Kin Rewards Engine: One Year Anniversary
One Year of Monetizing Apps in a Fundamentally New Way
March 27, 2020
Today, the Kin Rewards Engine turns one year old, celebrating its first anniversary as a fundamentally new way for apps to monetize their digital communities. In commemoration, let’s take a moment to reflect on where it started and the progress that’s been made so far.
Vision
Kin launched with an ambitious vision — to unite developers of all sizes for the first time, in order to build a new digital economy where everyone is rewarded for the value that they create online. This would enable people from all over the world to work together and share in the success of the new economy’s growth, and the Kin Rewards Engine is the mechanism that would tie it all together.
The Kin Rewards Engine, or “KRE” is an economic incentive model that allows apps to monetize by implementing Kin. In short, apps that drive the adoption of and contribute to Kin, are rewarded in Kin. This allows developers to join the ecosystem and all be aligned by the same thing — the growth of the Kin economy. In turn, users and developers around the world can become participants in a new digital world, where the focus is not harvesting value from users, but allowing them to be rewarded for the value they create.
Genesis
Not that long ago, the incentive model for Kin was still in its infancy, manual in nature (developer programs, grants, etc.), and with no algorithmic rewards engine in place. Nevertheless, there was already a community of supporters and developers that had volunteered to user-test new apps, signed up for developer programs, advocated for Kin, and passionately shared in its vision. Many anxiously awaited the first KRE payout, hopeful for what it might mean for the future of the network.
On March 27, 2019, the first KRE payout was sent, marking the genesis of the Kin incentive model.
Progress
Here are some highlights that reflect the progress of the KRE:
- Today, there are over 40 consumer apps monetizing with Kin using the KRE ¹.
- The Kin Rewards Engine currently allocates 500M kin per day to be paid out to developers who contribute to the Kin economy. Over 133 billion kin has been paid out to-date.
- Apps that see significant usage consistently generate meaningful revenue, with the top app in the ecosystem earning over 1 billion kin last week alone ¹.
- When excluding speculative trading and gambling, Kin has the highest transaction count of any cryptocurrency ², making it the most used cryptocurrency by mainstream consumers ³ ⁴.
Evolution
The first version of the Kin Rewards Engine was designed to get users spending with Kin. Today over 2.5 million users have spent Kin within apps in the ecosystem. However, as a real-world medium of exchange, a healthy and strong economy around Kin are paramount to the network’s continued and accelerated growth.
On Jan. 1st, 2020, Kin Rewards Engine underwent its first major overhaul in the form of the Kin Rewards Engine 2.0. This proposal was discussed and improved by the Kin Community and ultimately adopted, shifting the long-term focus of the KRE from spenders to buyers. For an app to maximize Kin rewards, the idea is simple:
- Get users to spend high volumes of kin.
- Get users to earn or buy as much kin as possible.
- Hold KRE payouts for as long as possible before selling.
We can already see some of the effects of KRE 2.0, as the amount of Kin spent daily within the ecosystem of apps has jumped from around 3M per day to over 100M per day.
We look forward to reporting more details on the growth of the Kin economy in the near future.
The Future
The Kin Rewards Engine is just one of many ways that apps can generate revenue with Kin. Whether it’s rewarding users for sponsored experiences or offering goods & services, Kin represents a whole new palette of complementary app monetization strategies to choose from.
There’s a lot to look forward to related to the Kin Rewards Engine, including an updated KRE 2.0 Dashboard so that apps can keep track of their progress within the new reward parameters, a beta test for a “Community Kin Rewards Engine”, spearheaded by the Kin Council, which will allow everyone, not just apps, to be rewarded for contributing to Kin, more decentralized representation within the Kin Foundation, and much more.
The most exciting part of the KRE’s future is one that has yet to be decided, because it will be written by the Kin Community. Anyone can contribute to the Kin Rewards Engine. If you would like to submit ideas or take part in the discussion, check out the tutorial on How to Contribute to the Kin Rewards Engine below:
To stay up to date with the latest developments in Kin, follow Kin_Ecosystem on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kin_Ecosystem
References —
¹ Weekly KRE Payouts
² Chainalysis data shows use of cryptocurrency; May 2019:
“Transactions related to exchanges still accounted for 89.7% of activity[…]”; “This suggests[…]top use case remains speculative, and mainstream use[…]for everyday purchases is not yet a reality.”
³ CoinMetrics shows Kin transaction counts compared to leading cryptocurrencies; June 2019:
“Separating out Kin payments from account creations gives a somewhat clearer picture. The below chart shows different average daily transaction counts over the last three months compared to Kin’s payment count[…]Kin is near the top of the pack, trailing only EOS. ”
⁴ Dappradar shows top apps for other leading blockchains and their uses cases; March 2020:
