Kin Newsletter: September 2020 Edition

Published in

Kin Blog

7 min readSep 8, 2020

Notice: The Kin Foundation is hiring an Executive Director to lead operations, ecosystem growth, and strategic marketing. Those interested are encouraged to apply here. Please feel free to share with anyone you think would be a good fit. More details below.

It has been an active month in the crypto ecosystem. More institutions are speaking openly about their position on crypto, mainstream media is doing regular coverage of the space, and companies like Square are reporting record earnings fueled by growing demand for Bitcoin. Crypto is starting to break into the mainstream. This is exciting to us. In 2008 the world was introduced to Bitcoin, a transformative tool that could be used to create, capture, and transfer value. Over the last 11+ years we have seen impressive growth of the space, both in the technology and community. While the progress has been steep, it is still early. The technology is nascent and the awareness and understanding of crypto is still generally low. But this year seems to be building to an inflection point — that is why we are excited about the growing attention to crypto broadly. For the most part, however, the narrative has generally been about buying and trading. But for crypto to make the leap to the next phase of adoption, there needs to be more ways for people to use it. To earn it and spend it, not just hold it.

This is what Kin has been building for the last 3 years. Mainstream consumer adoption. For Kin, 2020 has proven to be an inflection point as well. More than 4 million people are using Kin across an ecosystem of apps every month. A key driver of this is the Kin Rewards Engine, an incentive protocol that pays developers for their contributions to the Kin Economy. As noted in the Kin Foundation Transparency Report, a key metric for the maturity and sustainability of the Kin Economy is Net Dollars Bought — which is the amount of real demand coming from activity in the Kin Ecosystem relative to the inflationary incentives of the Kin Rewards Engine.

The month of August was a big step forward on this key metric. The Kin Rewards Engine v2.2 that was initially proposed in May went live on August 1. This update recalibrated the incentive for developers to drive Dollars Bought through the Buy Track, while reducing the payout for driving Spenders through the Spend Track. Under this revised schema, developers have collectively driven a 650% increase of Dollars Bought in the Kin Ecosystem going from 182M Kin in July to 1.36B Kin in August. While Kin Bought is still a fraction of Kin Issued, this is a positive step towards a sustainable crypto economy. This demand for Kin is being generated by users getting paid for engaging in ads. These are like “entry-level jobs” in the Kin Economy. As the economy continues to mature we should see more ways to spend Kin and more ways to earn and buy Kin, all driving real demand.

With more incentives moving from the Spend Track to the Buy Track, MAS has seen a contraction. This is an expected outcome from this recalibration but as developers adjust to these new parameters, we expect to see positive growth again in total spenders. In spite of the intermittent contraction in MAS, demand in the ecosystem continues to climb, showing healthy growth on a per-user basis.

To support this growth in the Kin Economy, the Ecosystem is preparing for a move to the Solana Blockchain. This will bring more capacity for scale and sub 1 second transaction times, showing the power of crypto without sacrificing user experience. To prepare for that, a new set of blockchain agnostic SDKs were shipped, making it dead simple for developers to migrate. These new SDKs also make it easy for a new app to integrate Kin, unlocking a more frictionless path for new developers to join the ecosystem. This is a key foundational piece to support the increased scale of the Kin Ecosystem long term while setting Kin up for a smooth migration.

On August 17th, the Kin Foundation held its first monthly board meeting with the second Kin Representative, Will Gikandi. This board meeting was largely focused on the growth of Kin Ads and how the ecosystem can best support a sustainable monetization option for developers.

More information on all of these items can be found below in this version of the Kin Monthly Newsletter.

September 2020 Contents

Kin Foundation Hiring Executive Director
Kin Economy Report: September 2020
Kin Foundation Minute

An important note: September 26 marks the three year anniversary of the launch of Kin. In this time we’ve seen the ecosystem grow from 10,000 initial purchasers to over 38 million people who have acquired Kin in the Ecosystem. In the next newsletter we will share a recap of the last three years with a look ahead to what’s next.

The Kin Foundation is Hiring an Executive Director

As Kin enters a new phase of growth and adoption, the Kin Foundation is searching for a full-time Executive Director to lead this exciting market evolution and expansion across the increasingly decentralized and energized ecosystem of Kin stakeholders, developers, influencers, and vibrant online communities.

This is a key leadership position with an opportunity to make a significant impact on the entire Kin Ecosystem. Reporting to the Foundation’s Board, the Executive Director will be responsible for leading, managing and coordinating 3 key areas for the Kin Foundation:

Foundation Operations (25%)
Ecosystem Growth (25%)
Marketing Strategy and Outreach (50%)

If you are interested or know someone who might be interested, please head over to this link where you can read the Job Responsibilities and Qualifications, and you can apply there as well.

Each month, the Kin Foundation provides an update on key metrics that are used to evaluate the health of the Kin Economy.

This past month, KRE v2.2 was implemented on August 1. This latest version increased the weighting of payouts to the Buy Track and decreased the weighting to the Spend Track. The Ecosystem has responded with a 650% increase in Kin Bought. The resultant impact on the Spend Track was a 10.5% decrease of MAS from from September 1 / August 1. This is expected given the recalibration of incentives. Going forward there may continue to be some attrition to MAS but it is expected to plateau and start climbing to positive growth again as apps adjust to the new incentives.

It should be anticipated that immediately following material changes to the KRE there will be a period of adjustment for developers. To account for this, the Kin Foundation is providing advanced lead time for developers to prepare. For example, while KRE 2.2 was implemented on August 1, it was first proposed in May of this year.

The economic markers in the Kin Economy look strong with increased maturity of real demand coming from ad sponsored earning. So far 8 of the top 10 apps in the ecosystem have implemented ad sponsored earning, meaning more and more users in the Kin Ecosystem are now generating real demand with their time and attention.

More analysis of the Kin Economy can be found at the following link: Kin Economy Report: September 2020

A Kin Foundation board meeting was held on August 17, 2020 and was attended by the Kin Representatives, William Gikandi and Matt Hannam, representatives of Kik Interactive Inc. and Miquel Tolosa, CEO of MonkingMe on behalf of the Kin Ads Network project.

At the meeting, the Board approved:

A grant of 1 billion Kin to the Kin Ads Network project to support a net-3 basis payout schedule for developers
A proposal to integrate the Wyre buy module into the Kin Ecosystem
A proposal to integrate the Simplex buy module into the Kin Ecosystem
A proposed improvement 2.2.2 to the KRE to streamline the process for the adoption of new modules
Modules submissions from Rave and MediaLab

The next Foundation Board meeting is scheduled for September 21, 2020.