Introduction To Kusama

by Rory Jenkins

About me

Hi, I’m Rory. I’m 14 from England:). I’ve found out about Crypto through memes. All of my friends stopped looking into it after the dogecoin crash but I found Kusama and was hooked. I found out that the technology in Kusama is pretty interesting . After doing some research in my free time at school this is what i’ve found out

What Is Kusama (KSM)?

Kusama is a public pre-production environment for polkadot, one that allows any developer to experiment and test new blockchains or applications before releasing them on this network.

Why are Kusama auctions special?

An extremely large amount of KSM is locked up allowing the team to have a safe layer underneath their token.

No funds can buy beforehand, it’s a no brainer. No pesky hedge funds or whales to pump and dump the price months before it is very much an even playing field.Only a small amount is released on the first day, a vesting schedule provides scarcity on release so everyone is locked in and the market becomes less volatile.

What is a Relay Chain?

The relay chain is at the heart of this cross chain infrastructure technology. The relay chain allows chains to sink up to it and then use it as an intermediary between other chains.

What is a Parachain?

Parachains are blockchains that sink up to the relay chain but use Polkadot or Kusama’s blockchain.

What is a parachain auction?

During a parachain auction, DOT or KSM holders can bond their cryptocurrency to support the project that they believe should receive a parachain slot. In return, the project may commit to airdrop tokens (or provide other rewards) to their supporters.

What is the hype about Kusama?

Kusama is a blockchain infrastructure with nearly the same codebase as its sister network Polkadot. Kusama is an experimental codebase intended for teams who want to move fast and innovate. While Polkadot will be intended for established projects e.g. ETH, BTC, ADA, etc. Kusama will serve as a place where less established projects can thrive.

The first key technical difference between Polkadot and Kusama is that Kusama has modified governance parameters that allow for faster upgrades. Kusama is up to four times faster than Polkadot, with seven days for token holders to vote on referendums followed by an enactment period of eight days, after which the referendum will be enacted on the chain. This means stakeholders need to stay active and vigilant if they want to keep up with all the proposals, referenda, and upgrades, and validators on Kusama often need to update on short notice.

As we know teams wishing to run a parachain need to bond tokens as security. The bonding requirement on Kusama is a lot lower than on Polkadot than it is on Kusama. Providing new teams and a cheap alternative to test new technologies. Kusama overall provides a cheaper and faster ecosystem compared to Polkadot with almost the exact same codebase.

Both Polkadot and kusama support over 100 parachain slots and up to thousands of parathreads. Kusama offers 100 more parachain slots for when polkadot gets filled up.

As you can see from my article this is a very interesting technology that I’m trying to convince my parents this is where they should invest their money(:

Thank you for reading my article I hope this helps.

Rory Jenkins