Digital cats that could be bred and traded demonstrated both NFT mania and Ethereum's scaling problem in one cultural moment. Single cats sold for 600 ETH (~$170k at the time). The congestion previewed the need for Layer 2 solutions — which would not arrive for another 3 years. NFTs went dormant until 2021's second boom.
culture·December 2, 2017
CryptoKitties Clogs Ethereum
The first viral NFT project causes Ethereum transaction backlog to hit 30,000 pending txs.