Allana's Avatar
published in Blogs
Nov 28, 2018

How Videogame about Cats Could Bring Blockchain into the Mainstream

Dapper Labs, the decentralized app (or dapp, pronounced ‘dee-app’) developer behind CryptoKitties, recently announced a $15 million funding round. Venrock, who led the round, were joined by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Samsung NEXT. According to the press release announcing the deal, the funds “will be used to help Dapper Labs, a Canadian-founded company, expand locally and globally,” including “establishing a U.S. subsidiary led by former executives from Unity and Disney, with additional hires for the Canada office from Ubisoft, EA Sports, Amazon, ESPN, Hasbro, and Zynga.”

CryptoKitties, which is billed in the press release as the “world’s first and most successful consumer blockchain product,” is a key part of Dapper Labs’ mission “to use games and entertainment to bring the values of decentralization to billions of consumers worldwide,” says CEO Roham Gharegozlou.

The game is centered around creating, managing, and trading the titular “collectible digital art forms”, each of which is “a unique digital asset, or non-fungible token (NFT).” Blockchain is used to establish true, indisputable ownership of each cat, which can be bred within the game to create new cats with special attributes; peer-to-peer transactions to acquire new cats are facilitated by smart contracts. CryptoKitties’ smart contracts represent “the world’s most popular outside of exchanges, with over 3.2-million transactions recorded to date,” according to the press release.

Investors are betting that Dapper Labs’ game-centric approach to blockchain will be a crucial step towards widespread mainstream adoption of decentralized ledger technology. Dapps have been slow to gather users thus far, despite their considerable promise – while developers are hard at work creating decentralized alternatives to traditional apps, functionality, and consistency can be elusive between myriad glitches and operating issues. Coupled with the familiar hindrance of scaling on Ethereum (which Fortune notes results “in prohibitive transaction fees when there is an uptick of activity”), CryptoKitties hovers between 300-400 users per day – down significantly from the 14,000 daily users it boasted at its peak (not coincidentally, near the peak of 2017’s crypto boom).

The numbers remain strong for a dapp but representative of how far there is to go to reach the numbers associated with wider engagement. The fact that CryptoKitties continues to attract attention from investors (this is its second investment round, following a $12 million round in March) speaks to the belief in the potential of blockchain outside of virtual currencies. Dapper Labs will use the latest influx of capital to improve the app’s infrastructure to make it more user-friendly, in hopes of creating a similar product to the traditional app-based games that are now proven money makers. The prospect of doing so while subsequently aiding large-scale blockchain adoption remains tantalizing.

 

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John Jacques's Avatar
published in Blogs
May 16, 2022
A.I. Stock Market Predictions: Head & Shoulders

A.I. Stock Market Predictions: Head & Shoulders

Statistics for the Head-and-Shoulders Bottom Pattern The days where only hedge funds used algorithms to trade stocks are officially over. Now retail investors can use Artificial Intelligence (A.I.  Here’s an example of the algorithm in action: Late last year, Tickeron’s A.I.
Edward Flores's Avatar
published in Blogs
Apr 29, 2022
How to Become the Millionaire Next Door

How to Become the Millionaire Next Door

The Golden Gate Bridge is always a fixture of these walks too, one of man's most beautiful creations.  As we were walking, at one point she turned to me and said, "Man, I'll never have a million dollars."" My girlfriend is 27 years old and works as a graphic designer, making about $75,000 a year.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
May 16, 2022
When Is the Next Recession Coming?

When Is the Next Recession Coming?

However, we also know that economists predicted 22 recessions out of 11 that took place since 1945. Are there real recession signs we should watch for?Indeed, the answer is yes, and here are a few very important ones: The first one is almost obvious and known to everyone – it is the Fed.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 14, 2023
How to Start Trading Penny Stocks

How to Start Trading Penny Stocks

Penny stocks have long been marginalized within the professional investment community, oftentimes being painted with a broad brush of simply being “too risky.” Leonardo DiCaprio’s depiction of the penny stock peddling conman, Jordan Belfort, in the Wolf of Wall Street certainly didn’t help.Here are four reasons to start trading them now. Reason #1: Let’s State the Obvious -- Penny Stocks are Cheap A single share of Apple Inc. costs over $350.
Dmitry Perepelkin's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 14, 2023
5 Habits that Lead to Successful Investing

5 Habits that Lead to Successful Investing

To consistently make money in this industry, you need emotional fortitude, an analytical mind, and a willingness to self-reflect. Despite trading and investing being two different activities, these principles can be applied to both.Conversely, investors with good habits often become great traders.  Rather than full sentences for titles, we’ve labeled each of our top-five investing habits using a single word principle.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 13, 2023
4 Tips for Fast, Effective Stock Analysis

4 Tips for Fast, Effective Stock Analysis

With just a few clicks, an investor can search for individual stocks, categories of stocks, sectors, or investment themes, and then he or she can conduct a full range of technical and fundamental analysis within seconds.All powered by Artificial Intelligence.  Below, we give you 5 tips for fast, effective stock analysis using Tickeron’s Screener.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 20, 2023
5 Golden Principles in Investing

5 Golden Principles in Investing

You have enough faith in that stock, based on research, that the return will equal or exceed the investment.  Do unto others.The principles outlined here will ensure that happens.  Principle #1: Diversification Investors can’t be one-dimensional when constructing a portfolio.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 15, 2023
The five most important Lessons Learned After 10,000 hours of Trading
Edward Flores's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 12, 2023
What's the Difference Between Tokens and Altcoins?

What's the Difference Between Tokens and Altcoins?

Between their inherently technical nature, multiple varieties and sub-varieties, and endless terminology, cryptocurrency (defined here as digital or virtual currencies that are encrypted using cryptography, powered by the immutable digital ledger known as the blockchain) represents a whole, complex world.All altcoins possess their own blockchain, independent from their source code, that records all transactions of their native coins. Many altcoins are variants, or forks, of Bitcoin that leverage that cryptocurrency’s open-source protocol as the basis.
John Jacques's Avatar
published in Blogs
Apr 29, 2022
How Machines and Humans Can Work Together

How Machines and Humans Can Work Together

We use devices every day that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) – to the point where certain actions, like communicating with digital “assistants,” have become second nature.Books and movies tell us that AI will not only replace our jobs, and by extension, our livelihoods – it will eventually replace us, too. While there is historical precedent for job loss following adoption of new technologies, experts insist that we should not be looking at AI as ‘machine versus human,’ but rather as machine plus human.