The past year has been one of the most interesting years of my life. A little over one year ago I invested in a little known cryptocurrency called KIN with no real knowledge of what it was or what it did. Within a short amount of time I began to read and understand the vision behind the project and could not have been more excited. Countless hours of research combined with watching Ted Livingston’s AMAs had me convinced that this was something I truly believed in.

It didn’t take long before I decided to seek out the rest of the community that supported this project. I initially started on Twitter but there honestly didn’t seem to be many people talking about it. Next I moved to Reddit where I was able to find the core group of community supporters. At first I sat back and watched, but it didn’t take long before I started throwing my ideas and opinions into the ring. Day after day I would discuss the project with a random group of internet strangers, some of which would soon become my friends and even working partners. The conversations continued as the project progressed. Then slowly but surely I began to meet many Kin Foundation employees which made the project feel even more personal.

At some point I set up a Medium account and started writing. It just kind of happened out nowhere. The revolving theme for my articles were all things Kin. I wrote about the project, the future, and the vision amongst other things. I got a lot of positive feedback so that helped keep me motivated. Not to mention I really enjoy writing, especially when it’s something I’m passionate about.

One day in late 2018 Kin Foundation announced the Kin Developer Program. It didn’t take long before a member (u/KinRocks) of the Reddit community reached out to me and asked me to join him to create a social media tip bot for Kin. It took some convincing but eventually we teamed up. Shortly after this I pulled in a couple additional members (u/blahv1231 and u/chancity) to join us on our venture. After lots of preparation we were selected to join the program and Kinny (Our Social Media Tip Bot) was born. We lived inside of a discord server, coordinating and communicating from across the globe. We worked tirelessly around clock for two months straight [or more] to create our beloved little robot. There were lots of challenges and road blocks along the way but we never stopped working and it all came together in the end. It was actually one of my proudest moments. It was more than just the app that made me proud. It was a group of random internet friends from around the world that came together to create something special. Working together to bring a shared vision to life. I couldn’t be any more proud of my team.

Shortly following the launch of Kinny and after a round of general user support to help get things running smoothly I decided to take a break from KIN around late November of 2018. I was burnt out. Working 15–20 hours a day between my job and the Kinny project had really taken it’s toll on me. I needed to recharge my batteries and spend some time with my family. So I put down the computer, stopped checking Reddit and even working on Kinny. It was a clean break from everything.

Sometime after the Holidays in late December I inquired to Yoel [Community Manager @ KIN] about a job. He put me in contact with Ayelet [Product Manager @ KIN] who revealed to me that she had a position that she thought might be a good fit. The position of Developer Advocate. This role was a hybrid role between technical, advocation and business. It was the perfect fit for me. I would be involved heavily in helping to build a developer community, support new developers integrating the KIN SDK as well as advocating for new developers to join the Ecosystem. We were aligned on everything so we started the process of scheduling meetings and interviews. I probably did 5 interviews in total over the course of a month. I met with so many great people including Ayelet Laub [Product Manager @ KIN], Benji Landis [Community Moderator @ KIN] and his beautiful beard, Andrea Trasatti [Director of Developer Advocacy @ KIN], Matt DiPietro [CMO @ KIN], Yossi Sergev [Tech Lead @ KIN] and finally Dany Fishel [President @ KIN]. Each and every one of these people are driven and dedicated to this project. I became more inspired and motivated with each new person I met. They all share my same passion and that’s why I am increasingly bullish on this project with each passing day.

And finally we come to today. I wanted to personally tell you all with great pleasure that I have officially accepted an offer to work for Kin Foundation as a full time Developer Advocate with my first day working for the company being on February 18th. The following day I’ll be heading out to San Francisco to join the rest of the team for Developer Week. To be quite honest, I still can’t believe it. To get the opportunity to work on this project at this capacity is somewhat of a dream for me. I now get to dedicate my time towards helping to make this project successful along with a large group of people who are equally as dedicated. I will now get to peek behind the curtain and see this beautiful machine with my own two eyes. And you can trust that I will do everything in my power to help push things forward. While I will be unable to disclose any private information to the community, you can at least know that you now have a man on the inside. An outside view coming into this project is a win-win in my opinion. And I truly believe that things will only get better from here. For all of us.

I want to thank all of you for this last year. I’ve shared many great conversations with a large portion of the active community. Many have become true friends, which is something very new, unique and special to me. KIN has brought a lot of us together in many different ways and I look forward to the future with all of you.