Last week in the midst of the CryptoKitties pandemonium I took the time to investigate the application to gain a first-hand perspective on developing crisis over on the Ethereum network. I put together a post to share my initial experience and give my thoughts on the situation. At the time I was locked in what seemed like a futile effort to simply purchase and then breed two virtual kittens.
In the days that followed we (the EOS supporters) used this frustrating and funny situation to poke fun at this Epic ETH Fail. I created several MEMEs for @OfficialFuzzy's contest and helped from his Tokens for Tweets challenge and even had my MEMEs posted an tweeted out by people all over the internet. Aaaaaand a good laugh was had by all.
As the dust settled a deeper conversation began over on Telegram, a discussion about network scalability and the economical repercussions of this type of network failing due to just one(1) DApp that went viral, not to mention the damage this causes to any developers or companies creating applications on the wrong technology.
I will get back to this in just a bit, right after we experience the pain of breeding digital kittens using ETH.
Creating Kitties
The process of breeding two kitties to make another is very straight-forward. You pick one to be the dad, and another to be the mom. Sprinkle on some ETH along with lots and lots of GAS fees and click submit.
Now I'm not sure if the programmers intended for this to simulate the actual amount it times for real cats to give birth (around 64 days), but it sure felt like it. The transaction process took forever, over an hour just to get to the point where you have to then wait for the programmed wait time for the new kitten to arrive in your account.
To be clear upfront, I do not have any problems with the CryptoKitties application, the intended functionality and concept is great. The problem is with the user experience which is 100% due to the failing of the Ethereum technology and blockchain.
SUCCESS! Almost 2 hours later, Squishy Paws was born.
I decided to continue on with my testing and went through the struggles to buy another kitty from the marketplace and breed a few more combinations to build my CryptoKitties family. Just as the day before, the process was time consuming and frustrating, and plagued with hour-long network delays and failed transactions.
The only way to have a "better guarantee" of success was to crank up the GAS fee which makes the whole process very expensive and NOT FUN at all. Most times it worked out to $10 to breed together two of my own kitties.
Trying to buy kitties is a drawn out process because of the delays on the Ethereum network. The application does not receive timely network replies (success or fail) to give the correct owner/sale status for the kittens on the marketplace. You can find a kitty, click buy, wait, and 45 minutes later get a declined error since apparently someone else already was buying the same one just before you even though the profile page said it was still available to buy.
Notice the 1 hour time difference from the top date/time.
Egg on Your Face
Can you imagine spending all that time to develop the 'first-of-its-kind' crypto application only to be plagued by network delays that cripple your user experience to the point you feel the need to place a "Network Status" alert at the top of your website?
Be patient? This requires more than patience. This REQUIRES a move to a qualifying DPoS technology... one that can handle millions of transactions per day with out breaking a sweat. Can we say STEEM or EOS!
The TRUTH about Blockchain Transaction Capacity
A few weeks ago @OfficialFuzzy introduced me and others to http://blocktivity.info, it is now the only metrics we use when trying to explain the differences between the operational capacities of the various blockchains running loose on the interewebs.
When people get all hung up on market cap, price, and buy/sell orders to gauge the success of blockchain, which is mostly then a contest of misguided opinion, we have to take a moment to focus on the actual performance metrics of the chains to get accurate understanding of how this will all play out long-term.
If a network can be brought to its knees by one(1) single popular application, what will happen when the next one comes on line? How are people going to be expected to wait upwards of an hour to make a single interaction with a website, business application, or game - no less if multiple steps are required for the application to be of any meaningful purpose. This will be devastating to any kind of business or financial system that requires close to real-time transfer of data.
What if you have to wait 30-60 minutes to see a confirmation after each comment you wrote on Steemit, or after every time you clicked the Upvote button before you could do the next transaction because of the STEEM blockchain technology? And then you had to pay a FEE on top of that! Would still be using this platform or any other that used STEEM?
Blocktivity.info snapshot showing a comparison of Ethereum and STEEM at the same moment in time. Ethereum is still at 100% capacity with a huge backlog of unconfirmed transactions while STEEM has done MORE transactions and is ONLY using 0.32% of its capacity.
Ethereum made so many promises of current ability and future scalability to handle transactional throughput using a technology that Dan Larimer repeatedly warned them would not be able to, and when it was finally put to the test by kittens, it failed - hard!
Our discussions carry on over on Telegram where Dan even joins the conversation and has given his opinion on the unfortunate situation the CryptoKittes developers find themselves in.
Again, CryptoKittes is a great concept and would have been a great way to introduce the general population (non-techies, non-crypto people) to the decentralized world of blockchain and cryptocurrency. The ONLY mistake they made was choosing to operate on the Ethereum blockchain network.
Let me know your thoughts.
Be sure to check out http://blocktivity.info AND Bookmark it! It is very useful in understanding what is really going on "behind the curtain". I just realized today they have a profile on Steemit @blocktivity, only a few posts so far, but feel free to drop a comment on a previous post to let them know what you think of the their tool.
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Thanks for reading!
