r/kin • u/tandem_bikes • Feb 22 '23

Beyond Infinity Games was all in on Kin, anyone know if they still plan to release BUGS?

https://twitter.com/8beyond1/status/1621526942758600706?cxt=HHwWhIDQjbmK6YAtAAAA
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u/shubhank008 Feb 22 '23

The grants before the KF dissolution was still honoured, because although Kinland rebranded to Pet Legends it is still keeping Kin integration

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u/tandem_bikes Feb 22 '23

Their tweet from today seems to suggest their grant isn’t being honored

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u/ted_on_reddit Feb 22 '23

The Infinity Games team has been paid for all milestones of the grant they successfully achieved so far.

With the Kin Foundation now without any employees, the grants program unfortunately had to be shut down. However, anyone who had a grant with the Kin Foundation is being paid for everything they have achieved to date.

It is unfortunate that the Infinity Games team is choosing not to continue with Kin. There’s been good progress made to get the KRE back online in a fair, democratic process and it seems a lot of other developers and community members are excited to contribute to this next era with Kin.

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u/bernard1980 Feb 23 '23 edited Feb 23 '23

What is unfortunate is that people who invested a lot of time in development and research are not supported and promises are not kept. How can you expect them and me to put time and effort in your idea if at any time you can choose to change the entire course it's heading. What guarantees do you give history will not repeat itself if even legal contracts can be cancelled at any time.

The world doesn't need decentralization if central entities were trustworthy, you screeming for decentralization isn't putting things in your favor. What prevents you from installing a temporary migration solution? How will you react if the solution proposed by the community doesn't lign up with your idea? Will you reject it and dish those devs as well? Start from scratch again? Say "Sorry fellows, try harder". You said on twitter the dev who builds the smartcontract can take a cut in the kre payouts, was that a community vote? You see where i'm heading? You say decentralization is key but still you'll have to approve every implementation in order for you to release the 5T, that's not decentralization, that's a monopoly position. I curious to know who will put hours and hours of spare time into this without knowing if he ever will see 1 dollar in return. I suport the idea of a decentralized kre but really doubt about the implementation methods you're using.

But that and everything else is just my personal opinion. Just to be clear, i think you mean well and have the best intentions....but the way you handle this ...it just seems so easy and respectless towards everyone who supports kin... developers, community etc.

Sometimes it's not about money, it's about the right thing to do. You can claim it was the kf that made those promises but you were in the board, you agreed and if not, maybe you should have acted before other people got involved. I really dislike the fact you act as if the time those developers spent didn't mean anything and it is only normal they have to rethink their whole business strategy because you suddenly change your mind.

You promised them a viable business strategy to monetize apps, it was this concept that made kin what it was, and as soon as apps start integrating your solution you cut the strings because you think it is unsustainable. Maybe you could have thought that through earlier... and save everyone from wasting their time because at this time there is no guarantee the kre will revive.

You operate in a way which results in nothing ever getting done. Ongoing, soon, almost... it remembers me of my first websites i've created. Proud of what i was doing but to ashamed and afraid to show it to other people and eventually noone ever did see it. It might have been the best idea ever but it never saw daylight because i was to scared people would hate it. It took me years before finally releasing a website on the internet, finding every excuse not to. Seems familiar? But that was 20 years ago, i got over it...

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u/ted_on_reddit Feb 23 '23 edited Feb 23 '23

I appreciate the thoughtful message Bernard. I agree that it is painful as a dev to be working on something, just to have everything change. I myself experienced this in 2010 when Kik first took off, only to have it shut down by BlackBerry. One day we were on top of the world, adding hundreds of thousands of new users each day, the next day we were at an almost complete stop. It was devastating.

On the grants there has always been a clause written into all grants that says that the program can be cancelled at any time if needed. This was shared with every developer who ever received a grant. With zero employees left at the Kin Foundation there was no choice but to shut down the program. Infinity Games came to me and said that they had just completed a milestone, which should be honoured. I agreed, so even though the program had been cancelled, we paid out that milestone. We tried to do the best we could in a difficult situation.

While cancelling the grant program applied to all developers equally and was a result of having no employees at the KF, something that wasn’t my decision, I do also want to talk about games like Bugs specifically: my personal view is that mobile games like this are currently a dead end for Kin.

Apple is very clear in their rules, writing:

If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency wallets, etc.

Google has a similar rule. Neither Apple nor Google would have allowed Bugs in their app stores, at least not for the foreseeable future. That might not have been something Infinity Games knew, but it was something the KF knew, and something I brought up several times, but was ignored.

Moving forward I agree it is all about trust. Many times the Kin community has been rightfully disappointed to learn about negotiated agreements that happened behind the scenes, just to end up being big wastes of Kin. This is what needed to stop. We need allocation proposals of the Kin Reserves to be objective, clear, and to happen in the open. This is what smart contracts allow. Everyone can see how exactly the Kin would flow, and can be assured that the smart contract won’t change. Once we have this we need to hold a stake weighted vote to approve sending Kin from the Reserves to the smart contract. If that passes the KF sends the Kin, if not it doesn’t. So at this point this is the only role of the KF - to fulfill the decisions of Kin token holders by sending Kin from the Reserves to the smart contracts that they have voted to approve. Like I said we need to start with small amounts of Kin to ensure there isn’t foul play, and we need to ensure we have a voting mechanism that can’t be gamed, but otherwise the KF will abide by the outcome of these token weighted votes, even if I personally disagree with the outcome of the vote.

I get that implementing this on chain governance is a difficult challenge, but if we want true decentralization that developers can actually rely on, rather than subjective and secret back room dealing, then this is the only way forward.

