We are pleased to announce the launch of Kaia v1.0.0 Testnet ‘Kairos’.
Kaia v1.0.0 is the first official release of the Kaia chain. The Kaia network starts by transitioning the Klaytn network at a transition hardfork. At the moment the hardfork is applied, the Klaytn Baobab testnet will transition into the Kairos testnet. The Kaia Transition hardfork and KIP-160 hardfork configurations are included in this version. For the mainnet hardfork block number, it will be announced with the next version.
IMPORTANT: Kaia v1.0.0 contains a hardfork upgrade that results in changes that are not backward compatible. All testnet nodes must be upgraded to v1.0.0 or later before the target block number.
Hardfork schedule for the testnet
- Block number: 156660000 (estimated time: 13 Jun, 10:13 UTC+9)
- Hardfork contents: Kaia Transition hardfork, KIP-160 hardfork
Kaia’s feature highlight
- KAIA is the native token of the Kaia chain, used for paying gas fees. KAIA tokens are distributed every block to block validators and community funds to support node operations and ecosystem growth. The validator portion of the block reward comprises the proposer reward for participating in block creation and the staking rewards for the staking KAIA, recognizing both operational and economic contributions.
- Kaia chain, utilizing IBFT (Istanbul BFT) consensus, aims to be an enterprise-grade blockchain prioritizing secure and efficient service delivery. Kaia blocks are generated once every second and are instantly finalized, avoiding temporal uncertainty. In addition, Kaia’s specialized node roles (CN, PN, EN) ensure stable and efficient network operation.
- Kaia chain extends the concept of EOA (Externally Owned Account) to include private key replacement functionality, advanced multi-sig, and role-based access control, and practical account management without the need for smart contracts. In addition, the platform supports the Fee Delegation feature, allowing service providers to sponsor service users for gas without the need for smart contracts.
- On-chain governance drives the Kaia chain. The validators’ voting powers are calculated from the staked KAIA amounts in the staking smart contracts. Based on these voting powers, validators can vote on network configuration changes, fund disbursement, and other agendas, deciding the chain’s future. Anyone can transparently verify that the governance process is transparently happening on-chain smart contracts.
- The Kaia chain utilizes randomized block proposer selection to ensure fairness and mitigate DoS attacks. A VRF (Verifiable Random Function) based on BLS signatures produces random numbers for every block that decides the next block proposer. Since the random numbers are derived from validators’ BLS private keys, it is impossible for any entity to predict them in advance, yet they can be verified against the published BLS public keys.
- Users can delegate their KAIA tokens to validators. By delegating KAIA tokens, the user gives the validator more voting power and helps them earn the block producer qualification. Then, the validator shares the block rewards with the users according to their delegation contributions.
- The priority fee mechanism is introduced to the Kaia chain. When transactions are included in a block, they are first sorted in the order of highest priority fee, then the order of arrival time on the consensus node. Transaction gas fees, comprising the base fee and priority fee, are burned up to the block proposer’s reward limit, contributing to the token’s deflationary model and increasing its value.
The Kaia v1.0.0 binary can be downloaded from the links below. For more details, refer to the GitHub release note. The binary executables are distributed for this version. For docker images, tarball, and rpm packages, it will be published in the following versions.
You can test the Kaia RPC through the public JSON-RPC endpoints below. (Note: Previous URLs remain active for service continuity.)
