The game allows players to buy, sell, and create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using Ethereum.

[1][2] The game's popularity in December 2017 congested the Ethereum network, causing it to reach an all-time high in the number of transactions and slowing it down significantly.

[1] Players purchase, breed and trade virtual cats that have different visual features of varying levels of rarity.

[7] The virtual cats are breedable and carry a unique number and 256-bit distinct genome with DNA and different attributes (known as "cattributes") that can be passed to offspring.

The company released some of the art under a new 'Nifty' license that lets players use the image of their CryptoKitty in a limited way.

[12] On March 20, 2018, it was announced that CryptoKitties would be spun off into its own company, Dapper Labs,[13] and raised $12 million from several top venture capital firms and angel investors.

[19] The court ruled in the company's favour, stating that "[t]he evidence demonstrates that Defendant, not Plaintiff, developed the idea to license digital collectibles using the likeness of celebrities first…".

[2] In November 2018, Dapper Labs, which was spun out of Axiom Zen as the developer of CryptoKitties, raised an additional $15 million in a venture round led by Venrock.

[21][13] In 2018, CryptoKitties was used by the German museum ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe to showcase blockchain technology.

[8] Each cat has a distinct visual appearance ("phenotype") determined by its immutable genes ("genotype") stored in the smart contract.

[citation needed] Shortly after launch, there were concerns that CryptoKitties was crowding out other businesses that use the Ethereum platform.