Kin Ambassadors Event 2018: Ted Livingston Chats With Brady Dale on Building a New Economy (Recap #1)

“Kin’s mission is to try to get you paid as much as possible for your contributions. And I just think that’s so cool, and so different, and so fundamental to where society could go.”

–Ted Livingston

Where could society go with Kin? Speaking to Coindesk reporter Brady Dale at the 2018 Kin Ambassadors event (April 11–12), Kik CEO Ted Livingston discussed our “clear path” to achieving widespread, mainstream use of the Kin cryptocurrency.

Ted and Brady’s fireside chat explored how Kik and the Kin Ecosystem Foundation are forging that path together. Read on for some of our favorite highlights, then watch the full video above.

Investor perspective

Brady Dale, who covers ICOs and other crypto news for Coindesk, asked how Kik’s existing investors responded to our shift into crypto in 2017.

Prior to the Kin token sale, Kik worked to monetize through advertising for ~6 years. Ted said the Kin vision was, at first, “a bit of a crazy idea.”

“I had to say [to our investors] ‘I know you want us to go do this ad thing, but this ad thing is just not going to work. If you want to do the ad game you are misaligned with your consumers… and you’re not going to be able to compete with Facebook and Google. They have a monopoly on the digital advertising market.

“Instead, [we recognized cryptocurrency] could be a fundamentally new way to monetize, to compete and to build a consumer service. Along the way, we realized we could not only do this for us, but do it for the 99% of other consumer services out there who also needed a different way [to monetize].

“So with our investors, we voted as a board only a year ago to go all-in on cryptocurrency. Today our investors are super supportive.”

Decentralize this

In his coverage of ICOs, Brady sees many companies pitching projects about decentralizing various functions or services.

He asked Ted about the implications: Doesn’t the launch of so many decentralized applications (and/or decentralized platforms, on which applications can be built) run the risk of “centralizing” experiences on each?

The question gave Ted a chance to clarify how our strategy is different. We’re not aiming to “decentralize Kik” — which is already a top app with no UX friction, no private keys, and no costs.

That marks a major difference between Kin and those other crypto projects. We recognize that parts of the user experience are better when centralized.

“This is a key thing that’s a little controversial: What is Kin? We’re not a decentralized social network, because we don’t think any mainstream consumer is going to use that. We’re a decentralized currency — so nobody controls the currency — and we are a decentralized incentive protocol.

“That protocol incentivizes developers to build places for consumers (which may or may not be decentralized, may or may not be centralized) to earn and spend that currency. And that’s it. Everything else is centralized.”

Economies need currencies

Brady noted that most ambassadors at the event weren’t highly active Kik users (or “Kik heads,” in his words). That gave Ted a chance to discuss how Kin isn’t designed exclusively for the existing Kik community.

Rather, Kik is just the first digital economy in which Kin will be introduced as a currency. Our integration in Kik will show other digital communities how Kin can support — and improve — their own economies.

“Kik is its own little country, that millions of people show up to every day. Those are the citizens of Kik Land…and when[they] want a way to exchange value with one another, they need a way to do it.

“Since Kik is our little country, we can demonstrate that this currency can operate at scale, and that we can get millions of people using it every day in little Kik Land. Once we demonstrate that, we think Kin will be the most-used cryptocurrency in the world… and that will make Kin pretty valuable.

“And then we’ll take a chunk of that value — 60% of that value — and give to [partners] who have their own digital lands. To them, we can say ‘“’Sure, you could launch your own cryptocurrency, but it’s hard. And it only works in your own little country, not anywhere else. But if you use Kin instead, you’re helping drive demand that will cause the value of Kin to go up, and we’ll give you that value back with the Kin Reward Engine.’”

Setting the standard

Brady wondered if integrating Kin into those “digital lands” could make them overly commodified. Could Kin turn an app you love into a heavily “commercialized” space (the same way ComicCon commodifies one’s love of comic books)?

Ted’s not worried about that. In his view, Kin creates alignment between an app and its user community. Our incentive protocol creates a way for app developers to get paid that also makes their service better for users.

“The digital world today is set up in a way where if you build a community…your job is to take as much value from those people as possible — either by trying to get them to buy your stuff, or trying to take their attention with advertising. That’s your mission, to extract as much value as possible.

But with Kin, we’re aligned. Now it’s ‘How can you provide value to the community that the community would recognize, and compensate you? How can we get you paid for your contributions?’

And I don’t think it’s like ComicCon [over-commercialization] at all. I think for the first 5–10 years it’s going to be amazing, where all of these developers around the world — instead of trying to extract value — are trying to give value and trying to get consumers paid. And when consumers get paid they get Kin, which means they have a piece of the ecosystem — they have a stake.”

Ted and Brady’s fireside chat and audience Q&A also covered:

• why Kin is focused on the digital (not physical) world;
• the decision behind our current “two chains” infrastructure;
• how we’re thinking about acquisitions and stablecoins;
• the ways Kik’s history will support our success in crypto;
• what will make us “uncatchable” to competing tokens or apps; and
• how our partnership with Unity Technologies provides a “powerful tool” for developers and a huge co-marketing opportunity.

The talk gave our event audience a great overview of how Kin is poised to win the long game. But as Ted told our attendees, that game hasn’t even started yet.

Why? Because the most important thing — in our view — is to get mainstream adoption of a cryptocurrency. And right now, “nobody uses these things.”

“Does anybody have a blockchain that can support mainstream scale? No. Has anybody shown mainstream consumer adoption? No. Has anybody shown an SDK that developers are using? No. Has anybody set up an incentive protocol that incentivizes developers to drive mainstream adoption? No.

I think we have a real shot at being the first project in the world to deliver all four of these things. And if we do, we’ll be the only one in the race.”

–Ted Livingston

Stay tuned for more recaps! Learn more on the Kin Ambassadors Event here.