Apple’s crypto guidelines

Apple has updated their developer guidelines with more specific clauses on cryptocurrencies in apps on their App Store. Ted took some time to reflect on clause 3.1.5(b), section v, which states that apps can’t give out cryptocurrency for completing tasks like inviting friends or downloading an app. Here’s Ted’s take:

When we saw clause five, our interpretation of that, and from our conversations so far, is [it’s] a broad bucket that Apple is putting in place to stop the incentivization of spammy or manipulative behavior. We actually saw these before, with these leader board or offer walls became a big thing on the App Store, and Apple came out and said you can’t do that anymore. Why? Because people were basically using them to manipulate the App Store charts. And so when we read clauses, like clause five, we don’t think it’s a blanket [statement that implies], ‘Nobody can give out cryptocurrency for anything forevermore.’ It’s a guideline to stop spammy behavior. We continue to have great conversations and continue to move forward, but in this really new and interesting space. I definitely think it’s going to take time with Apple. Tipping [is] allowed, but in-app-purchase on the far other side is not allowed. We’re working with them on where cryptocurrency should fall, and what should be allowed with Kin or any other cryptocurrency and what should not.

How early partners obtain Kin

In order to get the Kin Ecosystem up and running as quickly as possible, we need to provide a frictionless experience for developers and users in these early stages. This means that for now, we are subsidizing the Kin given to developers and users to start integrating Kin into apps and to begin earning and spending that Kin in the Ecosystem. Over time as earn and spend experiences grow and as more developers and users enter the ecosystem, we will start to get paid for that Kin, as we move away from subsidizing new entrants.

Today, we’re giving out Kin for free, and it’s our plan to give out a bunch of that Kin for the first millions of users for sure, giving them free Kin to get started right away at the SDK level. If you’re a developer, and you put this SDK in, we’ll have some mechanisms to stop spammers, and your users right away can get some free Kin or [earn] Kin — we call it minimum wage job Kin — for doing that first task. [It will] make it really easy for you as a developer and for your users. Now, a lot of those initial tasks today we’re not getting paid for, but we could over time. You can imagine a world where getting a million people to fill out your survey could be very valuable. So while today we’re not making money from it, we will over time.

Scalability of the Kin Blockchain

How will Kin’s blockchain be able to reach consumer scale when similar networks (e.g., Stellar, who limits their live network to ten transactions per second) can’t?

In conversations with Stellar, we learned that their 10 transactions per second limit is an arbitrary limit set because they’ve never seen anyone near even that scale. Last month, we forked Stellar to create our own blockchain, and we’ve already seen that: 1. we can get to twenty transactions per second; and 2. that we’ll soon be able to get to fifty transactions per second. From where we stand, there’s no reason to think that on a live network we can’t get past ten transactions per second, or that we can’t get to thousands of transactions per second eventually.

[We] will be able to get to consumer scale with our fork of Stellar, but even at 50 transactions per second, that’s millions of transactions per day, that by far, already, right out of the gate, makes Kin the most-used cryptocurrency in the world, and then we’ll just keep iterating and evolving from there as the scale continues to increase.

Fee-less blockchains and spam

Other networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum need to impose fees because it creates an incentive for others to secure the network, run nodes and process transactions. The Kin Blockchain is fee-less, but we don’t see that as an invitation for spammers to wreak havoc on our network because we’ve eliminated the incentive for them to do so. We think there’s a very simple and clever way to make transacting very easy for consumers and developers, while also protecting the network from the small percentage of bad actors who might attempt to spam it.

By spamming the Kin network, I don’t see what the financial incentive is for spammers. With Kik it’s clear, I can send out links to users, and that’s my incentive and how I make money. With Kin, if I just spam the network, I’m just wasting electricity for the people running those nodes, but I’m not actually getting any value. So the attack factor is less. We think there will be a solution for that as well, were 99 percent of users can have fee-less, seamless transactions, but the one percent of spammers who are malicious, they’ll have very high fees per transaction.

IMVU and the value of ecosystem partners

Last week, we announced our partnership with IMVU, the world’s largest avatar-based social network. We’re looking forward to sharing our knowledge and expertise with them as we work together on integrating Kin into their app, and we’re excited to see how IMVU and Kik can work together with other future partners to create a strong ecosystem of digital services in the crypto space.

Once Kik is up and running, and they have a Kin economy inside Kik, and once IMVU is up and running, and they have a Kin economy inside IMVU, there are these two powerful economies in and of themselves. Where it starts to get really powerful is where they start to reinforce each other. For the first time ever, it lets developers band together and work together aligned behind a common cryptocurrency.

The secret sauce

In order to remain competitive in this ever-evolving space, we need to keep some of our plans a secret. We’re working hard to be as transparent with our community as possible, without undermining our ability to make our shared goals a reality.

A firm roadmap for Kin

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — with all the uncertainty and constant learning going on in the crypto space, we’ve decided that we can’t give any meaningful deadlines for the milestones we know are needed to make Kin the most used cryptocurrency in the world. We’re constantly learning ways to implement new things — while iterating on previous plans — so timelines are simply moving targets. What can we give you? Realistic goals and milestones, and progress updates on each of them. You may have already read about these on our blog, but here is a quick summary: