Kik announced the launch of Kin, its own cryptocurrency that the company says will serve as a foundation for a decentralized ecosystem of digital services.
Kin will be created as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, and will be integrated into Kik as the primary transaction currency.
Kik founder and CEO Ted Livingston has been vocal about his dedication to combining payments and chatbots, calling payments “the missing piece” to making bots successful in an op-ed April 2017. Seemingly to boost this vision, the company also announced the launch of the Kin Foundation, which it “envisions” as a non-profit governance body for the Kin ecosystem.
The Kin Foundation’s mandate will be to grow an open ecosystem of digital services that consumers can find value in, while giving developers an open platform to develop and monetize those services.
“Kik believes that Kin can bring together a broad group of participants to create an open ecosystem of digital services that prioritizes consumer experience and choice,” said Livingston. “As a leader in the chat space, we want to bring a fair and sustainable model for digital services to the market and fuel an alternative ecosystem for communications, information, and commerce.”
Kin will be adopted as the transaction currency inside of the Kik app, which has “millions” of monthly active users. The company will also develop the Kin Rewards Engine, which will work to promote the use of Kin as a common currency by creating an incentive; through the engine, Kin will be introduced into circulation as a daily reward, which will be distributed among stakeholders by an algorithm that reflects each community’s contribution to the overall ecosystem. The company plans to make the engine a fully decentralized system based on smart contract technology.
“We believe cryptocurrency is the next important business model innovation in tech,” said Fred Wilson, partner at Union Square Ventures and Kik board member. “Kik will be the first mainstream application to integrate a cryptocurrency. This could be a watershed moment for the blockchain sector.”
This story was originally published on BetaKit.
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
