TLDR — The last 5% is the most important, Celine Dion’s song touch me seems like a bit too much information tbh.

An English theologian and historian Thomas Fuller is credited with saying the night is darkest before the dawn, speaking of holding onto belief at the darkest times. Interestingly the temperature of the air is also coldest at the end of the night becoming even colder as the sun rises until the air begins to warm, an irrefutable scientific fact but seemingly contrary to logic. One could say if your eyes weren’t open you wouldn’t believe the sun was rising at all.

Faith and fact seem to be a good summary to me of the crypto space in general and in particular this project many of us love; and evidently, some love to hate.

The fact is blockchain technology and the permissionless; decentralised, simultaneous payment and settlement of crypto will change every part of life as we know it, in time.

Being an advocate for a crypto through an epic bear market is not an easy thing. Personally I have been grateful for the distraction of being part of an incredible team building on amazing technology and dreaming of innovative ways to intertwine this amazing space into the lives of the everyday person. I only check CMC 7 times a day now. Frankly there are not enough hours in the day with all that we have going on. Sleep is an inconvenience!

The progress of the Kin Ecosystem in my perspective has actually been remarkable. Slower than thought maybe; in some cases definitely, but remarkable nonetheless. It takes time to build; to find solutions to problems that arise, to find ways to climb over walls and bridge the gaps in the road. There are other projects out there who in the paraphrased words of William Mougayar have discovered that their roadmap is flawed or their tech literally won’t fulfil the use case but are terrified of changing because of how their communities would respond to changing their own particular yellow brick road.

Personally as an entrepreneur in training (even that’s too strong) having worked at the right hand of ultra successful business people; the key observation I have had is that success doesn’t happen at the start, the middle or even the last third. It’s that final 5% that determines whether your efforts were worth it. It’s in the final 5% that you either step down and take that awful pat on the back that says well done at least you tried; or you maintain focus and keep your eyes fixed on the prize, put your head down and damn well follow through.

The vision of Kin is not a small one, in many senses it’s an impossible one. Thousands of apps with millions of users engaging in a virtuous ecosystem where the collective weight of a kin fuelled interconnected user base leads to network effects and other value extrapolating consequences. This dynamic I’ve just described when seen will make the sometimes derided efforts of individuals and teams who are committed to seeing that last 5% through to the end seem prescient, visionary and extraordinary.

Kinny recently with reluctance and genuine excitement for the one and only u/therealchaseeb saw a highly qualified truly excellent developer, business savvy and core part of the Kinny Team move across to Kin.

This move was by no means a simple one, I have friends who work in multinationals whose rigorous job interviews involving 5,6,7 interviews seemed incredibly intense and demanding. Well let me tell you through the lens of happenstance that the effective job interview the u/therealchaseeb went through makes that look like a walk in the park.

Working every hour God gives for months on end coding Kinny, an application that employs innovation that went beyond the technology employed by the handful of other groundbreaking tip bots out there

Involvement in high level strategic planning, detailed implementation and helping us build a brand.

Technically integrating monetisation into Kinny enabling us to immediately operate on a sustainable basis, from month one we covered set up costs and have been able to sustain running costs quickly confirming our business model is well defined and working. When our plans for a scalable Kinny are implemented we are confident in Kinny’s growth as a exciting, profitable and sustainable venture. You really aint seen nothing yet.

Combine this experience with an intense passion for Kin, a very detailed Kin interview process, his excellent resume from his professional career outside of Crypto and his unique and successful involvement as part of the target market within the Kin Ecosystem and you have a man superbly qualified for the role of Developer Advocate.

Kinny may have seemed quiet these past weeks but we have been very busy indeed! Since our highly enjoyable and productive Kinny Summit in Hollywood the team has expanded to include 4 developers with more in the process of getting their feet wet. u/blahv1231 and I marvel at these clever devs doing their thing. Amazingly we have incredibly talented people intrigued and inspired by what we are doing as part of this innovative ecosystem, people who haven’t had any previous experience of crypto but have been drawn to get involved in what we are doing.

In the coming months you can expect to see the following:

Very imminently you will see a migration to One Blockchain. Expect communications from us to help you prepare for this, principally to make sure you have downloaded the latest version of the App when we say its ready. When the comms go out we would appreciate you helping us spread the word. The iOS beta has been successful and will be rolled out worldwide once the transition to One Blockchain has completed. We have had brilliant feedback which we will be implementing in order of priority. High quality earn opportunities are on the way with innovative spends being planned for implementation a bit further down the track. We know spends are fundamental to the success of the ecosystem but it’s important to keep in mind that Kinny has a unique spend in p2p tipping on social media. Growing Kinny’s reach on multiple platforms is a fundamental part of our strategy to growing Kinny and enabling us all as the community to do our bit in extending the reach and awareness of the Kin Ecosystem. Between now and the unveiling of our new earns we will soon start pushing additional daily Kinny polls via Pollfish to Kinny users to ensure you have meaningful daily opportunities to earn Kin in addition to the standard Pollfish polls. We paused at our current social media reach but will be steadily rolling out new integrations in the months ahead. Last but not least, if there are any program managers and developers out there who would like to explore getting involved in the Kinny Team drop us a DM, we would love to chat.

We have said it before but it bears repeating that we are so grateful for the way the community has embraced Kinny and we look forward to seeing where this adventure takes us all in the coming months.

Trevor on behalf of the Kinny Team