The Independent Republic

Kik! Kin? I guess it does not ring a bell in your head, even if, you don’t seem to remember where you heard or saw it. This is probably because it is not on Coinbase or first 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

While Kik is a Canadian mobile app which aims at “connecting the world through chat” just like other social media apps like Facebook, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, but basically uses email for registration rather than mobile number, in a bid to secure anonymity.

Kin is a decentralized ecosystem of digital services for daily life developed by the creator of Kik messenger with the goal of creating “digital sharing economy” where people will be rewarded for their contribution and can be used for all transaction on the Kin ecosystem. Just like the world kinship, kin unites people in the new-shared economy.

Kik Messenger was able to attract about 300 million registered users in May 2016 with 15million monthly active users, then Kin was created in September 2017 to leverage on these users, to enable transfer of value in digital services, raising an Initial coin offering (ICO) of $98 million from 10000 participants.

From the scratch, Kin cryptocurrency was built on Ethereum Blockchain primarily for transactions on Kik messenger.

After months of usage, on Wednesday, 13th December, Kik CEO, Ted Livingston announced that the company is planning to move Kin token from the Ethereum blockchain to Stellar around complaints that Ethereum lacks the scaling capacity to hold Kin, as the token is moving beyond 10,000 users.

Calling Ethereum a dial-up era of blockchain, Kik CEO Ted Livingston argued that Ethereum falls short of speed, reliability, and cost. Stating that in December 2017, he added that the company wants to improve its services to users, thereby it will be edging towards another blockchain, Stellar. He said stellar was not created for general purpose.

Source: Twitter

“Stellar is custom built for an application like Kin,” said Livingston. “It’s focused on what it wants to solve for. It provides fast, reliable, and inexpensive transactions for a lot of people.”

Afterward, Livingston said the company, over the next few weeks, will begin to examine Stellar’s scalability and reliability.

“Stellar was built by the guys at Ripple and the thing we like about it is it’s custom-built for an application like Kin. It’s not like Ethereum where it’s trying to be everything to everybody, and that makes it general-purpose and slow.” Livingston said in a video.

Retracting the Previous Message

Months after that, it came to my surprise when Livingston issued another statement rescinding the previous, averring that the messenger will abandon Ethereum for Stellar.

The Kin Ecosystem Foundation yesterday announced that it would not jettison Ethereum for Stellar but use both blockchain side-by-side, where Ethereum will be used for liquidity and Stellar will be used for transactions.

Using the Duo Blockchain

Users will begin to wonder and get bewildered about the possibility of such, having their coins splinted by two blockchains.

Proffering answers to what might be creating ripple or disruption in the mind of users, Kik disclosed that it will be using atomic swaps, a proposed cryptocurrency technology that grants trading of coins across various blockchain without the need for trusted third party. It can also be regarded as “atomic cross-chain trade”.

Definitely, with atomic swap, Kik has no issue conglomerating the two blockchains. The technology embroils locking token on a blockchain and simultaneously creating on another. According to Coindesk, the company will lock up a Kin token’s stellar half when its ERC-20 (the Ethereum standard for crypto tokens) half leaves the app, and vice versa.

“Creating a bi-directional blockchain with stellar will drive mass adoption of kin by providing faster confirmation times, low transaction fees and scalability,” Livingston, in a press release disclosed.

“There are several barriers to entry that prevent the average consumer from using cryptocurrency in their digital lives”.

It is now glaring that Kik is obsessed by it proficiency level to its customers, and will be flexible in moving to the blockchain that can deliver the best.

“Kin simplifies blockchain for mainstream consumers and digital service providers, and we’re excited to work together to drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency through scalable, fast and low-cost transactions on Stellar,” backing Livingston, Jed McCaleb, founder of stellar said.

“Kik will be one of the first mainstream projects that use cryptocurrencies in a meaningful way. It will bring millions of more people to this technology and we are super excited to be the platform this will be done on”.

Musing over the latest decision, Kik may be of the opinion that Ethreum will bring it more popularity than Stellar, as the former is more famous than the later, while using Stellar for transaction may apparently be for the purpose of enhancing its services.