Game Giant Unity to Work With Kik's ICO Token

The Kin Foundation wants game developers to help take the kin cryptocurrency mainstream – and it has just scored the assistance of industry giant Unity Technologies.

Unity is the maker of a popular game engine that can be used by other developers. Notable games built with Unity's engine include Cuphead, Pokémon Go and Kerbal Space Program, among numerous others.

The company is the first participant in kin's "decentralized ecosystem for digital services and applications." Created by messaging app firm Kik, the initial coin offering of the kin token garnered $98 million last year.

The foundation will work with Unity to develop a gaming-specific software development kit (SDK) that will allow millions of Unity developers to integrate kin – hosted on both the ethereum and stellar blockchains – into their designs, it announced on Thursday.

"The SDK will allow all game developers to design with kin and blockchain technology at the core," Dany Fishel, EVP of Partnerships at Kin, told CoinDesk in an interview.

In practical terms, this means that the team will introduce a wallet and a marketplace for developers, Fishel explained. After emerging from its beta stage, the SDK will be open sourced and available in the Unity Asset store, as well as shared on GitHub.

The foundation intends for the kit to "bring monetization tools to developers," and will facilitate three particular use cases – the first of which is peer-to-peer value exchange in mobile games. For example, Fishel said, players could "reward one another for the knowledge they can share" about unlocking game levels or other features.

The SDK is also intended to enable developers to reward users for "being good citizens of the apps" by reporting bugs or providing feedback.

Likewise, the kit would provide another means of monetization by allowing brands to interact with players by rewarding them for completing surveys.

Fishel also spoke to why the foundation sees the gaming industry as an ideal foundational participant for the kin ecosystem.

"Gamers in general already have a strong understanding of digital currency to being with," he explained. "Game developers are the first ones to adopt technologies, they are the first ones to adopt innovation. So we see them specifically as a very natural audience to endorse a cryptocurrency."

Fishel added that that the integration of kin into the gaming world is just the beginning of the creation of a larger ecosystem. While developers will provide the cryptocurrency within the context of a game, users will eventually be able to spend it outside the game as more partners come onboard.

Although Fishel was unable to reveal who the next partners will be, he told CoinDesk to anticipate collaborations with "community-driven apps that will provide great ways to earn and spend for users," to be announced within the coming weeks.

Kik app image via Shutterstock