The Kik mobile messaging service announced back in May 2017, that it would be launching a new cryptocurrency named Kin as the first step to developing its Kin ecosystem; a decentralized ecosystem of digital services.

Jump forward to September 2017 where Kik successfully concluded it’s token sale and raised nearly $100 million from across 117 countries. 

Now — today, this decentralized ecosystem is truly underway as the company announced its approval of 40 developers to participate in its first ‘Kin Developer Program’.

But what is this and what will these developers do?

Kin Ecosystem

The chosen 40 developers will make applications that take advantage of the Kin cryptocurrency and once they successfully launch Kin-integrated apps over the next six months the developers will receive a financial incentive in the tune of $60,000 (or 400 million Kin).

The 40 applications will integrate the Kin Ecosystem Software Development Kit (SDK) into current existing apps. Areas of focus include

messaging/chat space
gaming
productivity
networking
e-commerce
content-sharing
health
education categories

Two examples are apps such as Nearby — a social networking app used to meet new friends, and Vent, an emotion-sharing platform.