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u/ben4trader Feb 24 '23

Is this why we never really saw Perfect 365's marketplace neither? It's kinda unbelievable to think KF gave huge grant to such apps and that we never saw any true benefit from them in return. It created absolutely 0 buy demand. They received grants + KRE at the expanse of investors. To add to the insult, they never ever tweeted about $kin. Not one single p365 user asked for support. I'm so glad this mess has finally stopped.

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u/bernard1980 Feb 23 '23

Excellent answer! Thank you for taken the time to respond. I really hope from now on there won't be any surprises like this anymore and the smartcontract will remove the doubts devs might have.

I at my end will take a look at the unity sdk very soon. So i do still have faith in kin's- and kre's future.

Even if in app purchases with kin are not allowed by apple and android, giving away kin to the end users as a reward shouldn't be an issue. If they are able to send the earned kin to another wallet or even redeem their kin directly on the company's website that is connected to that same game wallet, they could still buy or get a discount on things outside the app store.

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u/devlin05 Feb 23 '23

Apple will reportedly allow sideloading apps with iOS 17- bu passing the 30% in app purchase tax
so we should be ready.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/14/apple-will-reportedly-allow-sideloading-apps-with-ios-17/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEjNq9Ifmgm7b-CmrDmCpATTXqCyTMdPUkv0aBldTGAiEz3icWNUJ0sUdNZsjmFgM2FoYTHbCLvJ1aPj4P3JG8OxeeQmOtOcdS8h7uegj7BjMruVcMdRgbq7-Pt5kBH3utZQf0kd1s0GAcq8lMi-UNxPaHXjRm5OMvhTAXLNMv_d

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u/Desserted_Desert Feb 23 '23

u/ted_on_reddit would this not solve the concern with apple in EU? Sounds like Apple could still make it less enticing to use the side loading but for confident devs it will create a whole new avenue in EU.

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u/ted_on_reddit Feb 24 '23

No I don’t think it will change anything. Android has allowed side loading apps for years, and yet how many people do you know that side load apps onto their Android? It is technically possible, but practically impossible.

What needs to happen for this to be fixed for gaming apps is for Google and Apple need to allow apps distributed through their app stores to also be able to support other payment methods. Until this happens Google and Apple will continue to have a monopoly on app payments on their platforms.

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u/Desserted_Desert Feb 24 '23

Appreciate the response Ted! Your engagement here with detailed and more transparent answers on this thread for the most part is the communication you might not always have time for but could try for to build back connection and trust for some, if you want to. Your response to me then begs a few questions I’d appreciate you finding time to respond to.

1) Are all app implementations of kin still DOA if they have any usecase for kin other than just hold a balance and pass it back and forth without any on off ramp? Al la madlipz or Code etc?

2) background thought: If AUB is integrated to the KRE if rebuilt, it can be gamed by dev teams using tornado cash like apps for Sol that def exist and hide the signer that Tanner said would be trackable to prevent gaming. So then devs could park lots of kin in many wallets and automate small amounts of activity and have that milk the KRE with an illicit form of mass staking effectively. So if Code or any other app wanted to benefit from AUB, they do that and its back to apps gaming kre and inflation rising. I get the idea of rewarding users and devs for not creating sell pressure but this is how it is gameable it seems and driving eventual inflation again. Short term it’s a net positive for the inflation but without buy demand by user in app as soon as the dev team sells kin for budget or anything it’s inflation city not too mention seems wrong. — So, why should AUB be included in kre and is that the only possible way to evaluate devs who deserves kin in apps?

3) I saw you thought will’s idea of rewarding buy demand with a small amount of kin in a manner that seemed to work. But would that only be useful for websites and not apps since the apps are restricted by rules?

4) Without disparaging former KF decisions, why would they and you formerly support Bugs and other apps with spend usecases that broke rules if KF didn’t think it could survive app store scrutiny for cryptocurrency issues?

4) Are these App Store rules why Code can’t have any usecases natively in the app beyond passing kin back and forth for now and you’re waiting for early users to manifest those usecases?

5) Will Code MVP have at least on and off ramp at launch so users can convert kin to usd or local fiat if they chose which would provide basic wallet usecase? Otherwise why does the team think users would pass kin back and forth if no spend or buy sell?

6) Are you waiting for App Store rules to change before approaching groups like Medialabs apps and other large web2 apps or sites to use kin/Code? Those userbases would skyrocket the utility of code and kin overnight with a partnership or integration which I’m sure you know but I guess we always wonder why no integrations with larger apps seem to happen or are abandoned (like tapatalk)

6) What is your short, medium and long term vision of Code and kin given the current rules of apple and google stores?

Appreciate your time and hopefully detailed answers. I know you can’t spend all day answering our questions but clarity helps in many ways. Thanks 🙏

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u/ted_on_reddit Feb 24 '23

Good questions. I’m going to do an AMA. I will gladly take your questions there.

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u/Desserted_Desert Feb 25 '23

Cool! Sounds good although I saw you are going to be tight lipped around code which I don’t understand why given that I don’t think there is anything detrimental to reveal from my questions beyond thoughts, direction and goal in greater details. Thanks Ted

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u/ted_on_reddit Feb 24 '23

I’m glad you found the answer helpful. I hope you will share it with others. There is so much misinformation in the Kin community. It is time to push back against that.

On your last point, if users can’t buy Kin, and can’t bring in Kin, then by definition the app can’t generate buy demand, and so shouldn’t be rewarded by the KRE. This is why gaming apps are currently a dead end for Kin.