Kik rolls out Kin cryptocurrency test run to 1,000 random users
Kik wants to gamify the world, starting now with 1,000 randomly selected users.
The first step to real-world adoption is... real-world adoption.
The Kik chat app is rolling out its Kin cryptocurrency to 1,000 randomly selected users across the platform in a test run designed to see how it works in real life and to put it in the hands of more users.
"Our goal is to make Kin the most used cryptocurrency in the world and getting Kin into the hands of more Kik users is a critical step in achieving this," said Ted Livingston, founder and CEO of Kik and Kin. "Blockchain is a new and complex technology, but consumers don't have to understand the technology in order to use it. With these new experiences, we want to demonstrate how simple and seamless cryptocurrency-driven experiences can be."
"We’re starting off with 1,000 users because it’s such a new technology, and we want to make sure everything scales and that it’s sturdy, and then we anticipate we should be able to grow that number quite quickly. So 1,000 for now, with a potential of growing," said Kik product manager Laura Newton to VentureBeat.
Kin will be dropped into the platform through online games and surveys. The more users engage with content and spend time on the platform, the more Kin they'll earn to purchase premium content or other items on the Kin marketplace.
These might include gift cards or other incentives of actual value through a range of partners who want to boost consumer engagement on Kin.
Over time, the plan is to expand the functions of the Kin cryptocurrency in other ways. For example, the project also includes a development kit to let game designers integrate Kin-based reward systems into their games to reward engaged gamers in a tangible way.
In the long run, it's not clear how these kinds of reward systems, which cross real-life monetary value and game money, will pan out. Profit-sharing between game creators and game players has proven to be quite a successful driver so far, and it's possible that these kinds of systems will become normal in the future.
But as novel as it all sounds, video game currency has held real monetary value for a long time now. The main difference might be that now the currency belongs to the user, can be openly bought and sold, and can be taken between all kinds of different games and platforms. The world might be entering a whole new era of pay-to-win gaming.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author holds ETH, IOTA, ICX, VET, XLM, BTC and NANO.
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