these points are easily predictable so picking up an Egg remains a gamble, but there is a huge amount of nostalgic goodwill towards CryptoKitties, and NFT fans will enjoy the idea of one of the most OG projects around initiating a new NFT bull run, although that possibility remains for the moment just a matter of speculation.
