Kusama is a Polkadot-based pre-production environment primarily used to test new crypto and blockchain designs before being put on the market. Kusama is a playground for developers who create on Polkadot. And the project also has a native KSM token, traded on the market. Users can also test Polkadot updates on Kusama.
But why should developers test Kusama? Simply because it’s designed to make it easier for developers to experiment, offering much more flexibility, freer rules, and less rigid governance rules.
Table of Contents:
Fundamentals
Use case
As mentioned above, Kusama exists to make the life of developers working on the Polakadot project as simple as possible. And as you’d expect, most code design features are, in fact, the same.
But there are some differences. Polkadot is for enterprise-level applications and projects that require a high level of security and stability. Development on Kusama allows for less stringent criteria than the project would face on Polkadot. Blockchains controlled by the DAO community can be tested, with far less risk in the event of bugs than Polkadot.
Although they have some differences, some designs choose to have chain guards on both Polkadot and Kusama. Kusama will then be used by developers to test new updates before bringing them to Polkadot.
In addition, some projects like Kusama so much that they stay with it, even after doing their tests. As mentioned, Kusama has fewer measures, so projects that do not require a high level of security, games or social networks, for example, often stick with it. These facts make Kusama an excellent place for innovation.
Kusama is increasingly proving to be an excellent place for new ideas on governance, incentives, monetary policy and DAOs.
Tokenomics
Kusama’s native KSM token is used to:
- Network connection to validate transactions or launch a chain guard
- Pay commissions and transactions
- Participate in governance and appoint validators
Kusama provided 1% of the initial DOT supply (100,000 tokens) to stakeholders and community members. They made the flyer to connect the platforms and incentivize new Polkadot owners to get on Kusama.
Kusama has a treasury that aims to raise funds from cuts, inefficiencies from the staking system, lost deposits and transaction fees.
Users can submit spending proposals that require blocking a certain amount of KSM on the network in addition to 5% of the offer. These spending proposals must be approved by at least 60% of the board. If the proposal is not approved, Kusama cuts reserved funds but only if less than 50% of the council agrees; In this way, bad proposals are stopped. An innovative governance method to manage treasury.
KSM has a circulating supply of 8.47 million tokens out of the 10 million of the total offering. Many blockchains prefer a fixed supply, but not Kusama. The offer increases by 10% every year.
KSM is pointed depending on how many tokens are minted. So, if half of the available KSM tokens are wagered, validation keeps all newly minted coins. But if the amount of KSM wagered is less than 50%, validators will not support all minted tokens, so some will go to the treasury.
As mentioned above, KSM was launched as an airdrop for investors in the DOT sale. The distribution has a ratio of 1: 1, and investors who did not own DOT were still able to enter KSM with a friction tap. Measures that have since been interrupted.
Kusama operates on a multi-chain with a named proof-of-stake system, an alternative to the more popular consensus proof-of-work (POW) mechanism.
Team
Kusama has a dream team supporting him. The founders are Gavid Wood, Peter Czaban and Rober Habermeier, well known in the crypto space.
Gavin Wood is, of course, also one of the co-founders of Ethereum and has garnered a huge following in the community. Wood is credited with inventing Solidity, the programming language developers use to program dapps on the Ethereum blockchain. In addition, he is also the CTO of the Ethereum foundation and has also worked as a researcher for Microsoft.
In 2015, Wood founded Parity Technologies. The company maintains Substrate, a software framework used by developers on Kusama that focuses on parachains.
And it doesn’t end there. Wood is the president of the Web3 Foundation. The foundation is responsible for conducting the Polkadot token sale which raised about $200 million.
Wood is the man behind the project. And it can be said that he projected his brilliance right on Kusama,
Community
The community plays a vital role in the development of Kusama,
Three types of Kusama users can participate in the decision-making process:
- The Referendum Chamber – If you have KSM, you can propose changes to the network and vote to approve or disapprove other users’ proposals
- The Board – Board members are directly elected by KSM holders. And they are responsible for proposing changes. But not only that, but they also have the power to choose which proposed changes to implement. The Council on Kusama has only seven members, but more can and will be added as the project grows.
