Kin was created to bring about a more fair and open digital world in which everyone can be recognized and rewarded for the value they create online. Over the course of 2018, we made significant progress towards making this goal a reality. Kin is live in 40 apps on iOS and Android, where users are earning and spending Kin every day. More than eighty thousand users spent Kin in the last month, making Kin the most spent cryptocurrency in the world. And while we are proud of what we’ve achieved in such a short time, for us, this is just the beginning.

Live Kin Applications

As we began 2019, one of the first decisions we made was to embrace a decentralized ethos, not just in the ecosystem, but within our teams as well by moving to a squad model. Rather than thinking in terms of top-down or matrixed organizations, we recognized that by restructuring and setting up squads that functioned like “mini-companies” we could embrace the Kin spirit and provide maximum freedom and creativity that would allow everyone to move in a fast and scalable way to achieve their goals.

A decentralized organization offers an opportunity for each squad to define its own requirements, recruit the right talent, and create an organization that matches their unique needs. To fully achieve this, the squads need to own more than just product and engineering. This means each squad will have their own dedicated design, marketing, community, business intelligence, demand generation, business development, and support resources. By growing these functions directly in the squads, each team becomes more independent and efficient.

In a way, you could look at the new Kin structure as a bit like musicians coming together to play a symphony. There are multiple sections (strings, woodwinds, percussion, etc.) each performing their own piece of the music with their own unique set-up and expertise. Each section has its own lead that keeps them in time and playing harmoniously together.

When listened to in isolation, the music from each section is beautiful, but it’s when all the sections are put together that the real magic is created.

With all that said, let’s introduce the sections in our Kin symphony and see what they have been focusing on in 2019.

1. Blockchain

The Blockchain Squad continues to develop, improve, and support the Kin blockchain, with a focus on making it fully federated by connecting it to federation nodes. A major project, which is currently underway and will be launched soon, is pushing forward the full migration from Ethereum to the Kin Blockchain, and as they do so bringing exchanges, wallets, and custodians to join the Kin ecosystem.

2. Developer Experience

The Dev Experience Squad is currently launching two developer programs, with one for all developers who want to build with Kin, and another focused specifically on Unity game developers using our new Unity SDK! The goal is to onboard developers across platforms and industries, so that they can create the most robust, diverse, and, of course, widely used ecosystem. To support this, the new website, Kin.org, will be launching soon, serving as a complete resource for developers everywhere who want to work with Kin.

3. KRE

The KRE Squad is working on building out the right incentives and awarding developers for growing the actual adoption and usage of Kin. Since this sits at the heart of creating a more fair economic model, the squad has been testing numerous ideas and models to ensure it will achieve its main goal of getting developers fairly compensated for their contributions.

4. Ecosystem

The Ecosystem Squad will push forward with two main goals, supporting larger partners while continuing to create new ones looking to work together to design and build user-centric Kin experiences. The squad is currently helping Tapatalk and Madlipz, supporting new Kin experiences for current partners like Kik and Perfect365, and developing partnerships with new apps that can bring millions of users to the ecosystem.

5. Kinnovation

The Kinnovation squad (previously known as the standalone team) continues to focus on developing cutting edge experiences to help inspire and support Kin developers. Their first major project this year is connecting the ecosystem to allow users to easily discover other apps and seamlessly use Kin everywhere in the ecosystem. With everything connected, developers have a chance to get discovered and attract more users, while users gain access to a world of apps with Kin experiences.

2019 is shaping up to be an amazing year for Kin. The ecosystem is live and is being connected, new major partners are coming live, two major dev programs are in place, and the Kin blockchain is set to be fully federated and connected to major wallets and exchanges. At the same time, we are truly embracing a decentralized ethos by embracing a squad model that maximizes efficiency and creativity.

We stand at the edge of a new, more fair digital world. 2019 is the year that Kin will make it happen.