Kusama, often referred to as "Polkadot's wild cousin," is an experimental blockchain platform that offers a scalable and interoperable framework for developers. It's built on Substrate, a blockchain building kit developed by Parity Technologies, and shares much of its codebase with Polkadot, another successful interoperable blockchain. Kusama is designed to serve as a testbed for developers looking to innovate and deploy their own blockchain, and is often used as a preparatory network before launching on Polkadot. However, many projects choose to stick with Kusama for their final product due to its low barrier to entry for deploying parachains and low bond requirements for validators.
Kusama was created by the same team behind Polkadot, Parity Technologies, which was founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, a renowned computer scientist and programmer who also co-founded Ethereum. Parity Technologies boasts an extensive team of successful blockchain engineers and has over 100 employees worldwide. Kusama is also supported by grants from the Web3 Foundation, which provides research and community development assistance.
As of November 2020, Kusama has a circulating supply of 8.47 million tokens and a total supply of 10 million tokens. However, this maximum supply is not fixed and increases at an inflation rate of 10% per year. The distribution of newly minted KSM tokens from inflation depends on the proportion of KSM that are staked. If exactly half of all KSM are staked, then Kusama validators receive 100% of newly minted tokens. If it's above or below 50%, some of the inflation rewards will go to the Kusama Treasury.
Kusama (KSM) can be traded on several popular exchange platforms, including Binance, OKEx, and Huobi Global. The most liquid trade pairs for KSM are currently KSM/USDT, KSM/BTC, and KSM/ETH.
Kusama is most commonly used by early-stage startups and for experimentation. It provides a platform for developers to test and deploy their own blockchain projects. Kusama also offers a highly scalable, interoperable sharded network, with features that are not yet available on Polkadot.
Kusama is known for its fast-evolving pace of development. It uses a nominated proof-of-stake (NPoS) consensus system, an alternative to the energy-intensive proof-of-work (POW) scheme employed by several other blockchains. This system allows Kusama to perform rapid on-chain upgrades without a fork and support cross-chain message passing (XCMP) to enable communication with other parachains on the Kusama network. Kusama also features on-chain governance capabilities, which are both decentralized and permission-less, allowing anyone with KSM tokens or parachain tokens to vote on governance proposals. This on-chain governance procedure is roughly four times faster than that offered by Polkadot, leading to a rapid pace of development for projects built on Kusama.
Recent news about Kusama highlights the network's active participation in parachain slot auctions. SherpaX, a canary network of ChainX, is one of the participants. The auctions are a way for developers to secure a slot on the network without going through the traditional ICO path. Notably, the Crab Network won the 22nd Kusama parachain slot and is set to complete its connection with Kusama within a month.
In Kusama news today, we see several technological advancements. Tether, a well-known stablecoin, has launched on the Kusama network. This development expands the range of networks on which Tether is available. Additionally, Liquid KSM (LKSM) can now be used as collateral for Kintsugi Vaults. LKSM is an unlocked, yield-bearing staking token that allows users to earn Kusama staking rewards.
There have been several collaborations involving Kusama. Acala and Karura are set to integrate with Wormhole, a multi-chain bridging platform, which will connect them to eight layer-1 chains. NFTrade, a cross-chain and blockchain-agnostic NFT platform, has also launched an integration with Moonriver to enhance the Kusama NFT ecosystem.
While the Kusama price today is not the focus, it's worth noting that the network has experienced significant price fluctuations. Kusama's value has seen a downward trend, decreasing by over 45% in the last 30 days. Despite these movements, Kusama remains an attractive option for those interested in where to buy Kusama and participate in its ecosystem.