Hitting the Road: Kin at Hard Fork Decentralized 2018
Last week, we attended Hard Fork Decentralized, a premier blockchain and cryptocurrency event hosted by The Next Web in London, UK. The event brought together crypto enthusiasts, investors, and developers at multiple decentralized events across the city. Our very own Alex Frenkel, vp of product, was at the conference’s two-day main event, The Exchange, to participate in two sessions, each with a focus on driving mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency.
On day one, Alex moderated a panel titled “Unlocking the power of decentralized apps.” The panel brought together some of the brightest minds in dApp development and discovery, including:
- Cassidy Robertson, product manager for CryptoKitties
- Charles Hamel, product lead for crypto at Opera
- Makoto Inoue, Solidity developer for Ethereum Naming Service, and founder of Kickback
The panel covered mainstream consumer adoption of dApps. Across the panel, there was a clear, shared sentiment: creators of dApps must simplify the user experience if we want dApps to become apart of consumers’ daily lives.
Private keys, wallet addresses, and all the other daunting backend pieces of blockchain are foreign to the non-crypto enthusiast, posing significant barriers to entry in the space. If we want these apps, and blockchain in general, to be widely used, we have to make the technology as understandable as possible. With this in mind, it’s clear that companies are focussed on making cryptocurrency simpler and more adoptable in the future.
On day two, Alex capped off the event with a fireside chat titled “How developers will drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency,” where he discussed Kin’s vision, and provided tips and tools for developers to make the most of blockchain and crypto technology. The session was moderated by Chris Obereder, founder of Coin Stats, a popular app for crypto research and portfolio management.
“Many projects are focused on the infrastructure. Kin is unique because we’re focused on the application layer.” — Alex Frenkel
As with the first session, simplicity was the theme. In order for consumer app developers to integrate cryptocurrency, many of which have no prior knowledge of blockchain technology, the tools and infrastructure need to be easy to build with — and that’s the value of Kin.
Our SDKs remove the backend complexity of the blockchain so developers can build meaningful experiences without worrying about how to introduce it to their users. In doing so, we remove the “crypto” from cryptocurrency, and it simply becomes another means of transacting in digital environments — something that we’re all accustomed to.
