CoinEx Academy | From a Nothing to a Market Favorite, Does KAS Just Luck out or Prosper as Destined?

A PoW project that was once unknown to the public has recently caught people’s attention, which is said to be the world’s fastest open-source, decentralized Layer1 project. It has also caused a sensation in the crypto market, pushing the PoW track back to the spotlight. You may have already guessed what we’re talking about. Yes, it’s Kaspa.

Since the Ethereum merge, GPU miners have been searching for promising cryptos, and Kaspa is on their radar screen. After Ethereum’s transition to PoS, Kaspa’s hashrate on the network has been on a steady rise and even soared this March, which attracted growing attention. According to relevant data, as of April 12, 2023, KAS ranks fourth in terms of 24-hour PoW mining output, second only to BTC, DOGE, and LTC.

What makes Kaspa a blue chip among GPU miners? We should start with its key features, which can be summarized as follows:

I. Guaranteed security

According to information from the Kaspa official website and whitepaper, Kaspa is built on the GhostDAG/PHANTOM protocol, which follows the PoW consensus and represents a scalable generalization of the Nakamoto consensus (Bitcoin consensus). It abides by the design principles of Bitcoin set by Satoshi Nakamoto, involving PoW mining, UTXO-based isolation, deflationary monetary policy, no pre-mining, and no central governance. In other words, Kaspa, like Bitcoin, is completely decentralized and permissionless, and anyone can participate and protect its network. The core consensus of Kaspa also provides an effective shield over its security.

II. Great scalability

Kaspa uses BlockDAG to build its blockchain. The advantage of BlockDAG is that it generates multiple blocks every second for posting transactions to the ledger and then aggregating and ordering the transactions, which ultimately boosts the overall efficiency of bookkeeping on the blockchain.

BlockDAG can be understood as multiple chains simultaneously performing bookkeeping in a specified direction, securing operations while keeping the block rate high and the confirmation time controlled by Internet latency at a minimal level. This guarantees security, validation speed, and scalability at the same time, which is a trilemma facing traditional blockchain systems.

As officially stated by Kaspa, this project was created to solve the trilemma of security, scalability, and decentralization frustrating crypto users. By utilizing BlockDAG, Kaspa realizes the fastest, safest, and most scalable transactions without sacrificing decentralization.

III. High efficiency

Kaspa’s BlockDAG network generates multiple blocks every second to post transactions to the ledger, and transactions can be fully confirmed within 10 seconds, which is impossible for many other blockchains. The current Kaspa mainnet generates one block per second, with each block able to contain 400+ transaction records. What sets Kaspa apart is its ability to handle high congestion rates while maintaining the security level provided by the PoW environment, making it an ideal choice for everyday transactions.

Overall, Kaspa can realize extremely high block rates and almost real-time on-chain transactions, making it one of the PoW projects with the fastest transaction confirmation. There will be more improvements in the future, as the Kaspa team aspires to produce 32 blocks per second, making Kaspa the fastest decentralized network.

It is worth noting that Kaspa uses the KHeavyHash algorithm, which allows miners to use both GPU and FPGA devices. Miners may also adopt common AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards, partly explaining the reason behind the popularity of Kaspa among GPU miners.

As PoW projects have long suffered poor on-chain scalability, PoS projects have emerged in response. However, the Kaspa team believes that PoS has deviated from Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision of consensus, as this approach sacrifices decentralization in order to scale and accelerate transactions. Kaspa has been committed to solving issues of scalability and transaction confirmation speed in a truly decentralized system and maintaining decentralization while addressing negative impacts related to mining. Whether Kaspa can reshape the existing PoW track has become one of the concerns in the crypto market.

KAS, the native token of Kaspa, was issued in November 2021. With no pre-sale, no pre-mining, and no team allocation, the token is fully community-oriented, 100% decentralized and open-source. According to information on the official website, the maximum supply of KAS is 28.7 billion tokens.

The global crypto exchange CoinEx is one of the earliest platforms that support KAS trading. It listed KAS as early as November 2022 with the AMM function available. According to the data in the Market segment on CoinEx’s official website, as of April 12, 2023, the 90-day growth rate of KAS has exceeded 550%, and the current price stands at $0.03253, with a total market value of $934 million.

In addition, as of April 12, 2023, the AMM 7-day APY of KAS reaches 72.08% (data is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice).

According to information revealed by the Kaspa community, the team is actively expanding the daily use cases of KAS, and the developers are rewriting Kaspad in Rust to further improve Kaspa’s performance. From a nothing to a market favorite, Kaspa owes its success to both timing and accumulated efforts. Indeed, the Ethereum merge has provided a golden opportunity, yet Kaspa could not have made it without its profound strength. Let’s stay tuned for Kaspa’s future performance.