Technology owes a lot to kittens: including NFT. While their omnipresence on social networks is being threatened by the advance of the puppy “lobby”, the behind the scenes are still in their hands. The “Non fungible tokens”, ie the non fungible tokens (ie “unique, unrepeatable”) that demonstrate the ownership of an object through the blockchain, have recently found headlines thanks to a famous gif that has populated the network for over ten years: it is the Nyan Cat, an iconic gif that it has been “remastered” by its creator precisely on the occasion of the two decades of life. The creation was then sold for a value of $ 545,000 paid in Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain.
But the kittens are related to blockchain long before the headlines loved cryptoart and well before a sort of economic “bubble” was created around it, yet another digital one.
at auction
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Indeed, it is precisely the term “non-fungible token” that should be used for kittens. In 2017, a group of Canadian developers launched the game “KryptoKitties”, a game to raise and exchange digital kittens: a concept similar to the one that animated the Tamagochi in the 1990s.
The same blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies was used to create Nft, which served as identification collars for crypto cats. Unlike a cryptocurrency, however, each cat had to be unique. For this reason the developers thought of the term “non-fungible”, as explained by the chief executive of the company Dapper Labs, Roham Gharegozlou: “We didn’t think too much about it – he told the Wall Street Journal – the other things were not fungible and therefore we simply called them non-fungible “.
Between the felines and the Net, the story is long-lived: it was 2002 when Joel Veitch, British singer-songwriter and web animator, father of the cult site prettygood.com, created his Kitten Band, which was followed by Punk Kittens, Northern Kittens, Gay Bar Kittens and Sweary Kittens.
There have been internet myths that had claws: Maru, the Scottich Fold of the Japanese user Mugumogu, which was very popular on YouTube over ten years ago. Not to mention Grumpy Cat, the cat who, thanks to her repressive expression, became the perfect meme for years and years (she passed away in 2019). For kittens they have invented everything: from the purr generator for cats that helps improve productivity, Purrli, a kind of Big Brother on YouTube, called “Kattarshians” which in 2017 they invented in Iceland to find a home for little foundlings.
However, the times when entire exhibitions were dedicated to cats on the net, such as that of 2015 at the Museum of Moving Image (Astoria, New York), seem distant. intitolata “How cats took over the Internet”. In recent years, someone has assumed that a sort of overtaking was taking place on social networks. In 2018 it was even the New York Times that spent its time on the subject, explaining how dogs were more smiling and loyal – as well as more trainable – while cats were less funny: one order, the other chaos.
Some also seem to forget when photos and images of cats were used to promote political battles, such as that of 2015. The Kitten Project promoted an attack on Matteo Salvini’s social profiles – the hashtag #gattinisusalvini remained famous – using “cute little kittens messengers of love on the message boards of those who take it too seriously!”.
Tutorial
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It is impossible to have certain data, but a check is necessary. Fixed the maternity issue on Nft, on social media, current state, in fact, the china would seem to be undertaken: posts with the hashtag #dogsofInstagram are 241 million, while those with #catsofinstagram at 164 million posts.
Google Trends seems to confirm. Despite the rise of the gods a few weeks ago “Karate Cats” (a BBC game dedicated to teaching for kids) and the classic “How to stop cats scrubbing supplies” (how to stop cats from destroying furniture), the dogs seem, for the past 12 months, having conquered searches in everything. There trend is also confirmed in Italy.
I know the cats have been watching, one thing is certain: they are doing it with contempt.
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