Сartoon Cats on the Blockchain

Сartoon Cats on the Blockchain

I Think about collecting. 

aa)    What can people collect? Take 3 minutes to write down a list of objects or items people can collect. Compare your lists with other students.

  b) Do you collect anything? If yes, what is it? Do you know anyone who is a collector?

   c) Study the definition of the word collectible:

collectible “an object that is collected; especially one other than such traditionally collectible items as art, stamps, coins, and antiques”.

What object can be collectibles? What collectibles are worth large sums of money? Where can people find and buy collectibles?

  d)  Look at the examples of collectibles below. Match the images and the names of collectibles. Which of these items (if any) would you like to collect?

  

1.    Beanie Babies (a line of stuffed animal  toys created by Ty Inc. popular in 1990s. The toys are stuffed with plastic pellets (called “beans”) but not with soft stuffing. That is why Beanie Babies felt flexible.

2.    Baseball cards.

3.    Marvel Avengers Age of Ultron Toys.

4.    Comic books.

5.    Porcelain dolls.

6.    Celebrity autographs.

II What can people collect in the digital age and the era of the Internet? Share your ideas with other students in short (5 minutes) discussion in pairs.

III Look at the image below. The image shows a new collectible. What do you think it is? Would you like to collect such items?

IV  Study the active vocabulary and focus on Ukrainian equivalents of English words.

cartoon карикатура

viral вірусний

blockchain блокчейн

spark запалювати

craze захоплення

apparently  очевидно

cryptocurrency криптовалюта

collectible предмет колекціонування

cap завершувати

generation покоління

breed  розводити

trait риса

entirely повністю

found засновувати

convince переконувати

loyal вірний

community спільнота

contest конкурс

ugly потворний

V Watch the video and fill in the gaps with the words from the list. There are some words you don’t need to use.

Allow; cryptocurrencies; services; digital; sudden; Generation; combination; interesting; favourite; ways; virtual; game; alleviated; entirely; royal; users; complex; cartoon; company; dog; person; loyal; third party; breed; cheapest; more; baseball;  found; ugly; traits; engineering; investing; try; holding; outside; find; silly; billions; created; mechanics; digital; right; cat; show

When I 1)______ you what I’m 2)______, some of you might see a simple 3)______. Some of you might see a 4)______ piece of 5)______. You’d both be 6)______. Meet Genesis, the first Cryptokitty. She’s not alone. All of a 7)______, cryptokitties are everywhere.

-“Cryptokitties” “Cryptokitties”…

- “The viral blockchain-based 8)______ that sparked a global craze for 9)______ cats.”

          - “It’s a picture of a 10)______. And apparently someone bought one for $100,000!”

You’ve probably heard of 11)______ - but these are cryptocollectibles. They’re like digital beanie babies or 12)______ cards. It sounds 13)______, but Cryptokitties is testing a profound idea: Can a 14)______ good be…rare?

Every 15 minutes, the 15)______ Axiom Zen releases a new cryptokitty that only one 16)______ can buy. And they’ll do that until November 2018, when they’re capping these “17)______ Zero” kitties at 50,000. But there are already 18)______ cryptokitties than that, because unlike baseball cards, you can 19)______ them.

- The game is that there are 20)______ of different possible combinations of 21)______. And so you can decide which 22)______ of traits is 23)______ to you and you can go out and try to 24)______ a cat that has that combination and buy it. Or you can 25)______ and find a combination that no one’s 26)______ before. And through our breeding 27)______ you can come up with new combinations of traits or, if you’re lucky, even new traits 28)______.

That’s Layne Lafrance and Dieter Shirley. They both helped 29)______ Cryptokitties in November 2017. And they’ve convinced a 30)______ group of 31)______ to spend more than $23 million buying and breeding these 32)______ cats. In just a few months, a whole community of 33)______  _____ sites and 34)______ formed around cryptokitties.

-         You can do youngest first, 35)______ first. See, like $10 bucks. And as I mouse over, this is a plug-in I found.

-        We are trying to find new 36)______ to play with these Kitties 37)______ of the main game. So we’re starting with contests! Derpface is possibly one of my 38)______ kitties because he is just so unbelievably 39)______.

VI Watch the video and answer the questions.

