Kusama - an experimental blockchain platform, designed to provide a scalable platform for developers.
Contents:
Description of Kusama
The platform runs on Substrate, a blockchain creation kit, developed by Parity Technologies. The project shares almost the same codebase as Polkadot, one of the most successful interoperable blockchains. By deploying on Kusama, fast-growing projects gain access to a highly scalable, interoperable sharded network with features, not available on Polkadot now.
The platform runs to provide a test bed for developers who want to innovate and deploy their own blockchain. It can be used as a pre-launch network on Polkadot, although many projects choose to stick with Kusama for their final product. The project benefits from a low parachain deployment barrier, low bond requirements for validators and is most commonly used by early-stage startups and for experimentation.
Platform features
Kusama is unusual among blockchain platforms, as it is mainly created for developers who want to launch projects with a rapidly changing pace of development.
Platform advantages:
| System | It uses a designated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus system – an alternative to the consensus mechanism to the power-hungry proof-of-of-work (POW) scheme, used by several other blockchains. This system allows it to perform fast on-chain upgrades without a fork and support cross-chain messaging (XCMP) to enable communication with other parachains on the Kusama network. |
| Vote | Kusama has on-chain control capabilities. This governance is decentralized, allowing anyone with KSM tokens to vote on governance proposals. |
Kusama, like Polkadot, uses two types of blockchains - a main network, called a relay chain, and networks, called parachains (created by users). Parachains can be configured for any use and use the main chain of relays for security.
Buying cryptocurrency
As of 2020, Kusama has a circulating supply of 8.47 million tokens and a total supply of 10 million tokens. Unlike some other blockchains, this maximum supply is not fixed. Instead, it increases with an inflation rate of 10% per year. KSM is currently available for trading on dozens of popular exchange platforms, including:
- Binance;
- OKEx;
- Huobi Global.
The most liquid trading pairs for KSM currently are KSM/USDT, KSM/BTC and KSM/ETH.