What could go wrong
Kaspa risks and open questions
The case for Kaspa is seven separate claims; any one can fail while the rest hold.
Seven risks, and what would settle each one
| Verification cost |
Ten blocks a second raise the bandwidth, CPU, and disk a node needs; push far enough and only well-funded operators can check it. Settled by many separate node, API, explorer, and indexer operators, not fast blocks alone. |
| Security budget |
New coins pay miners on a shrinking schedule. An August 2026 median-fee model leaves a large gap, but actual fee income and demand need watching. Settled by durable fee income replacing new coins. Explore the dated model below. |
| External cost |
Proof-of-work security is bought with electricity, chips, and supply chains; a faster chain doesn't shrink that bill. Nothing settles this one: the price of the security model, paid daily. |
| Liquidity |
Market depth, custody, and exchange support don't follow from good design; they take years of money and legal work. Settled by getting in and out, holding your own keys, trading at depth, not holder counts or volume. |
| Mining concentration |
A few firms control ASICRuns kHeavyHash fast; can't be reprogrammed. supply; pools and geography still cluster into few hands, open protocol or not. Settled by production spread across many addresses over long windows. No premine doesn't mean no early concentration: fair-launch comparison. |
| Roadmap execution |
Toccata activated on mainnet; vProgs, DAGKnight, and native DeFi are separate tracks, separate timelines. A testnet demo of one isn't evidence for the others. Settled by a mainnet release with proof it activated: wallets, indexers, accepted transactions, repeat use. Status tracks each. |
| User demand |
Low fees and spare room are what apps need to exist, not proof anyone uses one twice. Settled by people returning because an app beats an ordinary server. |
Try it
Who pays Kaspa's miners
Explore how fees might replace new coins using an August 22, 2026 snapshot. The fee total below is modeled, not measured miner income.
Jump to
of modeled miner pay comes from estimated fees
- New coins at snapshot price
- $58,358 a day
- Estimated fees
- $5.17 a day
- Modeled gap
- fees are 11,293x too small
August 22, 2026 snapshot. New coins are valued at $0.0292121 per KAS, held flat as issuance halves every 12 months. Estimated fees assume every transaction pays the snapshot median of $0.000063; actual total fee revenue was not measured here.
Source: this site's twenty-chain dataset, Kaspa row, 22 Aug 2026; rusty-kaspa's coinbase.rs; emission demo.
Not Kaspa-specific: Bitcoin has run the same subsidy its whole life, still the priciest chain to attack. Watch whether the gap closes. Attack-cost calculator prices the other side.
What to watch
Separate node/API/indexer counts. Roadmap items becoming apps with repeat users, not demos. How fast live/testnet/roadmap/research flatten into one hype story. Price/hash-rate version: the mining cycle.