What makes $kas decentralized? Let us count the ways:
0. Nakamoto Consensus
The GHOSTDAG (and DAGKnight) protocols enjoys security guarantees similar to classical POW chains, providing the same Sybil resistence and 51% safety and liveness.
To learn more about GHOTSDAG:
- White paper: eprint.iacr.org/2018/104
- GHOSTDAG 101 online workshop (first half): youtube.com/watch?v=nhI2zo…
To learn more about DAGKnight:
- White paper: eprint.iacr.org/2022/1494
- Conference talk: youtube.com/watch?v=9v5h3P…
1. Fair launch
Kaspa launched with no preallocations and no ICO. The intention to launch mainnet was made public knowledge months before the fact. The community voted on the mining algo one day before the network launched. The mining algo was then modified to prevent existing GPU/FPGA miners from mining it, allowing CPU mining during the first few weeks.
2. Wide coin spread
Due to the fair launch, many people were able to CPU mine from the start. The rapid emission schedule ensured that by the time the network became ASIC dominant, most of the coin was already in circulation. Up to that time, the coin was mostly mined by GPU/FPGA miners, which have far more operational expenses and thus sell more of their yield, spreading the coin.
3. Low hardware entry for solo and pooled mining
The high BPS dramatically decreases the fraction of hashrate required for reasonably short revenue delays for solo miners, decreasing the amount of hardware required for a solo miner, and the amount of miners required for running a pool with steady revenue (thus removing a strong incentive for centralized pools that exist in low BPS chains).
The high TPS has similar effect on pooled mining.
For more information:
x.com/desheshai/stat…
4. Affordability
In the long run, security is funded by fees. High TPS imply that the same security can be bought with lower fee per transaction, making the chain more affordable in the long run.
5. Low hardware requirements and sync times for running nodes
In the first phase of testnet11, we've seen the network support 10BPS and 3000TPS. Community members provided builds that satisfy the system requirements for the phase that cost as little as 100$, and many community members reported that they managed to smoothly run nodes on cheap and old hardware that doesn't meet the suggested requirements. Since then, the codebase has been highly optimized.
More about that here:
x.com/houseofchimera…
The pruning mechanism ensures that storage requirements and sync time remain low in the long term, without compromising the security or integrity of the chain. More about pruning here:
x.com/desheshai/stat…
Or for a deep dive, see the second half of the GHOSTDAG 101 workshop:
youtu.be/nhI2zo44dfc?si…
6. Decentralized knowledge
The protocols powering Kaspa have been formally analyzed and published to peer-reviewed platforms. The codebase is open source, and none of the tech is patented. The devs make tremendous efforts to make knowledge accessible in the form of posts, threads, discussions, and doing our best to answer all questions. Community members arrange this knowledge into Medium posts, Youtube videos, a comprehensive wiki, etc.. Consequently, the Kaspa community is saturated with highly knowledgeable members with a deep understanding of the tech and the project.
Devs work hard to grow and mentor new devs from within the community, and it is working! For example, during the Rust rewrite, the group of people who contribute code to the core client has about doubled, with six(!) devs that weren't previously involved taking deeper responsibilities within the codebase.
Anyone who worked in software, and knows how hard it is to find good developers, should know how significant that is. This is true tenfold considering the new devs are not drawn in by lucrative paychecks, but by conviction in the project and being fascinated by the tech.
7. Community driven development
The development of Kaspa is funded and directed by the community. Anyone can post a proposal, and it is put through a voting process. If it passes, it is either funded by the community funds, or by a fund raising.
These projects are not limited to software development and also include pool listing, promotional campaigns, integrations, etc..
Many Kaspa initiatives initiated by community members (including e.g. Ledger integration, listing fees for several pools, a marketing fund, wallet extension etc.) were successfully funded this way.
Besides that, community members provide services voluntarily. For example, maintaining and hosting block explorers, wikis and YouTube channels and other sources of aggregated information, hosting spaces and other online and in-person events, and so on. Even the first GPU miner was an ongoing community effort.
An often overlooked advantage of $kas is the relative lightness of its nodes. The nodes implement two rather sophisticated mechanisms: 1. pruning, which allows securely discarding all blocked data older than a day and a half, 2. pruning proof, which allows verifying that the>>
