Beyond CryptoKitties: How NFTs and Digital Collectibles Were Finding Their Footing in May 2019

While Bitcoin and Ethereum grabbed the headlines in early May 2019 with their price surges past $5,400 and $160 respectively, a quiet revolution in digital ownership was taking shape on the blockchain. Non-fungible tokens — unique digital assets that could be owned, traded, and collected — were emerging from the shadow of the CryptoKitties craze and beginning to show their true potential across gaming, virtual worlds, and digital identity.

TL;DR

• CryptoKitties had faded from its 2017 hype peak but remained the most recognized NFT project, proving the concept of blockchain-based digital collectibles
• Ethereum at $160.82 powered the NFT ecosystem, with ERC-721 tokens enabling unique digital asset ownership
• OpenSea, Decentraland, and ENS domains were among the active NFT-related projects building infrastructure
• Dapper Labs, creator of CryptoKitties, was beginning to explore new directions that would eventually lead to NBA Top Shot
• The NFT market in May 2019 was nascent but laying critical groundwork for the multi-billion dollar industry it would become

The CryptoKitties Legacy

By May 2019, CryptoKitties was no longer the media sensation it had been in late 2017, when it famously clogged the Ethereum network with enthusiastic breeders. The digital cat breeding game had seen its daily active user count decline dramatically from its peak, but its impact on the blockchain ecosystem was undeniable and lasting.

Each CryptoKitty was a non-fungible token — a unique, indivisible digital asset stored on the Ethereum blockchain. This was revolutionary. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, where one coin is identical to any other, each CryptoKitty had distinct visual traits and genetic properties determined by its on-chain data. The concept of true digital ownership — where a user could provably own a unique digital item — had been validated at scale for the first time.

The game’s creator, Dapper Labs, had attracted significant venture capital investment and was using the lessons learned from CryptoKitties to develop new projects. While the company had not yet announced what would become NBA Top Shot, the team was actively exploring ways to bring blockchain-based collectibles to mainstream audiences — a vision that would prove prescient.

Building the NFT Infrastructure

May 2019 found several key projects actively building the infrastructure that would later support the NFT explosion of 2020 and 2021. OpenSea, which had launched in 2017 as a peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs, was steadily growing its catalog of supported assets. The platform allowed users to buy, sell, and discover digital items across multiple categories — from game items to virtual land to digital art — all verified on the Ethereum blockchain.

Decentraland, a decentralized virtual world powered by the MANA token, was another significant player. Users could purchase parcels of virtual land represented as NFTs, build experiences on them, and monetize their creations. The project demonstrated that NFTs could represent more than just collectible images — they could encode ownership of virtual real estate in persistent digital worlds.

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) was also contributing to the NFT ecosystem in an unexpected way. ENS domains — human-readable names ending in .eth that mapped to Ethereum addresses — were themselves tradeable assets. Users could bid on and own unique domain names, creating a market for desirable .eth addresses that functioned much like traditional domain name speculation, but entirely on-chain.

The ERC-721 Standard and Technical Foundations

What made all of this possible was the ERC-721 token standard, which had been formally approved in early 2018. Unlike ERC-20 tokens (fungible tokens like DAI or LINK), ERC-721 defined a standard interface for non-fungible tokens — assets where each token was unique and not interchangeable with any other.

This technical foundation was crucial because it enabled interoperability across the NFT ecosystem. A CryptoKitty could be traded on OpenSea, displayed in a Decentraland gallery, or used as collateral in a DeFi protocol — all because it adhered to a common standard that any Ethereum application could understand and interact with.

By May 2019, with Ethereum trading at $160.82 and the network processing thousands of transactions daily, the technical infrastructure for NFTs was robust enough to support growing experimentation. Gas fees were relatively low compared to what they would become during the 2021 NFT boom, making it economically feasible for users to mint, transfer, and trade non-fungible tokens without prohibitive costs.

Gaming Meets Blockchain

The intersection of gaming and NFTs was particularly active in early 2019. Beyond CryptoKitties, several blockchain-based games were exploring what it meant for players to truly own their in-game items. Traditional games had long featured virtual economies with rare items and collectibles, but players never truly owned these assets — the game developer could revoke access, shut down servers, or change the rules at any time.

NFTs offered a fundamentally different proposition: when a player earned or purchased a blockchain-based item, they owned it in the same way they might own a physical trading card. No central authority could take it away. This concept of player ownership resonated strongly with gamers who had experienced the frustration of investing time and money into virtual worlds only to see their progress wiped by a server shutdown or policy change.

Projects like Axie Infinity, which would later become one of the most successful play-to-earn games, were in their early development stages during this period. The seeds of the gaming-NFT revolution were being planted, even if the harvest was still years away.

Digital Art Finds Its Medium

While digital art NFTs had not yet captured mainstream attention in May 2019, artists and technologists were beginning to recognize blockchain’s potential as a new medium for art distribution and ownership. The ability to prove authenticity, track provenance, and enable direct artist-to-collector transactions without galleries or auction houses was a compelling proposition for creators who had long struggled to monetize digital works.

Platforms were emerging that allowed artists to mint their works as NFTs, establishing verifiable ownership and enabling resale through smart contracts that could automatically pay royalties to the original creator with every subsequent sale. This was a revolutionary concept that had no parallel in the traditional art world.

Why This Matters

May 2019 was a formative period for NFTs and digital collectibles — the moment when the technology graduated from a novelty to a foundation. The infrastructure being built during this quiet period would prove essential when NFTs exploded into mainstream consciousness in early 2021, generating billions in trading volume and transforming how we think about digital ownership.

The lessons learned from CryptoKitties’ rise and fall informed the design of every subsequent NFT project. The ERC-721 standard provided the interoperability layer that allowed a vibrant ecosystem to flourish. OpenSea, Decentraland, and other platforms built during this period became the backbone of the NFT economy.

Perhaps most importantly, the cultural shift was underway. People were beginning to understand that digital items could have real, verifiable value — that owning a unique digital asset was fundamentally different from licensing access to content. This shift in thinking would prove to be the most lasting legacy of the early NFT era, paving the way for everything from digital art marketplaces to blockchain-based gaming economies to tokenized real-world assets.

Looking back from a post-2021 world, May 2019 appears as the industry’s quiet but critical building phase — the period when the foundations were laid for a revolution in digital ownership that is still unfolding today.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The NFT market is highly speculative and volatile. Readers should conduct their own research before purchasing any digital collectibles or NFTs. Past performance is not indicative of future results.