Every Aspiring Developer Should Pay Attention to this $3 Million Contest

No, it’s not through Kaggle, Topcoder, or Upwork

Image modified from source.

Disclaimers: I own Kin and other cryptocurrencies. This is not investment advice. I’m part of Kin’s Ambassador program, but Kin did not vet this story before publication. (Unrelated: I hope you also pay attention to Moore’s Law.) Update: Applications to Kin’s Developer Program are no longer being accepted; however, you can still put Kin into your app to start getting Kin Rewards Engine (KRE) payouts once they begin. To learn more about incorporating Kin into your development please check out the Kin documentation pages and feel free to email info@kinecosystem.com.

Today, VentureBeat highlighted an unusual trend in the cryptocurrency world: a blockchain for consumers that’s focused on creating a sustainable business model for developers, a model that the Kin Foundation [check out this 5 min read if you’d like a simple intro to the Kin token] believes can compete against the likes of Facebook and Google. I call it a trend because it looks like Telegram is hoping to do something at a similar scale, and Facebook might be pondering it as well.

Ted Livingston is going “all-in on cryptocurrency.”

Kin’s founder, Ted Livingston, is also the founder of the Kik messaging app. Time and time again Facebook has copied game-changing new features from Kik. This time, Ted Livingston is going “all-in on cryptocurrency,” and Ted believes he and his team have already won in the battle against Facebook. Perhaps Ted’s confidence has to do with his 2% “secret sauce” that has become fabled and led to much speculation in the die-hard Kin community. But alas, it’s a secret.

Ted Livingston and his team have already won against Facebook.

Or perhaps it’s simpler than that. The Kin Rewards Engine (KRE) will be a smart contract that will reward new and existing developers to incorporate Kin into their apps. At current prices, it will pay out tens of thousands of dollars worth of Kin per day to the apps that are doing the best to get users using Kin.

(Pssst! Eric here. I’m excited about something called Wealthy Affiliate right now. You can learn more about it at my article here: What is Wealthy Affiliate? And please feel free to sign up and get the first month for free after rebate here: Wealthy Affiliate: Get Your First Month of Premium for Free This offer ends December 31st, 2019, is worth $19, is limited to the first 100 people, could end sooner, and has other limitations explained on the offer page. Thanks!)

“Say again? What does that really mean?” Glad you asked. With Bitcoin people get paid in Bitcoin to secure the network; with Kin you get paid Kin to get people to use Kin. This KRE, which is an incentive protocol, is right out in the open, but it is the key to making Kin the world’s number one cryptocurrency. No one else is doing anything like it, and Kin is starting off strong with over 8 million active users from Kik that will be encouraged to use the cryptocurrency shortly when the cryptocurrency is fully integrated into the app. Kik recently announced that 1,000 random users had full access to the cryptocurrency. They aim to ramp that up to all users quickly.

Before I get into why this is the one opportunity, as a developer, that you don’t want to miss, let’s cut to the chase: 25 individuals or teams from around the world will split up to $3 million dollars worth of prizes (up to over $100,000 USD each), both in cash and the Kin cryptocurrency. All they need to do is apply, be accepted into the program, and integrate Kin into an existing app or create a new app that integrates Kin to get the first chunk of the reward.

Meeting the next milestones means more rewards, all you need are active users. But it’s not winner take all. Every one of the 25 teams has a chance to earn over $100,000 worth of fiat and Kin. For those who are already sold on the concept, here’s the application landing page to get into the Kin Developer Program: you have nearly a month to sign up and make your case to be included in the program. (and here’s an excellent summary of the entire Kin Developer Program from the Kin team, and finally, a fun but epic Kin Developer Playbook)

P.S. Today (July 17th), Kin launched their Kinit app. (Now available on iOS and on Android, but it’s USA-only for now) I’m loving this app so far. It’s an excellent example of the type of app a team of developers could create, or you could do something totally different than Kinit. The sky’s the limit.

There are a bunch of key parts that make this contest so exciting,

But let me start with the most important one:

There is no experience required to enter and win this contest. It is well known in the startup world that some of the greatest and most valuable startups were created by people with little or no startup experience: think Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. The ideal developer to join this contest is one that can execute: The Kin Foundation wants a person or team who can execute on their vision, whatever that may be, and create an app or website with a growing, active userbase. The key is the ability to execute, build, grow, get engaged users, and perhaps most importantly, have an extreme passion for what you’re doing. I say this because passion is the one thing that can drive us forward when everything else is looking grim. In starting a company, tough times are virtually guaranteed. In order to succeed in this contest, you better be ready for the Ramen-only diet.

The Second Most Exciting Part of this Contest is the Outcome:

Should you succeed, you will get over $100,000 in rewards. But this is just the icing on the cake. More importantly, you will have an app with tens of thousands of monthly active users within the first consumer-friendly, global, digital currency ecosystem. Because of Kin’s Rewards Engine, you will be earning valuable Kin every time someone either earns or spends Kin within your app, all on an ongoing basis, even after the contest ends. It’s a decades long monetization model for your app and every other app who decides to join the Kin ecosystem. That’s the beauty of the KRE and Kin: it’s all about getting every digital business in the world to have an incentive to join the ecosystem, and as more apps join, the payout will increase because demand for Kin, and therefore, its price, will increase as more and more people are earning and spending Kin throughout hundreds, thousands, or even millions of apps within the ecosystem.

