The Kin Show with Tony Jacob

In this episode I’m joined by Ted Livingston, Will Gikandi and Andrew Mocol. Ted is the CEO of Code, a crypto wallet app that makes crypto simple to use. He was previously the CEO of the chat app Kik. Will is the Head of Research & Development at Sacred Finance, a privacy protocol. He was previously the CTO of the Kin Foundation. Andrew Mocol who is my Co-founder and the CTO of Kinny Technologies.

In this conversation, we talk about decentralizing Kin, we reconsider the need for the Kin Rewards Engine, and discuss ideas on how to build a smart contract to measure buy demand for Kin and distribute the KRE rewards. We also talk about the idea of an investment DAO, how to govern Kin in a decentralized and transparent manner, and finally wrap up with next steps.

Relevant Links:

Tanner Philp is the Head of Operations and Corporate Development at Code. Code is a not-for-profit organization building a new crypto wallet with Kin. Tanner has been involved with Kin since its inception. Prior to Code, Tanner was at Kik Inc., who helped launch Kin, and helped drive the evolution of the technology stack that Kin runs on today, going from Ethereum, to Stellar, to the Kin Blockchain, to Solana.

In this conversation, we talk about Tanner’s start as an early employee at Kik, growing Kik to 500 million users, the spark behind Kik points and the genesis of Kin. We talk about his early conversations with the Solana team, the process of identifying Solana as a viable blockchain for Kin and his early perspective on the introduction of fees for Solana. We then spend some time talking about Code, their joining of the Blockchain Association and his work with in-app buy module partners. Finally, we talk about his perspective on Kin becoming money.

Relevant Links:

• https://www.getcode.com/
• https://twitter.com/getcode
• https://tannerphilp.com/crypto/
• https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/05/22/fed-up-with-its-fork-of-stellar-kin-is-looking-to-move-onto-solana/
• https://forums.solana.com/t/solana-outage-perspective-from-a-developer/2871

Lewis Knell is the co-founder and CPO & COO of Swelly, the social voting platform where you can earn Kin for your opinions. He has a degree in computer science and has worked in a variety of design and product roles for both startups and large multinational companies.

In this conversation, we talk about Lewis’ background, his start in the app polling business and  his introduction to crypto. We then spend the majority of the conversation focusing on the return of Swelly, their motivations to acquire it, their plans to re-activate their 10 million registered users, why they chose to retain the Kin experience within the app and their plans for the future of Swelly.

Relevant Links:

• https://www.swelly.ai/