In brief
- Developers of the Kin cryptocurrency have announced that its migration to the Solana blockchain will start on December 15.
- Ahead of the transfer, Solana will undergo a mainnet upgrade to implement some new Kin-specific optimizations.
- Kin accounts with balances of $1 or more will be prioritized during the migration.
The developers of the Kin cryptocurrency are making the final preparations before tomorrow’s move to the Solana blockchain.
This will be “the single largest migration in the history of crypto,” according to an announcement published by Kik Engineering today.
“The Kin Ecosystem has more than 55 million total accounts making this the single largest migration in the history of crypto. Given that, we are taking a measured approach to make sure that everything runs smoothly,” said the post.
Solana is touted as a high-performance, proof-of-stake blockchain that supports smart contracts and decentralized applications. Prior to its migration, Kin was initially launched as an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token.
Kin developers noted that over the past week, they ran several simulations of the upcoming migration on a dedicated multi-node testnet. This allowed the team at Solana to work on additional optimizations that should make the transfer more straightforward. To implement these features, the Solana blockchain will undergo a mainnet upgrade today, Kik Engineering added.
“The most recent round of tests, coupled with the scheduled mainnet upgrade gave both of our teams the confidence to engage the migration beginning Tuesday, December 15th 2020. We have scheduled the official start time as 14:00 UTC [8:30 am UTC],” the developers announced.
Staying the course, through Kik and Kin
In 2015, messaging app Kik achieved unicorn status after a $50 million investment from Tencent, owner of Chinese rival WeChat. It was the first messaging app to create a platform for developers (in 2011), and the first to feature chatbots. Its founder, Ted Livingston, said it aimed to be the “WeChat of the West;” it even aspired to take on messaging app tech giant Facebook. Cut to today, and things aren't looking quite as rosy. Canada-based Kik has 15 million monthly active users worldwide and...
Per the announcement, active accounts with balances of over $1 or more in Kin tokens will be prioritized during the migration. The developers expect that this stage of the transfer will be completed by the end of the day.
At the same time, the remaining low-balance accounts—which hold less than $1 in Kin—will be migrated during the next 1–2 weeks (unless their users deposit more Kin and thus “will immediately be pushed to the top of the queue”).
SEC Seeks $5 Million Fine Over Kik's $100 Million ICO
The US Securities and Exchange Commission today proposed to a New York court that messaging app company Kik should pay a $5 million fine for illegally holding a $98 million initial coin offering (ICO) for its crypto network, Kin. US District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein sided with the SEC in its lawsuit against the Canada-based company at the end of September. Now, the SEC seeks to impose a penalty. The proposed settlement, which is yet to be ratified by the judge, would require Kik to wire th...
As Decrypt reported, Kin was launched via an initial coin offering (ICO) by popular Canadian messaging platform Kik in 2017. Since then, Kin made quite a number of headlines—although mostly “thanks” to its troubles with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
During the course of a lengthy legal battle, the regulator claimed that Kik violated Section 5 of the Securities Act, more specifically—offered and sold securities in the US without being registered to do so. In early October, the SEC ultimately won its lawsuit over Kik’s $100 million ICO.
As Decrypt reported, while Kik will have to pay the SEC a civil penalty of $5 million, the remaining Kin tokens, as well as the Kin Foundation itself, are now out of the legal woods, at least according to the company itself.
