As many of you already know, KIN decided to forego running on Stellar’s Mainnet and opt for a hardfork of the Stellar codebase instead. Stellar is an amazing blockchain project that allows for high transaction volume at lightning fast speed. With that being said, one of the biggest reasons for the fork is KIN’s need for customization. While Stellar’s blockchain is superior to most, it doesn’t fit KIN’s needs EXACTLY. They want to make sure everything works perfect for them. But that’s the beauty of it all. Forking allows them to take all of Stellar’s strengths, and modify things to fit them exactly as they need.

As of this writing it has been confirmed that KIN is now testing on their own Testnet of the forked Stellar code. This means that they have already configured it to fit their needs and have begun testing the changes. Once testing is complete, the next logical step would be to publish to the KIN/Stellar Mainnet, and finalize the KIN integration into KIK Messenger.

The KIK integration is loosely scheduled to happen by the end of Q2 (June) but Ted Livingston, CEO of KIK & KIN, has made it very clear that he is not worried about timelines. The sole concern is a high quality product. I’m guessing there’s a slight possibility the KIK integration could be pushed into Q3 but only time will tell.

As always, thanks for reading. I’m Crypto KIN. Follow me on twitter http://www.twitter.com/CryptoKin_