On November 11, 2025, this day was originally supposed to be the 'clearance day' for the e-commerce platform, but Kite's Agent App Store went against the tide—there were no discounts, no pull numbers, just a seemingly crazy announcement: the first 1,000 online AI agents that pass the security audit will share 20 million KITE as 'shelf subsidies.'
This is not just simple marketing, but a typical 'two-sided market war.' Kite is very aware of a harsh reality: no matter how beautiful the infrastructure is, if there are no useful agents on the shelves, it is just an empty shopping mall. Supported by traditional giants like Coinbase and PayPal Ventures, Kite chose the most direct approach—using the 48% 'ecosystem and community fund pool' written in the white paper to fill the shelves with real money.
I am like a boat looking for a sword; in this article, we won't discuss hollow narratives, but rather break down one thing: how Kite used 200 million tokens to transform the Agent App Store from a 'ghost town' into a 'CBD business district.'
Infrastructure is not the story; shelves are the story.
Kite is building the underlying payment and settlement network for the machine economy; such things have a common fate: when they first go live, the ecosystem is bound to be barren.
Without Agents, upstream developers find it troublesome
Without real traffic, downstream enterprises are unwilling to integrate
The App Store is up and running, like building a mall in the desert
Thus, Kite does not deceive itself by waiting for the 'ecosystem to grow naturally', but directly acknowledges a fact:
In Web3, anyone who wants to build a platform does not fight the first battle with technology, but rather with the 'shelf competition.'
The solution is to turn 'filling the shelves' into a protocol-level goal rather than a marketing KPI.
200 million developer budget: turning Agent Builders into 'shareholders'
From the structure of token distribution, Kite has already locked developers into the asset side of the protocol from the beginning:
48% of the total supply is allocated to the 'Ecosystem & Community' pool
About 20% is specifically for module (Modules) and Agent developers
As long as you deploy the Agent, it runs, and has users, you have a chance to continuously earn KITE flow
The logic behind this structure is actually very simple:
Traditional Web2: Developers are 'workers on the platform';
What Kite intends to do is:Turn the developers of quality Agents into 'shareholders of the platform.'
Specifically for the event on November 11:
The first 1,000 Agents that pass security audits / pass PoAI quality screening
Distributed evenly among 20 million KITE based on activity, call volume, and reputation score weight
There will be a continuing 'reward by contribution' pool, and subsidies will not be cut off abruptly
The result is: various segmented demand Agents filled the shelves within a month—
From legal consulting, on-chain risk control, compliance checks, to DeFi trading robots, NFT market-making Agents, the App Store quickly transformed from 'only demos' to 'everything.'
It's not a flood of resources: PoAI monitors every 'volume brushing script'
Many projects have also played with 'developer subsidies', and in the end, they all became:
A bunch of copy-paste junk projects
A large number of daily active users of only 1 'zombie apps'
After spending the tokens, the ecosystem hasn't taken off, and the chart has collapsed.
What Kite did smartly this time is use its own PoAI consensus layer as 'judges', binding subsidies with 'real computing power and real calls':
Agents wanting to earn rewards isn't just about going live, but requires:
Called by real users / other Agents
Workload recorded through the task pool (call count, success rate, latency)
Maintain a certain level of service availability and quality rating
All these metrics will be fed to the PoAI consensus layer to calculate KITE rewards based on weight.
Can be roughly understood as:
Kite uses the consensus layer to track the working hours of each Agent; brushes and scripts cannot be accounted.
This addresses a very critical point:
Money will not be wasted on 'pseudo shelves', but will continuously be invested in modules that truly run the business.
Piggy Bank: forcibly turning short-term subsidies into long-term commitments
The simple 'launch rewards' come with an old problem:
Take the money and run, developers shut down services, run away, and switch to new tracks
The protocol initially provided huge subsidies, only to end up with a graveyard of 'tombstone warehouses'
Kite added a lock for this—Piggy Bank mechanism:
The KITE rewards received by developers are not released at once
A part is immediately available, and another part is locked in the 'Piggy Bank'
To fully unlock the rewards in the Piggy Bank,
they need to continuously keep the Agent running normally in the subsequent period
Accept regular security audits / version updates
Maintain a certain level of activity
In other words:
You are not selling code to Kite once, but continuously working for this network in exchange for equity.
This structure is very Web2-SaaS:
One-time motivation turns into long-term motivation
Developers shift from 'grabbing a quick profit' to 'operating a long-term revenue machine'
It also greatly reduces the 'counterparty risk' for CreatorPad and enterprises integrating into the Kite ecosystem—
Those Agents who can receive full rewards are inherently more stable and durable Infra.
Once the shelves are filled, who will walk into this supermarket?
When the supply side is sorted out, demand will naturally start to flood in.
Kite's strategy is not only focused on developers; it's also targeting enterprise entry.
Collaborate with large ecosystem integrators like Samsung Next
Integrate Kite Agents as underlying modules into mobile devices and enterprise workflows
Allow traditional enterprises to 'one-click' call on-chain Agent services
For AI / SaaS projects:
No need to build a payment + settlement + security layer from scratch
Directly use Kite network + components in the App Store to upgrade an 'AI tool' into an 'AI business that can collect its own fees'
When the shelves are rich enough and the access threshold is low enough, the network effect begins to push the token value back up:
The more enterprises and Agents use Kite for settlement
The larger the PoAI task pool, the more stable the earnings for validating nodes
The demand for KITE (staking, paying gas, serving as a subsidy medium) becomes stronger
Token price → Token incentive ability → Further feed more Agents and users
This is a very standard 'token → incentive supply → drive demand → further boost tokens' feedback loop, it's just that Kite is genuinely running it.
From a higher perspective in this 'shelf war': tokens are not just chips, but growth hackers
Many people see '200 million tokens for developers' and their first reaction is:
'Is this just another round of story packaging before VC cash-outs?'
But if you view Kite as the 'App Store + payment layer of the AI Agent economy', you will find that what it is actually playing is more like a Web2 set of things:
Use token budgets to replace marketing budgets / BD costs in Web2
Upgrade developers from 'suppliers' to 'co-shareholders'
Using protocol rules and PoAI accounting, transform the speculative impulses in human nature into long-term operational motivation
For readers of Binance CreatorPad, here are two key signals worth paying attention to:
Who truly dares to put a large amount of tokens to smash the 'real supply side', rather than just smashing for market making and airdrops;
Whose token distribution logic can withstand the penetrative inspection of PoAI / reputation score / long-term locking mechanism.
Kite's current round of Agent App Store cold start provides a very clear answer:
Tokens are not simple trading objects, but rather 'growth hacking carriers' written into the protocol.
When the shelves are filled, the real 'application layer Alpha' in the machine economy will emerge.
I am like a boat looking for a sword, and in the developer leaderboard of Kite and the PoAI task pool curve, I see the key to the next round of Agent ecosystem success or failure—it's not about whose white paper is more flashy, but who fills the shelves first.@KITE AI $KITE #KITE
