Kin: a decentralized ecosystem of digital services for daily life
This article covers everything you need to know about Kin hence the article is bit longer. 😄
Kin!! What is it ?
“ A Cryptocurrency for use in everyday digital services such as chat, social media and payments. Kin will be used to buy / sell different types of digital content in Kin Ecosystem. “
Kin Ecosystem!! What is it ?
“ A set of apps where content creators, users, developers, advertisers all are compensated fairly based on their amount of time contributed in the economy (Attention Economy). ”
That’s interesting!! What are Token Metrics ?
“ Total number of tokens — 10 Trillion. “
Token Allocation,
- 1 Trillion tokens are sold in private (500 Billion tokens — 50% locked) and public sale (500 Billion tokens).
- 6 Trillion tokens are locked and allocated to KRE. Tokens will be released when the reward engine starts and it will be released over 60 Years.
- 3 Trillion tokens are locked and allocated to KIK. 10% of Tokens will be released ever quarter for 10 quarters to KIK to manage operations and technology for Kin Blockchain.
Ok!! Hold on, 10 Trillion!! Huge supply ?
For every project, the supply is decided based on the economic activity from their app or ecosystem.
Kin is basically designed to facilitate micro-payments (buy/sell digital content) in app between the users.
Micro payments are easier and a lot simpler for user when it is done in whole numbers such as 10 Kin for Stickers, 20 Kin for themes, 12.50 Kin for Icons etc.
When millions of users use Kin, a huge supply is needed like 10 Trillion otherwise the transactions would look like 0.000042 Kin for Stickers etc.
Basically most of the currencies in the world has whole number and 2 decimal points such as 10.50 Rupees, 12.41 Dollars, 39.83 Euros etc. So it will make a lot of sense to design a currency which is going to be used in digital world similar to the physical world.
Remember the economics are not designed just like that. They are designed and validated with the help of MIT professors.
What is KRE aka Kin Rewards Engine ?
60% of supply is allocated to rewards engine.
Rewards engine is one of the important component in Kin project because it is going to reward Kin to app developers who are driving the demand for Kin in the ecosystem.
How Rewards are given to developers ?
Each app which integrates Kin will be called as a digital service and the rewards will be given based on the amount of transactions which happens in the app. And the rewards will be distributed daily.
Rewards Engine Formula,
Let “i” be a digital service eligible for rewards and “Ri” be the daily reward it will receive on a particular day. Then:
“ Ri = TDR ⋅ (SSEi /TSE) “
where TDR stands for “Total Daily Reward,” SSE for “Size of Service Economy”, TSE for “Total Size of Economy”.
“ Why would a developer in India (An example) integrate a token which is created in Canada in his app, is because of rewards (daily payouts in Kin).”
A developer can use such rewards to pay his infrastructure cost and award users in turn to grow his user base. This solves the issue for apps not getting profit and not making a user experience a mess by showing ads.
To know more about KRE, Refer technical paper and the articles from Tanner Philp.
Who is behind Kin Project ?
- Ted Livingston, CEO of Kik Messenger who has enormous experience in messaging and social apps.
- Fred Wilson, Founder of Union Squares Venture who was an early investor in Twitter, Zynga etc and investor of blockchain projects such as Coinbase(Top Exchange in US), Cryptokitties etc.
- Pantera Capital, Investors of Ripple, Koinex etc.
- Blockchain Capital, Investors of Kraken, Shapeshift etc.
- Polychain Capital, CEO was Ex Risk and Product manager of Coinbase.
Enough with the introduction, let’s get into what as a project they want to achieve.
Product Vision:
There are three main components here,
1. Integrating Kin into Kik Messenger.
2. Building a standalone app were users can earn, spend and store Kin.
3. Kin Blockchain.
4. 5 Min Kin SDK.
On what stage the components are at,
Kik Messenger integrated Kin and it is released to 1000 selected users (Android). For IOS, it will be released soon.
Users can earn Kin range from 30 Kin to 130 Kin by doing various tasks such as,
1. Giving their opinion in surveys.
2. Taking a tutorial.
3. Answering Questions.
Users can spend Kin on buying,
Chat Themes. (100 Kin)
“ A Mobile app where users can earn, spend and store Kin. ”
Public Beta has been released for Android Users (Available only in US). Watch Kinit in real action here.
Users can earn Kin by doing various tasks such as,
Surveys, Polls, Quizzes.
Users can spend Kin on,
1. Buying gift cards such as Amazon, Grubhub, Ticketmaster etc.
2. Send Kin to friends as a gift.
Kinit app source code is available for developers in GitHub and anyone can improve it.
