Published on Feb 21, 2020
Kik has been a leading innovator in the chat space since the first million people signed up for the chat application in 2010. Kik was the first chat app to become a platform in 2011, and the first Western chat platform to integrate bots in 2014. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Kik also experimented with a form of digital currency on its platform, called Kik Points.
The first step is to create a new cryptocurrency: Kin. Related to the word “kinship,” and conveying a feeling of being connected to community, the Kin identity and currency is designed specifically to bring people together in a new shared economy. But simply creating a digital currency is not enough. For a cryptocurrency to be viable, it must also be useful and valuable. To establish an economy around the new currency, Kik must help to establish Kin’s fundamental value.
The Kin Rewards Engine will use economic incentives to bring other digital services and applications into the decentralized Kin Ecosystem. Inspired by previous systems like Bitcoin’s block rewards1 and Steemit’s posting rewards,2 the Rewards Engine will create natural incentives for digital service providers to adopt Kin and become partners in the ecosystem. The ecosystem will not impose any unnecessary restrictions or tolls on monetization strategies, beyond ensuring common ethics and legality of content and transactions.
As more partners join, the network effect of the Kin Ecosystem will grow, building the value of the currency, and in turn encouraging new partners to join this initiative. A majority of the Kin supply will be allocated to the operation of the Kin Rewards Engine. Periodically, the Rewards Engine will unlock and distribute a specific amount of Kin to be shared among digital service providers in the Kin Ecosystem.
The reward that each partner receives will be proportional to a measure of the utilization of kin within that digital service. Such value will be assessed by a well-defined process that ensures the rewards are distributed fairly using an objective, performance-based methodology. Rewards will be transparent, auditable, and secure. The Kin Rewards Engine will initially be administered by the Kin Foundation. However, over time, it will be decentralized based on smart contract technology
