THE FEATURE Scratch That: CryptoKitties Isn't Ethereum's Vision for Apps Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin cried himself to sleep the night "World of Warcraft" maker Blizzard Entertainment altered his "beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell." According to Buterin, the online role-playing game forever changed his outlook toward app development. "On that day, I realized what horrors centralized services can bring," he writes on his official "About.me." Aspiring to offer a "world computer," ethereum has sought to stop similar occurrences by providing a platform on which decentralized applications (dapps) can run. But while a whole slew of startups is developing ethereum solutions for everything from social media to file sharing, none have yet to see a large, mainstream audience. Apart from CryptoKitties. An internet-based game for buying, selling and breeding adorable digital kittens, CryptoKitties has found itself in the center of a pop culture storm. Many have lauded the app for giving new users an easy, fun way to learn about cryptocurrency protocols, but others are strongly opposed to the app, which has been the cause of serious backlogs and rising transaction fees on the network. But there's another issue with CryptoKitties that's being increasing called to attention: namely, your kitty isn't as decentralized as you think. | 
0 Comments