Note: Tasks such as branded mini-games, donation, tipping are all in pipeline.
- Initially, Kin debuted on Ethereum chain and intended to run on this network, but due to few technical reasons, Kin shifted to Stellar.
- Stellar satisfied their technical needs though adapting it increased the cost of user acquisition etc. So they decided to fork Stellar and run nodes on their own.
- It was decided they will be using two blockchain, one to use in the ecosystem and another one for the investors.
- Kin 1 -> Runs on Ethereum -> The ones which are in exchanges are Kin 1.
- Kin 2 -> Runs on forked Stellar -> The ones which will be used in Kin Ecosystem are Kin 2.
- There is a plan ahead to introduce atomic swap to interchange Kin 1 to Kin 2 and vice versa, So the developers can cash out Kin 2 when needed and also the initial TDE participants can bring their Kin 1 into the economy.
This SDK will be used by developers to integrate Kin in their apps within 5 minutes.
There are two types of SDK,
- Core SDK is providing the blockchain building blocks to be used by the Ecosystem SDK to interact with a blockchain.
- Ecosystem SDK provides UI and blockchain functionalities as a service: registering and creating accounts for users, managing offers’ lifecycle, and providing analytics.
All of the source code is available in GitHub.
Wow!! That’s a lot of work. But how about adding apps to the ecosystem. That’s were partners come into the picture.
Kin partnered with three companies as of now,
-> A Video Game Development Company, no 1 Game Engine.
-> Specific Gaming SDK is on the plan, where game developers can integrate Kin in their game.
-> Plays an important role by providing Gift Cards to app developers to integrate in their app.
-> Each developer can choose 3 to 5 gift cards and integrate them in their app where users can buy gift cards using Kin.
IMVU,
-> A 3D Social Network — A first app in Kin Ecosystem, where users can create avatars and sell digital assets, chat with people etc.
-> 4 Million active users.
Let’s have a look at how all these things fit together,
Use Case 1:
- Brands wants opinions from people for their new product so they give out surveys, polls etc or they want to popularize their brand so they conduct quizzes.
- Users gives their opinion, participate in quiz and they earn Kin. (Either via Kinit App or Kik Messenger).
- App developers build apps by connecting brands and users, by doing they facilitate the transaction in the ecosystem and building value for Kin.
So users earned Kin, what do they do with it ?
That’s where Blackhawk Network partnership comes in to picture they provide gift cards, which the app developers integrate into app and the users will be able to buy gift cards with Kin.
Use Case 2:
“A mobile app where users create stories and share with other users.”
What problems does this idea have,
- Story creators want to get compensated for their stories because they have spent some quality amount of time creating it.
- App developers need to get compensated because they need to pay bills for their infrastructure such as server etc.
- Very few story readers are interested in some kind of subscription or paying for story(digital content) using their physical money (INR, USD or EUR) but when they earn some points or credits via online they are more interested in spending that because the money is already in digital world.
Let’s see how Kin solves above problems, when app developers integrate kin in their application,
- Story readers earn Kin by participating in surveys, polls etc.
- App developers get paid in Kin for facilitating the transactions between users by Kin Rewards Engine.
- Story creators get compensated in Kin because now readers are more interested in paying them then earlier.
Developers Corner :
Kin recently announced a developer competition with $3M in fiat and kin for selected 25 developers.
Important Dates to Remember
- Apply here no later than 10 A.M. P.T. on Aug. 10
- Participants will be announced on Kin Blog on Aug. 15
- Selected developers will work on integrating Kin and will present their integrations during a virtual demo day on Oct. 2. Approved apps will go live following this and receive the first incentive payout.
- Developers who have reached 10,000 monthly active wallets (MAW) will receive the second incentive payout on Jan. 1.
- Developers who have reached 50,000 MAW will receive the third incentive payout on April 1.
I hope, I have explained Kin in detail. In case of doubt, you can contact me in telegram @vicky_micky or join Kin India group to discuss with fellow Indians.
Resources & Further Reading,
- Kin Ecosystem Website
- Kin Whitepaper
- Kin Rewards Engine Documentation
- Kinit App (Android)
- Kin Foundation — Medium Account
- Kin Contributors — Medium Account
- Official Telegram Groups: Kin Foundation, Kin Currency, Kin Technology and Kin Announcements
- /r/KinFoundation Subreddit
- Usecase Example: Chatbots & Kin
Vignesh is a part of the Kin Ambassador Program.
