Alan Carr is a long-time product lead at Vancouver-based blockchain studio Dapper Labs, and one of the original community developers behind CryptoKitties. He's helping to bring the viral project into a new phase.
This month, Dapper will launch a memecoin ecosystem related to CryptoKitties, the 2017 NFT series that helped establish the ERC-721 standard and briefly overwhelmed the Ethereum network at its peak.
The release is based on All the ZEN, a Telegram-based idle game that Dapper quietly launched last October. Carr says that over 250,000 players have experienced the game, which will be the main way to earn the CryptoKitties brand memecoin, which will be traded through PunchSwap, a decentralized exchange based on the Flow blockchain.
Dapper's version aims to provide a game-driven experience that combines token burning, trading challenges, and fictional news updates, providing collectors with a new way to interact with NFTs.
The new memecoin event is arguably the spiritual successor to KittyCalc.com, a legendary breeding tool originally co-created by Carr and co-founder Jordan Castro, who later co-founded the NFT project Doodles.
The site helped thousands of early CryptoKitties collectors decipher hidden traits and breeding strategies, which played a key role in user onboarding in the early days of the project.
Next, Carr sat down with OpenSea to discuss the next steps for the feline-centric series, and why he believes 2025 will mark a new era for web3 gaming.
Note: This record has been edited for length and clarity.
OpenSea: Let's start with your background, what brought you into the world of CryptoKitties?
Carr: I was working on the web team at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine at the time, I loved it there, but everyone wanted to work at Blizzard, so the pay wasn't great. Around the time my daughter was born, I decided to start my own business. We moved to Las Vegas to be closer to family, and I spent a year developing apps, one of which was a beatboxing app called 'Beat Boxes', which was fun, but I quickly realized I was better at developing than marketing.
Then in 2017, I stumbled upon CryptoKitties, and the boss asked me if I wanted to 'breed blockchain cats', I had no idea what he was talking about, that afternoon, I fell down the rabbit hole, I bought my first cat, Cucumber, it was ugly and cute, and expensive, it cost me $27, which seemed outrageous at the time, I realized I needed to breed a second cat, so I spent hours figuring it out, this obsession led me to develop 'Kitty Calc', a breeding probability tool.
OpenSea: What stands out about Kitty Calc?
Carr: That spreadsheet was very complex, full of hidden gene data, trait probabilities, and everything collectors wanted to figure out. People were developing similar tools, but not as detailed. When I shared it on Discord, some users said it was too much to handle, but others loved it. I worked with Jordan Castro, who is now at Project 2 and is a co-founder of Doodles, and we turned it into a website.
We also made it fun. Jordan created the poop trait rating system, for example, the wingtip trait is a five-poop trait, which is great, it's easy to use, intuitive, opinionated, and has become an indispensable tool for breeders.
OpenSea: Can people still use it today?
Carr: Not exactly, a lot of the functionality has been integrated into the extension, or built into the CryptoKitties website, so it's not as necessary now. Jordan and I didn't have time to maintain it after we joined Dapper Labs, but that's exactly why we joined Dapper Labs.
OpenSea: After you joined Dapper and participated in the development of CryptoKitties, what contributions did you make? How should the community thank you?
Carr: I launched the 'Red Dot District', which allowed people to breed with cats bred by Dapper that carried rare genes. We charged a small fee so that these genes could continue to be available to the community, which caused some controversy, some people liked it, some people didn't, but it helped prevent cat hoarding, I was also involved in the development of Purrstige Traits, which were seasonal and could be unlocked through breeding recipes, we even collaborated with artists like Hackatao.
OpenSea: Take us back to the present, what is All the ZEN? How has it performed since its launch?
Carr: It's an idle game, kind of like (Cookie Clicker), except it was developed on Telegram. We released the game under the CryptoKitties brand in October, and it was the IP's first major release in years. Over 250,000 people have tried the game, and it's especially popular in the Vietnamese gaming community, where players are participating in translations and sharing strategies.
OpenSea: How did memecoin become the next step in the brand's development?
Carr: A lot of people are attracted to meme coins, but most meme coins have a half-life of only one day, they suddenly spike, crash, and ultimately frustrate users, which is not a good learning environment. We asked ourselves, what would happen if we applied the original vitality of CryptoKitties to meme coins? What if it was a sandbox, a fun, low-risk way to interact with tokens?
So we came up with 'Meowcoins', which is what we're launching, a memecoin economy focused on interaction rather than speculation.
OpenSea: So you're planning to release around Easter weekend, what happens next?
Carr: This will be our token generation event. Before that, we will distribute initial tokens through the game. If you play All the ZEN, you will receive CryptoKitties memecoin. If you want to skip this step, these tokens can also be exchanged on PunchSwap. You need to download a Flow wallet, either a browser plugin or a mobile app, and then go to PunchSwap to exchange Flow tokens for memecoin.
OpenSea: What can players do with Meowcoins?
Carr: We're doing events and quests, and introducing a 'Rumor Mill,' which is essentially a world-building RPG system inspired by games like (Dungeons & Dragons), where each kitty will have secret traits that affect their ability to perform certain tasks.
Luck will also play a role in it, with various events unfolding that will test each kitty's abilities, their success or failure will depend on a series of hidden attributes and probabilities, and constant news about each kitty, good and bad, will emerge, and you can trade currencies related to them based on your judgment of their impact on value.
OpenSea: That sounds like a shift in the way NFTs have been used in the past, has your experience working on NBA Top Shot and Disney Pinnacle influenced your views on the newly launched CryptoKitties?
Carr: Of course, both projects have taught us how to simplify the user onboarding process. Top Shot allows NBA fans to access NFTs without learning wallet or token standards, and Disney Pinnacle goes a step further, allowing users to collect and trade NFTs through smartphone apps and in-app purchases.
We're taking the same approach to CryptoKitties now—if you want to dive deep, you can, and if you don't, you can still have fun.
OpenSea: What changes have you seen in digital collectibles since 2017?
Carr: CryptoKitties opened the door for NFTs, Top Shot broadened the audience for NFTs in 2021, and now, in 2025, we're taking the next step.
What has changed is the level of engagement of collectors, these are some of the smartest communities I have been involved with, people have learned how to use wallets, track rarity, and decode breeding genes, we have tens of thousands of collectors on our platform, and we have learned a lot from them, and they have helped shape the future direction.
OpenSea: Do you think this year will be a turning point for the brand?
Carr: Yes, we've been closely following everyone's needs and how to make this space fun again. I think 2025 will be the year of CryptoKitties.
CryptoKitties' token generation event is scheduled for around Easter weekend, players can join All the ZEN on Telegram and start earning CryptoKitties memecoin, more event and game details will be released on the CryptoKitties website in the coming weeks.
Note: Mention of tokens is for informational purposes only and is not intended as financial or investment advice.
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