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The prevailing consensus within the crypto-community is that Kin, Kik Messenger’s new crypto-token, is simply just another native app-token capitalizing on the blockchain craze without bringing anything new to the table. I’m here to dispel the notion that Kin is nothing more than a Chuck-E-Cheese token that can only be spent at the arcade or to buy stuffed animals at the gift shop. Instead, I want to demonstrate why Kin is one of the most important ideas of the decade, and will fundamentally evolve digital economies.
The Token-as-a-Service
Kin is a cross-app token with a unique incentivization protocol that will be implemented within an ecosystem of apps. It aligns the incentives of the developers with the users, to promote real value creation within a digital sharing economy. It allows everyone the equal opportunity to contribute and get paid.
That’s right. Developers no longer have to make the difficult decision to exploit their users’ data and sell it to advertisement agencies in order to make a profit. This hardly works anyway, unless you’re Facebook. Let’s take a closer look.
The Facebook model is simple. First, capture as many eyes as possible. Once you have those eyes, the game is to keep that attention in the app. Facebook will do anything to waste your time in their app and “extract” as much value from you as possible so that they can profit off that data. This is because the customer is their product. There is a misalignment between the incentives of the developers and their users.
This works for Facebook because they’re a monopoly. But what about the indie developer who just created an amazing app? How does she not only get eyes on her app, but retain them, and then also get compensated for her work? If she doesn’t put ads in her app, she won’t get paid, and if she does, it will reduce engagement and retention because nobody likes ads. She could make you pay for the app ad-free, but then what motivates her to continue developing, and what’s stopping Facebook from simply stealing the idea and implementing it themselves for free? There must be something that she can do to get fairly rewarded for her contribution as a developer.
There’s Another Way
The Kin Rewards Engine is a radically new incentivization protocol that aligns developers and users, and benefits both. Not only can the developer get paid for her work, but it can be done in a way that actually benefits her users as well.
Here’s how.
The Kin Foundation has set aside 60% of the total number of Kin that will ever exist and placed it in the Kin Rewards Engine (KRE). The KRE rewards apps with a daily payout proportional to the creation of value within each app, measured mainly by Kin transaction volume. The more transaction volume an app generates, the larger the daily reward. This encourages developers to create inspiring new ways for users to earn and spend Kin within their apps. They might allow users to create digital art for sale to other users with Kin. They may offer discounts for paying for in-game gems with Kin instead of dollars, encouraging Kin adoption and driving transaction volume.
This spurs competition between apps to develop the most rewarding ways that users can earn and spend Kin and have great experiences within apps that generate transaction volume. This improves app quality while allowing the developers and even the users to be compensated for their contributions.
Kin is for the Community
But something else happens that’s interesting. Apps of course compete for transaction volume, but other apps’ success increases the value of Kin through network effects and supply and demand. Kin earned in one app can be sent to other apps and spent there. Creation of value within the ecosystem can drive users to purchase Kin on the open market and bring that into the ecosystem to purchase goods and services that others have created. The rising value of Kin due to the ecosystem working together benefits everyone and promotes a healthy, collaborative economy.
In short, Kin is expanding far beyond the Kik app. Kik is merely the starting point for Kin to serve as a proof of concept. The idea is to create application scenarios for earning and spending Kin that other ecosystem apps can copy and expand upon to easily integrate the token within their apps.
Kin is doing something that no other cryptocurrency is doing. It has an actual reason to be used, and will be placed in the hands of millions of mainstream (non-crypto) users within the Kik app, and quickly extended to tens and even hundreds of millions of users. For this reason, Kin is going to be the most used cryptocurrency in the world by the end of 2018.
It’s not just a Kik-token. It’s Kin.
For more reading material, especially if you’re new to Kin, I recommend reading The Magic of Kin for a better understanding of the KRE, loaded with specific examples. Join the discussion in r/KinFoundation and on Telegram.
The MisKINception — It’s Not Just a Kik Token was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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