KAS is the native coin people send, receive, mine, and pay fees with.
Beginner answer
What is Kaspa?
Kaspa is a live proof-of-work blockDAG network. It keeps Bitcoin-style mining and UTXO ownership, and uses GHOSTDAG to order parallel blocks into one payment history.
Summary: Kaspa is a mined UTXO blockDAG where GHOSTDAG turns parallel proof-of-work blocks into one ordered payment history.
Read the limits too: the Risks and Open Questions page covers adoption, liquidity, mining concentration, node load, security budget, and roadmap execution.
Plain model
The simple picture
Kaspa uses Proof of Work. Miners spend energy, hardware, facilities, and operating time to create blocks.
Kaspa uses UTXOs, meaning wallets spend specific outputs instead of editing a global account balance.
Kaspa uses a blockDAG, so honest blocks found close together can stay visible in the graph.
GHOSTDAG gives nodes the rule for ordering that graph into one shared payment history.
The live network is in the 10 BPS Crescendo era. Future app and consensus work needs separate status labels.
Live vs next
What is live, and what is not live?
| Claim | Status | Safer wording |
|---|---|---|
| Kaspa is Proof of Work | Live | Kaspa is mined Proof of Work. |
| Kaspa is 10 BPS | Live | Kaspa is in the Crescendo-era 10 BPS network. |
| July 2026 is a sudden emission cliff | Misleading | Kaspa emission steps down monthly; July 2026 is one scheduled step in that curve. |
| Toccata has activated on mainnet | activation record | Toccata has crossed its mainnet activation score. The protocol label is live; app, wallet, explorer, SDK, and user evidence still need separate checks. |
| DAGKnight is current mainnet consensus | Research | DAGKnight is future consensus research and implementation work. Current mainnet uses GHOSTDAG. |
Read next
Where to go from here
MechanismUnderstand GHOSTDAG.
How the blockDAG becomes one ordered history.
OriginRead the fair-launch story.Research, DAGLabs, failed launch paths, early stress, Rust, Crescendo, and Toccata boundaries.
PaymentsInclusion versus finality.Why fast blocks are not the same as instant irreversibility.
ClaimsCheck common claims.Live, testnet, targeted, roadmap, research, wrong, unsupported, or out of scope.
EvidenceOpen the sources.Use code, releases, KIPs, docs, and research for status-sensitive claims.