Traditional cryptocurrencies suffer from the so-called blockchain trilemma: a widely held belief that blockchains need to do a security-scalability-decentralization tradeoff and can only achieve two of these three benefits at any given time.
But while some developers believe that the blockchain has inherent limitations that prevent it from harnessing security, scalability, and decentralization at the same time, others argue that it’s possible to build a project that hits all three targets simultaneously.
And that’s what Kaspa is all about. They are leaving traditional blockchain technology behind to develop a revolutionary solution that is scalable, decentralized, and secure.
Let’s take a closer look at this project and its promising token: KAS Kaspa Website
What Is Kaspa?
Kaspa is an open-source, decentralized, and fully scalable Layer 1 and the first of its kind to enable parallel blocks and instant transaction finality. Touted as the “fastest coin in the world,” it was fair-launched in November 2021 without pre-mining or any other pre-allocation of coins, and it’s supported by a robust proof-of-work engine with quick single-second block intervals.
Kaspa was developed with a clear goal in mind: to solve the blockchain trilemma and bring security, scalability, and decentralization all together in one single project.
As opposed to blockchain technology, and thanks to its revolutionary BlockDAG solution, Kaspa operates without compromising any of the three aspects of the trilemma: it enables the fastest transactions in the market, is entirely scalable and highly secure, and holds decentralization as one of its key pillars.
About BlockDAG
Kaspa is the first BlockDAG cryptocurrency, meaning no blockchain is involved in its operation.
Blockchains are linear systems where transactions are recorded in blocks, organized by time, and sealed. BlockDAG, in turn, is a mathematical structure that consists of vertices and edges, where the vertices represent blocks and the edges represent references from the blocks to their predecessors.
The core idea is relatively simple: instead of having any block point to a single parent block, BlockDAG allows it to point to many. This creates parallel blocks in the network rather than a chain, enabling next-generation scalability, high throughput transactional bandwidth, and instant confirmations while preserving decentralization.
With the BlockDAG solution, the Kaspa team seeks to solve the most pressing issues of traditional blockchains, such as their lack of scalability, selfish or centralized mining, and orphan blocks. It’s an innovative implementation of distributed ledgers that seemingly puts an end to the trilemma.
A Community-led Project
To achieve its ambitious goal, Kaspa relies heavily on its community.
Created by industry pioneers and led by the community, Kaspa has no central governance —just like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Monero, among others. Apart from the core developers who helped with the implementation and stabilization of the network, the project is powered by community developers, marketers, and project volunteers who actively contribute to the ecosystem’s growth. As a 100% decentralized project, anyone who wishes to participate can join the team.
Kaspa Features
Kaspa boasts a series of features that set it apart from the rest in the market:
- Fastest transactions. Kaspa is ideal for everyday transactions because its network generates multiple blocks each second for posting transactions to the ledger and has 10-second confirmation times —faster than most existing solutions.
- Instant confirmation. Kaspa was built with the goal of being hundreds of times faster than other networks. And they are getting there: on average, each Kaspa transaction becomes visible in the network in 1 second, and each transaction is fully confirmed in 10 seconds.
- Scalability. To solve the scalability issue of the blockchain trilemma, Kaspa can generate and confirm multiple blocks per second without putting security and decentralization in jeopardy. So, no trade-offs are necessary.
- Security. With a stake-less, efficient proof-of-work framework and a revolutionary consensus mechanism, Kaspa leverages an ultra-secure block network that does not compromise decentralization in the slightest.
Mining decentralization. Kaspa has a fast block rate that makes mining rewards more regular and steadier. This contributes to mining decentralization and eliminates incentives to join mining pools, which remain huge drives of centralized operations in the sector.
An Overview of the KAS Token
KAS is a 100% decentralized, open-source, and community-managed coin, with a total supply of 28.7 billion tokens and a thorough emission schedule that halves once per year via monthly reductions.
According to the Kaspa team, KAS is the fastest proof-of-work, mineable coin currently on the market. Its underlying technology allows for better decentralization and effective solo mining at lower hash rates.
The Basics of KAS
| Token Name | Kaspa |
| Token Ticker | KAS |
| Circulating Supply | 12.52 billion KAS |
| Total Supply | 28.7 billion KAS |
| Market Cap | $49.8 million |
The KAS Monetary Policy
Kaspa has a well-rounded monetary policy to maintain the total KAS supply steady. It’s split into a pre-deflationary phase and a chromatic phase.
The pre-deflationary phase began with the launch and ended in May 2022, six months later. During this phase, the reward rate was random (it could be anywhere from 1 to 1000 KAS per block) for the first 2 weeks or so. Then it was replaced with a rate of 500 KAS per block.
In the chromatic phase, which started right after, block rewards decrease geometrically. The initial block reward was 440 KAS, and it halves once per year, but gradually.
The Road Ahead
Kaspa seeks to become the fastest, most scalable, and most secure Layer 1 proof-of-work crypto. And while the team admits there’s still some fine-tuning left to do, it looks like they have already reached this benchmark.
But they have some exciting plans for the future.
Kaspa is working hard to further increase the number of blocks per second from 1 to 32, speeding up transactions tremendously. Also, a complete rewrite of Kaspa’s programming language from Golang to Rust is underway to boost overall performance and speed. Finally, a mobile-device wallet development project is currently in the funding stage.
On paper, Kaspa seems like the only coin capable of achieving scalable throughput and immediate confirmations while maintaining security and decentralization at its core, all based on simple proof-of-work principles. With such potential and a roadmap packed with new features and improvements, it’s no wonder why this project has become a new favorite in the crypto community.