What is Kaspa?

Decentralized means no one is in charge. Computers all over the world check every payment and agree on what happened.

Bitcoin works like this, but it takes about an hour before a payment is safe and nobody can block it.

Kaspa gets the whole network to agree many times a second, so the same safety comes in seconds.

That is real-time decentralization, Bitcoin's kind of security at the speed of the internet.

Payments are saved in blocks, like new pages in a notebook that everyone shares.

Bitcoin adds one block about every 10 minutes.

Kaspa adds 10 blocks every second.

So while Bitcoin makes one block, Kaspa makes about 6,000.

Why does block speed matter? Picture paying for a coffee.

Your payment lands in a block in about a tenth of a second.

Within seconds so many blocks pile on top that it is safe to count it as done.

So nobody waits at the counter, and nobody has to trust a payment that is not final yet.

A shop can take KAS, in a store or on a website.

The customer scans a code and pays from a phone.

The money goes straight to the shop's own wallet, with no bank in between.

And it works the same for a buyer on the other side of the world.

Sometimes two new blocks are made at the very same moment.

A blockchain keeps one and throws the other away. That work is wasted.

Kaspa keeps both. Each new block links back to the newest blocks it knows, so none is lost.

Blocks that arrive together still need an order, so everyone agrees which payment came first.

A rule called GHOSTDAG puts all the blocks in one line, the same line on every computer.

A cheater who hides a block and shows it late only gets the back of the line.

KAS works like cash in your wallet, not like a number in a bank account.

It comes in separate pieces. Here you have three, worth 5, 3 and 4 KAS.

To pay 7 KAS you hand over the 5 and the 3. That makes 8, so 1 KAS comes back to you as change.

The 5 and the 3 are gone from your wallet, so nobody can pay with the same KAS twice.

Miners are computers that race to add the next block.

They guess numbers again and again. Only a number under the target wins.

Finding a winner takes huge work. Checking it takes one look.

The whole network makes about 378 quadrillion guesses every second.

Every block pays new KAS to the miner who found it.

In May 2022 that was 440 KAS a second. Every month since, it steps down a little.

Twelve steps halve it, like a piano going down one key every month.

About 28.7 billion KAS will ever exist, and about 96.8% of it is already mined.

A node is a computer that checks every block for itself.

A home PC or a good laptop can run one.

It needs 8 CPU cores, 16 GB of memory, a 640 GB SSD and about 80 Mbit/s of internet.

With your own node you check Kaspa yourself, without trusting anyone.

Ten blocks a second is a lot of data.

So a normal node keeps only about the last 30 hours of blocks.

Everything older is squeezed into a small proof, so a new node can join without downloading years of history.

KAS can now carry its own rules, like a safe that follows instructions.

This safe holds 100 KAS and lets out only 20 KAS a week, straight into your wallet.

Ask it for 50 at once and the network itself says no.

Rules like this are called covenants, and every computer running Kaspa checks them.

Real time is more than fast payments. It changes what a network with no one in charge can do.

Nobody can block a payment or push in front of it, not even for a minute.

Next, the network itself could confirm what happens in the world, like a delayed flight, so an app pays out within seconds.

Games, live apps and machines paying each other can run on it, with no company in the middle.

Builders can make apps on Kaspa itself.

Coins can carry rules now, so the network itself checks an app's rules.

Wallets, tokens, payments and messages are just a few of the apps people make today.

With SilverScript, and KCC-20 tokens on the way, the only limit is your imagination.

Kaspa grew out of years of published research.

GHOST in 2013, SPECTRE in 2016, PHANTOM and GHOSTDAG in 2018.

It launched on 7 November 2021 with no premine and no pre-sale. Every coin is mined.

A wallet keeps the keys to your KAS.

There is one for your phone, your browser, your computer or a small hardware device.

Here are twelve of them. Pick one that you control.

If your wallet shows recovery words, write them on paper and never give them to anyone.

Many big exchanges let you buy KAS.

Here are fourteen of them.

Buy there, then send it to a wallet you control.

On an exchange, the exchange holds the keys. In your own wallet, you do.

Kaspa can even carry messages between people.

KaChat seals each message on your phone, so only the person you write to can open it.

The sealed message rides inside a Kaspa transaction, with no account and no phone number.

Anyone can see that a message was sent, but only the two of you can read it.