Kaspa
Summary
Kaspa is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency launched in November 2021 that implements the GHOSTDAG blockDAG protocol, developed from academic research by Yonatan Sompolinsky at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The project claims a fair launch with no premine, no ICO, and no venture capital allocation to insiders, though pre-launch R&D was funded by Polychain Capital through the now-dissolved DAGLabs entity. Kaspa has a credible technical foundation and transparent governance, but faces centralization concerns from institutional ASIC miners and carries unresolved questions about the erasure of early transaction history following a genesis reset in November 2021.
Timeline(16 events)
2018-01-01
DAGLabs founded by Yonatan Sompolinsky to commercialize the GHOSTDAG protocol, receiving approximately $8 million from Polychain Capital, Accomplice, and Genesis Mining.
Kaspa Wiki — DAGLabs2021-11-07
Kaspa mainnet launched with no premine, no ICO, and no VC token allocation. Initial block reward set at 440 KAS. Genesis block produced November 8, 2021.
Kaspa Wiki — History and Fair Launch2021-11-21
Critical bug caused a complete network split approximately two weeks after mainnet launch, with roughly 648 million KAS already mined. Development team hardwired a new genesis block based on the last stable checkpoint UTXO set, erasing on-chain transaction records from the initial launch period.
Medium — The Forgotten Blocks2022-04-14
First hard fork since genesis reset, addressing deep side-chain spam attacks.
KasLens Kaspa Wiki2022-07-01
Core developer Michael Sutton announced the Rust rewrite initiative (Rusty Kaspa / KIP-001) in the official Kaspa Discord. Community approved and subsequently funded the effort with 100 million KAS.
Rusty Kaspa FAQs — KasMedia2022-09-12
Developer Ori Newman discovered the sig_op_count consensus vulnerability during the Rust rewrite process.
Kaspa Security Patch and Hard Fork — Medium (Michael Sutton)2022-09-28
Permanent hard fork activated at DAA score 27,905,000, fixing the sig_op_count consensus vulnerability by including the field in the transaction hashing process.
Kaspa Security Patch and Hard Fork — Medium (Michael Sutton)2022-10-31
DAGKnight whitepaper published by Yonatan Sompolinsky and Michael Sutton on the 14th anniversary of the Bitcoin whitepaper, introducing a parameterless generalization of Nakamoto consensus.
The DAGKnight Protocol — ePrint2023-09-01
Marathon Digital Holdings deployed its first Kaspa mining machines, beginning institutional ASIC mining on the network.
Marathon Digital Holdings Kaspa Mining Operations — MARA IR2024-01-07
Testnet 11 (TN11), the 10 BPS Kaspa testnet, launched for the Crescendo upgrade.
Kaspa's 2025 Upgrades — CoinMarketCap Academy2024-05-01
Rusty Kaspa (Rust implementation) released as stable and recommended as the primary network client.
Kaspa on Rust: First Stable Release — Medium2024-06-25
Marathon Digital announced it had mined 93 million KAS (approximately $15 million in value) and was targeting approximately 16% of Kaspa's global hashrate using 60 petahashes of Bitmain ASIC hardware.
Marathon Digital Diversifies Revenue by Mining Kaspa — CryptoSlate2024-06-30
Kasplex KRC-20 beta launched, introducing fungible token standard on Kaspa Layer 2.
Introducing Kasplex — KasMedia2025-05-05
Crescendo hard fork activated on mainnet at DAA score 110,165,000, upgrading the network from 1 BPS to 10 BPS and implementing all Kaspa Improvement Proposals KIP1 through KIP15.
Kaspa Updates to Crescendo and 10BPS — kaspa.org2026-04-30
Toccata hard fork code freeze finalized, incorporating native covenants (SilverScript compiler), ZK verification opcodes, RISC Zero STARK verifier, and native KRC-20 token issuance at the consensus layer.
Kaspa Covenants Toccata Hard Fork Outlook — Medium (Michael Sutton)2026-06-05
Toccata hard fork mainnet activation window opens (June 5–20, 2026), introducing native L1 programmability, covenants, and ZK infrastructure.
KAS.live Hardfork Countdownmodel: claude-code-investigator
generated: 5/13/2026, 3:54:12 AM
avoid.net — verified advice for a post-truth world