CryptoKitties taught us two things in 2017. One, that Ethereum was going to need serious scalability solutions sooner rather than later.
And secondly? That the future possibilities of gaming on Ethereum could be, well, endless and promising.
It was only a matter of time before innovators came and tried their hands at these possibilities. Accordingly, the next big game that's currently causing waves in the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond is CryptoCelebrities.
The name alone pretty much says it all. Instead of buying and selling tokenized kitties with ether (ETH), with CryptoCelebrities you buy and sell tokenized celebrities — like Gucci Mane and Miley Cyrus — courtesy of smart contracts.
The idea? You sell your tokenized celebrity for a profit, and the makers of the game keep a small percentage of that as the next person takes said “celebrity” and tries to do the same: sell for a profit.
Now, if you pick up Brad Pitt's “contract,” you can reasonably expect there will be some bankable demand for the A-Lister token. Buying smaller, less renowned celebs is obviously much riskier.
Allow us to explain a little bit further.
How's it work
You head over to the CryptoCelebrities marketplace, which — be warned — is still in beta. You'll automatically see a dashboard of celeb contracts to choose from, at which point you can start perusing and buying at your leisure.
Image via CryptoCelebrities
In order to actually do any buying, you'll need to have MetaMask installed on your browser. Once you do, you can start buying celeb contracts with ether.
If you buy, you'll own the contract in question until someone else comes along and decides to pay the going price.
The token interface itself will list out previous buyers, what price they bought at and when, and what price the next buyer will have to pay. So profit is caked in — if anyone wants your token that is — in that celebrity tokens can only be bought at a higher price than what they were previously sold for.
Another neat aspect? Real-life celebs can “verify” their contracts, much like the common practice of verified accounts on Twitter today. Accordingly, these celebs can then pocket 3 percent of every sale from their associated token, or they can select to forward the proceeds to charity.
Prices are already pretty high, too. The current Vitalik Buterin token, for example, is going for ~23 ETH at press time.
Worth the fuss?
While interesting, CryptoCelebrities is still an unproven project. It's probably best to let the platform mature further before you drop double-digit ETH into some celeb tokens expecting to make a quick buck.
You may be tempted to jump in early and catch the wave before it really starts, but that could also make you get burned the worst if anything were to go seriously wrong.
Patience, right? Or, in the very least, perhaps just pick up one of the smaller celebs for a cheap price and see what happens from there. But do your own research as always, you're alone responsible for your crypto decisions.
Image via Fotolia
