Chapter 07 · Who got the coins
No premine. No sale.
No insiders.
On November 7, 2021 Kaspa started with an empty ledger. Every coin since was paid to whoever mined a block, on the same terms for everyone.
Most of it is already out
96.8%
Recorded Nov 4, 2026, 07:30 CET from api.kaspa.org/info/coinsupply. Updating…
No cliffs
The reward halves every year in twelve monthly steps of about 5.6%. The last coins come out around 2057.
New coins right now: …
A staircase, not a cliff
Reward steps down every month.
… KAS in circulation, … of the maximum.
Maximum: about 28.7 billion
Schedule from the node coinbase code: a month of 2,629,800 seconds, first chromatic reward 440 KAS per second from May 8, 2022, each month times (1/2)^(1/12). Exact maximum read from api.kaspa.org: … KAS. The wiki figure is 9,004 KAS lower; both are in use.
Play the money supply.
Each month the block reward drops by one piano semitone. Twelve make an octave, so it halves every year. Tap a key.
Next key down:
dayshoursminsec
Sound is off. Turn on Sound at the top of the page to hear the keys.
The people earning these coins, and how to read their signatures in blocks: mining.
Block 0 held no coins.
- Launched
- Nov 7, 2021
- Genesis coins
- 0
- Cap
- about 28.7 billion
Open the raw record: the block window that starts at block 0
The one sentenceNo premine, no sale, a fixed cap: every coin was mined in the open, and the reward steps down every month.
The exact version
The same chapter with the workings shown: the derivations, the edge cases, and the numbers behind the plain version.
The catch, the head start, and who pays the miners later
The catch for miners
The catch: miners’ pay from new coins halves every year too. Bitcoin halves in one jump every four years; Kaspa halves every year, in twelve small steps. Fees have to grow to fill the gap, the open question in who pays the miners later.
Didn’t anyone get a head start?
The company that funded early research, DAGLabs, mined an estimated 2.5 to 3% of supply in the first months, in the open, like any other miner.
Who pays the miners later
Today new coins pay almost all of it. As they taper, fees have to grow. It’s the most common serious doubt about Kaspa, and a fair one.
Sources and the raw numbers
Sources for the staircase
The ratio, 2−1/12 a month, is in Kaspa’s node code (rusty-kaspa, Kaspa wiki: tokenomics). Dates past the next one are one schedule month (30.4 days) apart, so they are about right, not exact. Keyboard after Chrome Music Lab.
Where these numbers come from
Kaspa: the node’s genesis file ships an empty coin set. Ethereum: the 2014 sale sold about 60.1M ETH, and 0.099× that amount went to early contributors and another 0.099× to the Ethereum Foundation, so about 11.9M of 72.0M at launch, 16.5% (ethereum.org blog). Cardano: 5.19B of the 31.1B ADA at genesis went to IOHK, Emurgo and the Cardano Foundation, 16.7% (cardano.org/genesis). XRP: all 100B were created for Ripple and its founders.
More depth: Read the deep version: Who pays the miners later