LOL Ninja Cat!
Yeah, ETHic Fail lol!
BTS, Steem & EOS are the future... Yeah baby, yeah!
LOL - I like that ETHic :-)
@steempowerpics Salute mah man, since i read ur previous post on the cryptokitties i told my wife about this blockchain game. We have 2 cats that we love so much so we thought why dont we create their characters on the blockchain we started with 2 and we ended up with this... lol there is also another page but u get the scope... :P
Definitely its an addictive game if anyone is into collectibles and experimenting with breeding and in a way what i like about it is that it gives a cooler way for people who don't understand crypto to be part of the whole thing. I even learned about ethereum crypto and the metamask because of this, and we started making profit through breeding and selling.
Once again thanks for sharing and motivation to step into this crypto furry world haha
p.s If u want any special breeds or have any for sale let me know, also maybe we can trade :P Ill catch u on discord. Kudos!
hmmm.. thinking about this more now, I don't seem to recall seeing anything in the code that would stop offspring <-> offspring or parent <-> offspring from mating with one another! Perhaps that opens the doors to creating a whole generation of cryptardkitties! lol
🙀 Cryptard Kitties LOL Classic! It does prevent your from selecting parents or siblings when you breed within the kitties you own. Not sure if you try to mix related ones owned by other people.
ah okay, so that's good at least, didn't see that on your other screenshot so made me think perhaps they "forgot" about that part! lol
regarding that line, remember how pissed off we all were those few weeks when we had to click upvote or try reposting 5 or 6 times before they went through? It was practically steemigeddon out there! Put in the context of ethereum, I suppose we didn't realize just how "spoiled" we really were! lol
Regardless, I'm glad it seems they worked out many of those issues, because for now at least it seems they've got STEEMIT working pretty smoothly, well practically perfectly by "ethereum standards"!
Of course, to show me up I just clicked to upvote your comment and it just keeps on spinning, I think just to piss me off! At least it did finally go through on only the second try! :D lol
LOL 😂 Yep I remember those Steemit issues, which was unfortunate, but at least that was on the front-end side and not a failing of the STEEM blockchain tech. I'm super happy they got that all worked out too.
After experiencing 6 days using an Ethereum DApp, I can 100% say we really are spoiled here on Steemit with the virtually instant transactions and no fees.
Great write up. I enjoyed this a lot. Resteemed and up-voted.
I am excited about EOS and this gets me more interested. It is clear the current Ethereum is not where it needs to be, but the question in my mind is still whether ETH can get where it needs to quick enough, because if ETH doesnt get those transactions per second up, and fast, then it is going to bleed market cap in 2018.
Yep, I'm not sure if the plan for upgrading the ETH tech is on schedule or not, but that is part of the bigger issue. If more DApps launch on Ethereum and the network delay and backlog of unconfirmed transactions grows it will be detrimental to any company using it for their business or applications. On top of that you will have the financial bleed.
😌 Thank you for the support.
It was a long ride for me to even be able to buy the kitties, than breed them and sire them out... so far is has only cost me ethereum and allot of time.
I will be holding on to them tho and see what i can do with them in a couple weeks/months :)
😵 I hear ya. I moved over .5 ETH from Steemit earnings to test out the various functions of the app. I ended up with 9 kitties from the original 3 I purchased. Six days of struggles, so now i will wait it out and see what I can do with them in time as well.
Great post.
Getting a kitty was my first experience using ethereum and understanding how gas works. Honestly it was painful and most of that was from the network issues.
Also the cost for transactions! Having to guess the amount of GWEI and then the total you would pay and yada yada yada is difficult for someone that just wants to join in the fun. It is amazing that Steem is creating transactions on the blockchain with the push of a button just like I am about to do. 👍
🌟 EXACTLY! You hit the nail on the head right there!
Trying to figure out all those computations to get the best price but just high enough to let the transaction go through is beyond frustrating.
If we ever expect crypto-based applications to go mainstream and be "mom and dad" friendly where they are not calling every 2 minutes for help, chains like STEEM, BTS, and soon EOS are the only way to go.
Why in the world did they choose ETH, we may never know. But it was a missed opportunity for sure.
Maybe krypto doggies will use a smarter network.
Who knows.
Funny adventure of yours and nice reading.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you. There is lots of talk about clones on EOS going around and even an effort to convince the CryptoKitties devs to move over to EOS when it launches next year (do-over). We'll see. Definitely a missed opportunity to bring crypto/blockchain to the mainstream.
It's awesome to see the blockchain used in a game. This just shows how incredible the technology is and all of its applications.
Yes, It is a great example from the concept angle. If only they used the correct blockchain that could handle the large number of transactions.
Could you make money breeding cryptokitties and selling them?
Technically yes. You buy them, breed them, and can then sell them off. The can technically be seen as a graphical representation of ETH.
interesting...
These “kitties” are clogging up the ethereum Blockchain.😂
very nice design in your post, very good work !
this game have not enough gamers !
Informational stuff
Its a good game
And an indirect ethereum investment.
Ethereum...destroyed by kitty cats.