1 What is a Cryptokitty? Are Cryptokitties popular today? Why or why not?

2 In what way are cryptokitties similar to cryptocurrencies?

3 What company created Cryptokitties and how long would their project last?

4 Why are there already more than 50,000 Cryptokitties in the world?

5 What can users do when they want to play Cryptokitties game?

6 What traits can users change or control in their Cryptokitties? Can users create their own new traits?

7 What kinds of services exist around the Cryptokitties?

8 Why are contents important for Cryptokitties community? What kind of contests can there be?

9 How much can people spend on a Cryptokitty?

10 What idea are Cryptokitties trying to test?

V OVER TO YOU. Look at the images in task 3 or search for Cryptokitties online. Think of the appearance and traits that you would like to see in your own Cryptokitty. Describe the looks of the kitty to other students (the colour, the shape of the eyes, etc.) You can create a (digital) drawing of your Cryptokitty and show it to other students. What is special about your Cryptokitty. Think of a short backstory (5-10 sentences) about the character and life of your Cryptokitty.

VI Study the active vocabulary and focus on Ukrainian equivalents of English words.

adorable чарівний

gene ген

define визначати

physical appearance зовнішність

feature особливість

template шаблон

attribute характерна риса

offspring потомство

algorithm алгоритм

reproduction розмноження

demand попит

scarcity дефіцит

brand new абсолютно новий

accessible доступний

infinitely нескінченно

entertainment розважальний

scarce рідкісний

decentralized децентралізований

transaction операція

fraud шахрайство

piracy піратство

ledger гросбух

VII Watch the video again and choose the correct option to complete the sentences.

          The traits/brakes/taints that made Derpface the ugliest Cryptokitty    - even though, I mean, I think he’s adoring/boring/adorable - are baked into his mode/code/road. See, this is what Derpface and Genesis both really look/book/cook like. The “genes” in their code definite/definitive/define their physical appearance/appeared/disappearance on 12 features, based on a temple/template/plate by a human designer/designed/sign. They call those creature/teacher/features…. Cattributes, Cattributes are the visual/visibly/invisible attributes of the cat. Like fuss/mass/us, these cats can also carry traits in their code that only show up in their offspring/spring/offset. But the general/apologetic/genetic algorithm that drives cryptokitty reproduction/reproduce/producer — that’s kept secretly/secret/secretive.

-        When the cats are breeding/feeding/bleeding together the secret sauce imbues/combinations/combines those elements to make with a certain amount of... well we can’t really tell you much about that. But! They are combined/outbound/mind.

 And people spend a lot of honey/money/ sunny on the chance to get their dream cat. Pride/price/prime depends on the generation number/numerous/mumble and on what traits are in high demand/in high demanding/in high damage. In other words, popular Cryptokitties earn high prices the way collectors/collectibles/collection always have: scarcity/sacristy/city. And what’s so interesting about this is that digital scarcity is blend in/brand new/brand mow.

-        Before the computers/computed/computing came along if you had a thing, only you could have that fling/bling/thing and no one else have that thing unless you gave it to the other person/personal/parson in which case you would no longer have it.

But that completely arranges/changes/change is when goods become digital and progressive/accessible/accessed online.

-        Every time you give somebody data on the internet/Ethernet/net it’s a copy. I think the sort of reckoning we had in the 90s and early 2000s was how do we live in a world where everything can be copy it/coping/copied infinitely and you know and what’s going to happen to the music industry? What’s going to happen to the news/few/mews and entertainer/entertainmententertained industries? And we’ve seen it all play out.

But Cryptokitties can be scarce because of the technical/technically/technology they’re built on. They’re using a blocking chains/ blockchain/ locked change. Specifically, the Ethereum blockchain, so you have to buy them with “ether”. But you might also be family/familiar/famously with the original, Bitcoin. A blockchain provides a central/digitalize/decentralized system for recording transactions, making fraud and piracy a lot harder.

-  And so the essence/absence/sense of blockchain is that we have -whether you want to say a look/book/hook or people refer to it as a badger/larder/ledger. And they would say, “Hey, you know you know Bob has this, Alice has that.” And then everybody gets a copy of that book. And if someone/sometimes/no one comes along and says, “No Alice doesn’t have that.” People can point to their own poppy/copy/copied of the book and they can say, “No, no, no you’re wrong/strong/long. I see right here in this in my copy that Alice has this.”

-  When a kitty is born and it’s beautiful/beauty/helpfully and I love it, there’s something very special about knowing that it belongs to me and no one else and no one can take it.

