Line Develops Its Crypto Token In A Bid To Solve Its User Growth Problem

In a bid to help grow its stagnant user base, Line, a Japanese messaging app firm, is pushing deeper into the crypto world after it launched its own token. Line is well known for its mawkish characters and also stickers.

After going public two years back, Line hit a whopping 218 million users. However, it has not been able to kick on. It has recently registered a drop in the ‘number of users, after hitting 164million users million in Q2 2018 from 169 million in Q2 last year. The company no longer gives out its worldwide user number.

Link –Lines token- is going to be given out to the users as an incentive for using certain services. In a bid to promote engagement, it is likely that it will be tied to specific activities as it there’s no specific details as to how the tokens will be earned.

The token is bound to be listed on Bitbox –the Lines crypto exchange. Link will be used to purchase certain products associated with Line such as stickers and also web comics as well as other services.

Link, however, has not yet been launched in Japan. Reason being, Line is awaiting regulatory approval for its token and also exchange. For those in Japan, which is Lines largest market will be earning virtual tokens. This can later be traded for link tokens.

Following The announcement of Bitbox in July and also the launch of a dedicated crypto fund early in August, Link will be launching next month.

It comes with no surprise that Line is using the currency to incentivize user engagement and also user activity. It has also dodged legal questions around token sales by not holding an ICO.

Despite user numbers declining, Line has continued to grow its revenue through additional services after going public in 2016 in a dual U.S-Japan IPO that raised over $1 billion.

Line has taken a logical move by incentivizing its users given that it encounters increased competition from the likes of Facebook Messenger and also WhatsApp. This however will depend on how useful link becomes. Line may likely gain appeal if the users can exchange it for a decent amount of cash or even credits

There are plans for Line to use both Link -and the Blockchain developed to power it- to host decentralized applications (dapps) which will connect to the messaging platform. The company is involved in other activities other than messaging like music and videos, payments and also ride-hailing. There are plans to tap a third party to develop the aforementioned dapps. They however have not taken off. The collectibles game cryptokitties blew up late last year. Studies have however suggested that user activity has gone downhill this year.

“Over the last seven years, Line was able to grow into a global service because of our users, and now with Link, we wanted to build a user-friendly reward system that gives back to our users. With Link, we would like to continue developing as a user participation-based platform, one that rewards and shares added value through the introduction of easy-to-use dapps for people’s daily lives,”

said Line CEO Takeshi Idezawa in a statement.

Line has minted a whopping 1Bilion Link tokens which it said will be “gradually issued according to how this ecosystem develops.” 800 million tokens will be made available as user rewards as the company keeps 200 million tokens.

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