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The Technical
- Committee – The Council votes on the members of the Technical Committee. The committee is made up of a collective of people who are building and upgrading Kusama. They also have the power to submit proposals in an emergency.
On social media, where changes to the project are discussed, the community is also very active. The Kusama Reddit community has nearly 5,000 members, and their Twitter accounts have nearly 66,000 followers. Kusama also has a Discord channel with about 3200 members,
Conclusion
At the time of writing, Kusama is sitting at around $420. The market cap is around $3,600,000,000, making it the 39th largest crypto asset. Kusama also holds a dominant market position of 0.20%,
If you believe in Polkadot, you believe in Kusama. If you believe in Kusama, you believe in Polkadot. The price history of their two native tokens DOT and KSM, are closely related and not surprisingly considering that they are “cousins”.
But there are also some differences between the platforms. As we have already mentioned, the barriers to entry and risk are much lower on Kusama, the Polkadots test network. And for this reason, some developers are choosing to never switch to Polkadot and stay on Kusama. Even after their tests.
Cryptographic projects are, by definition, risky and innovative. This is the central point of the community. So I think Kusama will grow more independently in the future, and there’s a lot of demand for projects that allow developers to build with more flexibility. Polkadot is not the best for this.
Kusama, in my opinion, will pump in the future but not only, but will also develop more independently, creating a larger ecosystem. Polkadot’s market cap today is around $29,000,000, about eight times larger than Kusama. I predict that the gap will narrow soon.
My Kusama price prediction for 2021 is $1500-1700 and I think the project can enter the top 20 crypto assets by market capitalization.
Of course, I’m talking about my opinions. This is not financial advice. I could be wrong. You should always do your research before making any investment decision. Always remember to trade responsibly and don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose.
Kusama price prediction 2025
Based on the above data and arguments, a price of the KSM token in 2025 could be between $3000 and $5000. A reasonable long-term estimate: ~$3317.31
Kusama Price Prediction 2030
There are a couple of laws of human progress that prevent us from thinking that Kusama will be what its owners expect and hope it to be. These are the advantage of the first engine and consolidation and subsequent monopoly.
A first-mover advantage can simply be defined as the ability of an enterprise to perform better than its competitors as a result of being first on the market in a new product category.
Monopoly is a situation in which a single company or group owns all or almost all of the market for a certain type of product or service.
Both phenomena we mentioned above speak in favor of Ethereum and we do not think that it will change in the medium and long term future.
We are still not sure if Kusama and similar projects have a long-term future and the KSM token could be worth ZERO in 2030 since the project may not exist by then. The chances are 50-50 in our eyes that this will happen.
Is it worth investing in Kusama?
Kusama is a good short-term investment when the market is in the bull race. Usually these types of newer projects do extraordinarily well when the overall crypto market is in green and far outperforms other better-known projects. However, make sure you get out of it in time as they tend to take a hit during range and bear market cycles.
Why will Kusama succeed?
Because it offers a valuable service, it has already built a name for itself in its niche and has not suffered security breaches or other types of compromises (economic, reputational, etc.). The token itself provides utility and makes sense, which is not the case with many other similar projects.
Why will Kusama fail?
Kusama may fail due to fierce competition, dynamic technological field and rocket speed developments in its niche. Another common reason why this type of project fails is team problems: the team splits up or leaves the project entirely.
Will Kusama reach $1000?
This is part of the real possibility, even in the short term. It could very well reach $100 within a year.
Can Kusama reach $10000?
Kusama will almost certainly NOT reach $1000 in the near future, unless we see a bull run that will see bitcoin at $100k and ETH at $20k.
Where to buy and how to store Kusama
The best places to trade Kusama are:
- Binance (buy and sell with: USDT, BTC, BUSD and BNB)
- Kraken (buy and sell with: USD, EUR, DOT, BTC, GBP, ETH and AUD)
- Crypto.com (buy and sell with: CRO, USDT)
