What Is Kusama (KSM)?
The Kusama blockchain is built upon Substrate – a blockchain platform from Parity Technologies. The codebase of Kusama is nearly identical to that of Polkadot – a successful interoperable blockchain.
Fast-paced companies can take advantage of Kusama’s sharded network, which is highly scalable, interoperable, and includes features that Polkadot does not yet support. As a result, Kusama describes itself as a “canary network.”
Developers can use the platform to test out blockchain innovations before launching their final project on Polkadot – although many projects choose to stay with Kusama for their final product.
It is often used by early-stage startups and for experimentation because of its low barrier to entry for parachain deployment and its low bond requirements for validators.
Kusama Founders: Who Are They?
A company called Parity Technologies built Kusama with the same team that created Polkadot. Gavin Wood is a world-renowned computer scientist and programmer who co-founded Ethereum.
Over 100 employees work for Parity Technologies, including some of the world’s best blockchain engineers.
Kusama is also supported by grants from the Web3 Foundation, a non-profit organization that was established to foster decentralized web software and supporting technologies and applications. This foundation also supports Kusama’s research and community development through its growing team.
Kusama: What Makes It Unique?
Kusama is unlike other blockchain platforms in that it is primarily designed for developers who want to launch bold, ambitious projects with a fast-moving development schedule.
Based on a multichain, heterogeneously sharded design, it relies on a nominated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, as an alternative to the energy-intensive proof-of-work (POW) scheme used by several other blockchains.
The Kusama network can quickly upgrade the chain without forking, and support cross-chain message passing (XCMP) to communicate with other chains.
Kusama offers on-chain governance capabilities similar to Polkadot. It is both decentralized and permission-free, allowing anyone who owns Kusama (KSM) tokens or parachain tokens to vote on governance proposals, such as protocol upgrades, feature requests, and putative upgrades. With a combined voting and enactment period of just 15 days, Kusama offers on-chain governance roughly four times faster than Polkadot.
The project is designed so that projects are able to launch immediately, launching updates and improvements without having to implement a fork – thus promoting community cohesion.
How Is the Kusama Network Secured?
Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) is the consensus mechanism used by Kusama.
KSM stakeholder node election is done through a network of nominators (KSM stakers). If their nominees are selected on the next rotation, they will receive a fraction of the inflation reward. If a validator violates performance requirements or acts dishonestly, their stake may be reduced.
In addition, Kusama resolves cross-chain transactions using a simple queuing mechanism based on Merkle trees. Validators on relay chains pass messages from one chain to the next using the same validators on each chain – this secure, trustless process uses the same validators on each chain.
Where Can You Buy Kusama (KSM)?
Well, that is rather obvious, Klever Wallet and trade on Klever Exchange.
By Warren Manuel
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