Q4 was a busy and productive quarter for Kin. In the last three months, we released new Kin-powered features in Kik and other ecosystem apps, on-boarded new developers, announced that we are fully migrating to the Kin Blockchain, and continued leveraging the success of the Kin Developer Program.
Read on to learn more.
Product and engineering
Kinit continues being an inspiration for new and existing developers in the ecosystem. We launched a discovery page for ecosystem apps on Kinit, allowing users to explore Kin-powered apps. A solution for sending Kin between apps in the ecosystem is also in the development stages, and the work on the discovery page is the foundation.
We also improved the ‘earn’ user experience in Kinit, which now gives users the opportunity to choose the type of activities they’d like to complete. Additional gift cards, including Spotify, Xbox, and others, have been added to the app for ‘spend’ opportunities, and the purchase policy has been expanded to allow more users to enjoy these options.
The team also created Tippic, a new app for discovering photos and rewarding the people who create them. With Tippic, users get to enjoy carefully curated, beautiful captures from amateur photographers around the world. But instead of just giving them another heart or thumbs up, they can reward them for their work and the value they create online.
In November we announced that we are eliminating original ERC-20 token and fully migrating all Kin to the Kin Blockchain. Moving to the Kin Blockchain eliminates the complexity of swaps, removes the confusion created by having two types of Kin tokens, and simplifies the integration process with both exchanges and consumer applications.
We also improved our blockchain security in Q4. In addition to implementing new spam prevention methods, we developed a multi-layer whitelisting feature to improve our spam prevention ability even further. We are currently exploring and researching network scale improvements, and this will continue in Q1 of 2019.
Developer
In Q3, we launched the Kin Developer Program, a multi-million dollar program that incentivizes developers to build Kin-powered experiences into new and existing apps. We accepted 40 apps into the program, and hosted a Demo Day in Q4 to give developers a chance to showcase their Kin-powered earn and spend experiences. Thirty-two apps were given the go-ahead to continue on in the program, and 29 apps went live, reaching the program’s first milestone. Now, developers are working on scaling their apps to reach the program’s two additional milestones, based on monthly active spenders. An NPS score of 8.1 shows that participants are pleased with their experience in the program, and we’re currently looking into ways to make this even better.
We also began working on the migration module to move existing apps to the new native Kin coin on the Kin Blockchain, and we will continue this effort in Q1. Additionally, we completed our work on the Kin SDK, which will also support the migration to the new native Kin coin on the Kin Blockchain.
Hitting developer events, we attended Unity’s annual developer conference, Unite Los Angeles, where we gave a pop-up tech talk alongside Prime31, Unity’s leading Asset Store publisher. We’ve been quietly working alongside Prime31 to build a custom extension of the Kin SDK specifically for Unity developers. We anticipate releasing the Android version by end of January, followed by an iOS launch.
Ecosystem
In Q4, we saw traction on a variety of Kin partnerships, from ecosystem partners to blockchain partners and even brands. We launched Kin experiences inside of Swelly, a feedback exchange platform, giving Swelly app users on iOS and Android devices the opportunity to earn and spend Kin for their opinions. We also announced a pair of new partners, MadLipz and Tapatalk, both of which will bring millions of new users to the ecosystem. After executing workshops with these partners in Q4, we’re excited to bring their experiences to life in 2019.
In addition to developer partnerships, we worked with DoSomething.org to build a fun poll experience inside of Kinit around the U.S. elections. After completing the poll to earn Kin, users were directed to register to vote if they hadn’t already.
Lastly, we launched admin tipping in Kik, a new peer-to-peer feature that allows users to send Kin to other users in the app. Through this feature, users participating in public group chats can reward group administrators for facilitating positive and meaningful user interactions inside the app, thereby keeping groups productive, engaging, and safe. The launch came on the heels of Kik releasing chat themes, its first Kin-powered experience, to 100 percent of Android users.
Community
Our community continued being a solid group of advocates for Kin throughout 2018. We conducted our first community benchmark survey, which focused on demographics, and Kin and general crypto industry topics, to help us get to know our community members better. The results showed that Reddit was the preferred destination for company updates, and that most of our community members do not consider themselves experts in cryptocurrency. We’ll use these insights, and others from the survey, to better engage and connect with this audience.
The involvement of all squad leads in the community increased in Q4 through dedicated squad AMAs. In Q4 we hosted AMAs with the blockchain, ecosystem, and DevEx squad leads — something we will continue in the future on a regular basis. We also hosted our first partner AMA with Swelly. The community was highly engaged in this AMA, and we see this as the first of many partner-community initiatives to come.
Our VP of product, Alex Frenkel, met with a group of community members for some drinks and an open-hearted chat in London after his speaking appearances at Hard Fork Decentralized (more info on Alex’s sessions in the marketing and communications update). We hope that this will be the beginning of a new tradition in which we meet our community members in every location where we attend conferences.
Lastly, in the spirit of the holidays, we identified our top users, based on levels of engagement, centrality, and more, and sent these users a Kin-themed holiday swag pack — and it was much appreciated by those who received it.
Marketing and communications
With several projects to announce, including blockchain updates, live apps from the Kin Developer Program, and new partnerships, we had a busy Q4. In December, we attended Hard Fork Decentralized, a premier blockchain and cryptocurrency conference hosted by The Next Web, in London. Kin vp of product, Alex Frenkel, moderated a panel titled ‘Unlocking the power of decentralized apps’. Panelists included Cassidy Robertson, product manager at CryptoKitties, Charles Hamel, product lead for crypto at Opera, and Makoto Inoue, Solidity developer at Ethereum Naming Service and founder of Kickback.
Alex capped off the event with a fireside chat titled ‘How developers will drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency’ where he shared Kin’s vision, and tips and tools for developers to make the most of crypto and blockchain technology.
Q4’s most read blog content focused on product developments and expanding Kin use cases:
- Announcing: One Kin, one blockchain
- Demo Day roundup
- More ways to spend Kin in Kik
- Tapatalk and Kin
- Kin Developer Program: Apps from our community
Kin in the news:
- Beauty platforms have started using cryptocurrency to attract users, Glossy
- Apps for Kik’s crypto are beginning to appear on Apple and Google stores, Coindesk
- ‘One blockchain’: Ambitious crypto project Kin forks roadmap [again], CCN
- Kik selects Stellar over Ethereum for token launch, Coindesk
- Tapatalk will reward its 300 million users with Kin cryptocurrency, CCN
- Kik allowing P2P transactions on Kin, Betakit
- Kik Messenger is trialing a cryptocurrency tipping system for its Kin token, Bitcoin Exchange Guide
- Kik now lets users tip with cryptocurrency, TNW Hard Fork
- Blockchain and cryptocurrency 2019 predictions — vol. VII, Block Tribune
Growing the team
There are several open positions in both our Tel Aviv office, as we are also establishing our presence in San Francsisco:
- Engineering Manager (Tel Aviv)
- Backend Developer (Tel Aviv)
- Blockchain Developer (Tel Aviv)
- Technical Support Engineer (Tel Aviv)
- Full Stack Developer (Tel Aviv)
- UX\UI Designer (Tel Aviv)
- Senior Android Developer (Tel Aviv)
- Technical Account Manager (Tel Aviv)
- Developer Success Lead (San Francisco)
- Content Manager (San Francisco)
- Senior Director of Marketing (San Francisco)
