Chapter 02 · The short version
The short version.
The whole tour in five claims. Each card states one claim, shows the picture that carries it, and names the chapter that backs it.
It’s proof-of-work, like Bitcoin.
Miners secure it. No company, no votes.
Backed by the chapter: Why you’d care
Ten blocks a second, all kept.
Blocks found at once join a blockDAG; none are thrown away.
Backed by the chapter: One order
The point is security, fast.
Bitcoin’s one-hour protection in 1 to 3 seconds. Source
Backed by the chapter: The race
Nov 7, 2021 launch · premine: none · sale: none · founders' coins: none
Launched fair, supply fixed.
No presale, no founders’ coins. 96.8% of at most 28.7 billion KAS already mined.
Backed by the chapter: Who got the coins
The open question is fees.
New coins pay miners today. Can fees grow to replace them?
Backed by the chapter: Price and risk
Ten times the blocks, same coin flow
Block time 1,000 ms → 100 ms. The reward is set per second and split across the blocks. Live since May 5, 2025, at DAA score 110,165,000. Source: KIP-14.
The exact version
The same five claims with the workings shown: the weighing, and what the system is actually used for.
Strengths and weak spots, side by side
Five pairs. Tick what matters; the scale tips.
Tick what matters to you and watch the scale. It only counts your choices; we don’t weigh anything.
Nothing ticked yet. Start with whichever row you care about most.
SecurityWho protects the payments
- Bitcoin-style security, in seconds. Proof-of-work, settled in 1 to 3 s instead of about an hour.
- Security is paid by new coins. They halve every year; fees don’t yet make up the gap.
MiningWho runs the machines
- Machines built for it. Mined with chips made for its own algorithm, kHeavyHash, from a 100 W home box to 3 kW farm machines. IceRiver · Antminer KS5 Pro
- Light nodes. A node keeps only recent history, so it runs on a desktop.
- Mining power is down. About 362 PH/s on Nov 4, 2026, against a peak of 1,592 PH/s on Jan 31, 2025. peak
- Mining is concentrated. On Nov 4, 2026 the two biggest pools reported about 59% of all mining power, the top three about 70%. pool stats
UseWho actually uses it
- Cheap to use. A normal payment’s fee is far below a cent today.
- Little real use yet. Blocks aren’t full: on Nov 4, 2026 every fee level in the node’s own estimate was the same.
The coinWho holds it, and how it trades
- No insiders. Fair launch; nobody started with a pile of coins.
- Fixed supply, mostly out. 96.8% mined; the rest tapers monthly to about 2057, with no halving shocks.
- Price swings hard. Far below its 2024 high (see Price and risk).
- Harder to buy, thinly traded. Coinbase, the largest US exchange, didn’t list KAS on Nov 4, 2026, and in the 24 hours to Nov 4 about $20 million of KAS changed hands, roughly 1/1,450 of Bitcoin’s $30 billion (CoinGecko). CoinGecko
What it can runWhat you can build on it
- Rules on coins. Vaults, time locks and tokens on the base network since June 2026.
- No big app ecosystem. Shared apps (vProgs) and the next consensus rule (DAGKnight) aren’t live.
What crypto is for, and where Kaspa fits
Six reasons for crypto, and how Kaspa does.
These are the reasons crypto people give for crypto at all. Kaspa is strongest on the first four.
- Hold your own money.Whoever has the keys has the coins. No bank account needed. Same on Kaspa.
- Nobody can block a payment.Proof-of-work makes rewriting or censoring costly. Kaspa’s pitch is getting there in seconds.
- Pay anyone, any time.Around the clock, across borders. Kaspa adds settlement in seconds and tiny fees.
- Money nobody can print.A fixed supply, set in code. Kaspa’s is fixed and almost all out.
- Programmable money.Coins with rules and apps on top. Kaspa has rules on coins; Ethereum and Solana host far more apps.
- Payments by software.Apps and AI agents paying each other. A common pitch; for Kaspa, a hope, not a market yet.
List after a widely shared X post, x.com/davidtsocy. The Kaspa column is this page’s reading; figures checked Nov 4, 2026.
Sources and the raw numbers
Daily transaction figures are one dated read per chain, kept in data/figures.json: Bitcoin 532 thousand a day and Kaspa 72.3 thousand a day, read Nov 4, 2026. The mined share is painted from the same snapshot as the price chapter, or live from api.kaspa.org when it answers.