The KRE takes every app within the ecosystem and pays out roughly based on the value of transactions your users are generating in-app each day. The payouts come to you on a daily basis. More transactions from more unique users means more payouts for you. The KRE is paying out about 6 trillion Kin over its lifetime of a few decades. This is 60% of the total Kin that will ever exist.

The Kin cryptocurrency is not worried about securing the blockchain as Bitcoin was. That is now commoditized.

The Kin cryptocurrency is not worried about securing the blockchain as Bitcoin was. That is now commoditized. With Bitcoin, miners were incentivized to secure the blockchain by mining and earning the mining reward. Kin uses a fork of the Stellar blockchain where transactions are much faster and cheaper. The blockchain will be secure because that part of the technology is now commoditized and cheap because of advances in technology. “Miners” in the case of Kin are developers, and instead of working to mine Bitcoin by securing the network, they are working to get more people to adopt Kin by launching new apps that integrate Kin, or by incorporating Kin into old apps.

Adding Kin to an app can take a developer as little as 5 minutes

Developers need to get people to earn and/or spend Kin within their app and then they get paid. Kin is creating a 5 minute SDK to make it easy for developers to pop earn and spend opportunities into their apps at any stage of development, all within five minutes. The vision of Kin is to be a part of every digital service on Earth as the dominant digital currency for the universe. The KRE is the incentive platform that will make everyone, including Google and Facebook, look into jumping onto this ecosystem that Kin is creating. The Kik messaging app, who launched Kin, as well as IMVU, the Unity game development platform, and others have already jumped on board. I’ve already proclaimed that Ted Livingston is the Shigeru Miyamoto of cryptocurrency because this is the idea to bring crypto into the mainstream.

Isn’t the resemblance of these two uncanny?

Next up is Guidance:

Developers will receive guidance as part of the program in order to guide them to success. Because Kin already has the IMVU avatar-based social app as a signed partner, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kin recommends the Lean Startup principles popularized by IMVU’s cofounder Eric Ries in the book of the same name. The Lean Startup is a set of principles that allow a startup to know when it’s time to tweak their existing structure or pivot away from it in order to continually grow the userbase and the value of a company. IMVU and Kin have both used Lean Startup principles to keep growing and improving their products.

The Unity Connection:

If you are a current or aspiring game developer, this is a huge opportunity for you. Kin has partnered with the Unity game development platform so that Kin will be native to the Unity SDK. If you have a game idea, now is the time to apply and launch it on the ground level of the new Kin ecosystem, and be rewarded in the process.

The Reward is Yours for the Taking

I believe the price of Kin will grow, and so I doubt that there will ever be an opportunity for a new developer to acquire this much Kin (400 million of them) in one go from the Foundation like this. My guess is future contests will reward a much lower number of Kin, since each Kin will be worth much more.

This contest gives you experience as a developer like a traditional startup incubator would, only you don’t have to leave your hometown, and you keep 100% of the equity. Seize the day! My hope is for the 25 most passionate developers or teams to collectively win this reward worth about three million dollars. And I want you to all build apps bigger than Facebook.

A few thoughts to help you win:

1. Take your time building your team and your pitch: Only 25 individuals/teams will be allowed into the program, so take the time to fill out your team with competent, competitive players. Kin is looking for the ability to execute from an individual or team, so a young, active team could give you the edge to be selected as one of the 25. You have just under a month to complete the signup process, which is due by 10 am P.T. on August 10th, which is a Friday. Feel free to go through the sign-up form, which is a Google Form, with bogus information without submitting it to see what information they are asking for. Make your answers the best they possibly can be to increase your chances of getting in. Details and specifics matter. Here it is for your reference, but this could change:

Image is a composite created from the official Kin Developer Program application.

2. Get your Linkedin, Github, and Stack Overflow profiles pretty, well-documented, and action-focused before you submit your application.

3. Focus on the Lean Startup way: Once you build an app don’t be afraid to pivot away if your growth isn’t meeting the targets required to hit the milestones. As a reminder from Kin’s overview of the program on Medium: “Developers who have reached 10,000 monthly active wallets (MAW) will receive the second incentive payout on Jan. 1.” and “Developers who have reached 50,000 MAW will receive the third incentive payout on April 1.”

4. Use teamwork among teams: The beauty of this contest, and of Kin in general, is that everyone can work together to get everyone to win. Even if your team won’t meet the last milestone, for example, you have an incentive to help the other teams reach their last milestone. Once you’ve won some Kin, you will want that Kin to grow in value, no matter how it happens. By supporting the other teams as well as your own, you are helping to grow the economy that surrounds Kin. More users, more transactions, and more volume all mean that Kin should grow in value.

Let’s work together to compete against the internet advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google to stomp out annoying ads and the outsized power of annoying companies for good.

Once an app joins the Kin ecosystem, there may be many examples of apps recommending other Kin-integrated apps to their users when it makes sense, perhaps as an agreement of the exchange of users between two apps, because once a user is in the ecosystem, there’s no real loss from a user leaving as long as they’re still using Kin somewhere else and as long as they can come back to your app the next day. “Kin for the win” means that apps will be working together to compete against the internet advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google to stomp out annoying ads and the outsized power of annoying companies for good.