VIII Watch the video and answer the questions.

1 What controls the way Crypotkitties look?

2 How many features do Crypotkitties have and how are these features combined (randomly, by the user, by the designer, by the game)?

3 What are Crypotkitties’ attributes called?

4 How are features changes when kitties reproduce?

5 Why can Crypotkitties be expensive? What does their price depend on?

6 How was the world changed when the goods became accessible online?

7 What is blockchain?

8 How can blockchain prevent fraud and piracy?

9 How is blockchain connected to Crypotkitties?

10 What type of blockchain do Crypotkitties use?

IX OVER TO YOU. Find out more about blockchain, Ethereum blockchain, and the code used to give Crypotkitties new traits or change their traits. Share your findings with other students. How would you go about changing the code to influence the “genes” and create your perfect Crypotkitty? Will it be easy for the users to understand how to make such changes? How would you make the changing the Crypotkitties’ “genes” easier or more enjoyable?

X Study the active vocabulary and focus on Ukrainian equivalents of English words.

actual фактичний

physical object фізичний об’єкт

copyright авторське право

own володіти

trade міняти

collector колекціонер

artwork витвір мистецтва

cute милий

unfortunately на жаль

mature зрілий

robust надійний

complicated складний

  XI Watch the video and fill in the gaps in the text.

But the truth is, it’s not 1)________ yours. You own the 2)________ for that cat, but not the actual 3)________.

-        In the case of 4)________, they have sections in their terms of service that say that they 5)________ all of the images, all of the 6)________ elements and that they have the 7)________ to use them however they want. That you actually have no 8)________ to use them in any way.

That’s not so different from a 9)________ card.

-         If you have, say, a Topps baseball card and it has the player’s 10)________ on it – say Barry Bonds, and a 11)________ of Barry Bonds on it - you own the 12)________ object but you don’t own the copyright. Owning the physical 13)________ doesn’t give you the right to print up other 14)________ but it does give you the right to trade your card to someone else or to sell it to a 15)________.

But for Cryptokitties...

-    If they decide they want to, say, 16)________ the artwork or if they sell the 17)________ to someone who wants to pull the artwork offline and use it only in their new Cryptokitties movie series, they could do that. And you’d be left just with this string of 18)________ and numbers on the 19)________ with no art attached to it at all. So I think that’s a fundamental 20)________ between real-world collectibles where you have the object and they can’t take it 21)________ from you and a 22)________ collectible. We really really, really wanted to put the art in the blockchain, because our users, I think most of them conceptually 23)________ that what they own is sort of some numbers, in a blockchain. But what you think you 24)________, what you think of as your, 25)________ is that picture of the cute little guy with the funny eyes. And unfortunately, the decentralized systems are just not 26)________ enough to support art in a robust way.

Cryptokitties are 27)________ and complicated and they show that we still have a ways to go until we can really keep a 28)________ collectible like we can a baseball card.  

XII Watch the video and answer the questions.

1 Do people who buy Cryptokitties own actual images?

2 Do players have the right to use Cryptokitties the way they want? Why or why not?

3 What do owners of physical objects actually have: a collectible or a copyright? Are Cryptokitties similar or different from for example baseball cards when it comes to copyright?

4 Can collectors of physical objects like baseball cards trade their physical objects? Can owners of Cryptokitties do the same?

5 What will happen if the company that works with Cryptokitties today is sold or if there is an idea to create a movie about these characters?  

6 Which collectible can be taken away from the owner: a physical or a digital one?

7 What do owners of Cryptokitties rally own? Do they own images and the rights to use them?

8 Are their mature and robust mechanisms to support collectors of digital items today?

XIII OVER TO YOU. Suggest a way to protect the rights of the owners of Crypotkitties. What should be done to guarantee that the digital cat they bought would still belong to them in the form of an image (not as lines of code only)?

XIV Vocabulary focus. Study the words and  word combinations, check your understanding using flashcards, practise their translation, spelling. Check your knowledge in the test. Play matching vocabulary game (match words to their translations to make cards disappear)  and save the planet from asteroids by typing in correct translation of the words.

  

XV OVER TO YOU. Work individually. Think of a digital collectible that can be an alternative to Cryptokitties and that people would like to buy. Prepare a short (5 minutes) presentation about your digital collectible: its name, what makes it special, what would people be able to do with it (trade, take part in contests, change appearance, breed, etc.).