Kin: The Developers’ Digital Currency

In this article you [the developer] will learn the whats, whys and hows of integrating Kin into your mobile application. Follow along with me and learn why joining the Kin Ecosystem could be the best decision you’ve ever made for your mobile app. You’ll learn about our platform [and tools], use cases, user & developer benefits, our open source community, outlined instructions for integrating Kin and a brand new way to monetize your app on day one

What Is Kin?

Kin is a currency for the digital world. A world where users can exchange value in a shared economy. Developers are rewarded for integrating Kin into their apps and driving the exchange of value by creating unique user experiences. And users continue coming back to Kin integrated apps to share in these rewarding experiences. Kin seeks to reach mainstream user adoption and show the world what’s possible with digital currencies by providing our open source community of developers with the tools and the support they need to create their own exciting experiences.

No Blockchain Experience, No Problem

We provide many things to our developers including our Kin Development Platform. Our platform is a suite of tools that can be used to quickly and easily to integrate your app with our digital currency. We realize that many developers out there want to get involved with blockchain technology but just don’t have the knowledge or experience to do so. Well this is where we come in. The Kin Development Platform SDKs take away the barrier to entry for leveraging blockchain technology in your apps. You’ll need almost zero knowledge of what happens behind the scenes. We take care of all of that for you so you can focus on doing what you do best. Building killer apps.

A New Way For Developers To Monetize

Up until now developers have had limited options for monetization. The top choice being the ad-revenue model. But the mobile app industry is dominated by monopolistic giants who make it extremely hard to compete in a sustainable way. Even large apps are struggling to keep their heads above water when competing with the Facebooks and Googles of the world. Kin believes that all developers deserve a piece of the pie and aims to re-imagine the ad-revenue model and level the playing field. One way we plan to do this is through the Kin Rewards Engine. A portion of the overall supply of Kin is governed by the Kin Foundation and intended to help grow the ecosystem by rewarding developers through the KRE for their contributions and the value they bring to the ecosystem. This monthly [and soon to be daily] payout will increase in size over time as the network effect of the ecosystem begins to take shape, making the allocations to developers much more substantial. These payouts can be reinvested into your applications, OR they can be liquidated for fiat currency on exchanges. This model incentivizes developers to create unique and rewarding experiences in their apps that keep their users coming back for more. Users can earn and spend Kin in fun and exciting ways, and developers have a way to monetize their apps on day one of integration.

Users Love Being Rewarded for Their Value

The response from users of Kin integrated apps has been overwhelming. Users love earning and spending Kin. The reality is that without users, apps wouldn’t exist. They are the lifeblood of the mobile app industry. They’re also extremely valuable. But what do users get for the value they bring? Answer? Nothing! Apps like Facebook treat their users as products and sell their content and data and keep all the profit for themselves. Kin seeks to change that by rewarding these users. Just like developers, users will also be compensated for their time and the value they bring to a given app. How are users rewarded? One of Kin’s top apps is called Madlipz. Madlipz is an app where users can create hilarious videos by dubbing their own voice over original videos. Some of these users have tens of thousands of followers. And now they are being tipped in Kin from their followers who truly appreciate the content they produce. The Kin they receive can be spent across the entire ecosystem of Kin integrated apps. This is just one small example of what’s possible with Kin. Users love it, and we love users.

An Ecosystem of Connectedness & Discoverability

Imagine for moment a digital world in which all developers can easily take part. An ecosystem of interconnected apps that all share a native digital currency which can be earned and spent anywhere [seamlessly] between these apps. We make it easy to send Kin between them using Kinit, the lighthouse application for Kin. The economic alignment and incentive of apps to apps and users to apps creates an amazing network effect that will propel the value of Kin further than we ever thought imaginable. Soon hundreds [then thousands of apps] will be integrated. Millions of users creating hundreds of thousands of real world transactions every single day. This is what mainstream adoption looks like! Joining the Kin Ecosystem also allows even the newest [and smallest] of apps to easily be discovered and have users from day one. Discovery of an app at no cost to developers is HUGE. Kinit also provides a discoverability feature where users can quickly discover new apps in the Ecosystem. This is something that we hope to provide to all apps in the future. This is the beauty of it all. Thousands of apps can easily be discovered without investing a single dollar into marketing. All of this is the true vision of the Kin Ecosystem.

A Community of Developers Helping Developers

Our ultimate goal is to build a large, self sustainable, open source development community. We aim to do this in many ways. Including our very own community forum where developers can provide each other with support and share their ideas and creative solutions to problems. We trust our developers and we know they have great ideas, and we encourage them to share these ideas and help everyone grow. Developers helping developers is something we see as an extremely integral part of the ecosystem.

Blog Posts & Tutorials

One thing we plan to provide our developers is the information and resources they need to get the job done. Documentation is of course very important. But we want to take it one step further. Providing blog posts on important topics such a security is something you can expect to see more of. Providing fundamentals and best practices might not seem that significant, but you’d be surprised how beneficial this can be. In addition to blog posts we will also provide tutorials in both written and video form. Each of us learn differently and we feel that providing both forms of education will make sure we reach our entire audience.

How It Works

Integrating Kin into your app relatively simple. We provide you with iOS, Android, Unity and Python Kin Development Platform SDKs (with a NodeJS SDK in the works) as well as documentation and sample applications (Available on our website) to get you started. Once you have the tools a simplified outline of the steps are as follows:

1. Add the corresponding SDK into your iOS, Android or Unity app.
2. Follow the documentation for creating user accounts and sending transactions in our playground environment.
3. Build experiences for users to earn kin by performing tasks such as filling out their profile or taking surveys and for spending their kin on digital goods, tipping or unlocking features in your application.
4. Test your functionality in our playground environment.
5. Deploy an implementation of the Python SDK (for creating accounts and whitelisting transactions in production) to a host of your choice (AWS, Heroku, etc).
6. Switch your app to production mode and now you’re live on the blockchain.
7. Sit back, relax and earn Kin from the KRE (Kin Rewards Engine) for each spending transaction that your users produce.

Summary of Developer Benefits

Kin is focused on helping developers to be successful and here is short summary of everything we’ve covered so far:

• Platform Tools: A collection of Kin SDKs that allow you to easily integrate Kin into your iOS, Android or Unity apps complete with a full range of blockchain functionality without the need to understand the technology itself.
• Support: Full support of Kin Foundation who continually strives to improve upon the tools we provide to developers
• Documentation: Robust documentation and sample apps to make your integration into Kin as easy as possible.
• Community: Kin specific developer community forum to leverage for support, sharing ideas and open sourcing creative solutions. A community of developers helping developers to be successful.
• Monetization: The Kin Rewards Engine provides a revenue model upon launch, allowing you to monetize without the need for ads that introduce poor user experience into your app
• Use-Cases: Easily create unique experiences for your users by allowing them to interact with each other using Kin, driving engagement
• Unlock new experiences: Seamlessly allow users to spend kin in your app for things like unlocking new features or anything that gets them excited
• Network Effects: An ecosystem of apps working together to allow for easy discoverability of your app, big or small

Are You Ready!?!

Kin is here to help make the world a better place for users and developers alike. We believe that the new digital frontier has arrived and we want everyone to be able to take part in it. Users now have new ways to earn and spend digital currencies easily. While developers have the ability to join a growing ecosystem of apps, create new unique experiences for their users and earn Kin at the same time.

If you’re eager to join us, then check out the Kin Developer Program. The program arms developers with additional tools and incentives to build their own amazing experiences with Kin. Join the Kin developer community by applying HERE today.