{
  "url": "https://blockindex.ai/coin/ksm",
  "name": "Kusama",
  "links": {
    "github": "https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot",
    "website": "https://kusama.network/",
    "whitepaper": null
  },
  "dScore": 68,
  "market": {
    "priceUsd": 3.5039722316766984,
    "marketCapUsd": 64417699.08711933,
    "volume24hUsd": 4511375.84219898,
    "priceChange7dPct": -3.53281741,
    "priceChange24hPct": -4.118737
  },
  "source": "BlockIndex.AI",
  "supply": {
    "max": null,
    "circulating": 18384192.2332514,
    "circulatingPct": null
  },
  "ticker": "KSM",
  "founder": "Dr. Gavin Wood; Parity Technologies team",
  "vcFunded": false,
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-19T06:00:28.603329+00:00",
  "fairLaunch": false,
  "launchYear": 2020,
  "description": "Kusama (KSM) was created as an experimental, fast-moving canary network that mirrors much of the Polkadot codebase while deliberately providing lower barriers and faster governance cycles for teams and projects. Built by Parity Technologies with stewardship from the Web3 Foundation, Kusama's founding narrative centers on an airdrop-style initial distribution to Polkadot contributors and a community-first approach to iteration. The network exists to allow real-world stress testing and feature iteration before changes are promoted to Polkadot, which gives Kusama a distinct place in the ecosystem: a production-grade environment optimized for rapid experimentation. Over time Kusama has attracted parachain teams, tooling providers, and validators who value quick enactment windows, flexible runtime upgrades, and an active on-chain governance model. While the network's experimental posture increases operational risk relative to more conservative mainnets, it also accelerates developer velocity and composability experimentation across parachains and cross-chain message flows.\n\nTechnically, Kusama is a Substrate-based relay chain that orchestrates parachains using XCMP/HRMP for cross-chain message passing and Asset Hub features for multi-asset handling. The relay-chain design centralizes security via validator selection under Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS), where token holders nominate validators who are then responsible for block finalization, slashing, and maintaining consensus. Kusama supports on-chain upgrades that can be enacted without hard forks, enabling rapid runtime and SDK updates; the project has recorded multiple referenda-driven upgrades in 2025 including elastic scaling and Asset Hub runtime releases. These properties make Kusama attractive as a canary environment for parachain deployments, where functionality, economic models, and interoperability primitives can be validated in a live, permissioned-but-experimental setting.\n\nKusama’s real-world use cases are anchored in parachain experimentation, rapid governance testing, and cross-chain asset workflows. Parachain teams use Kusama to trial runtime logic, token economics, and XCM-driven asset flows prior to Polkadot deployment. The network accommodates a variety of applications including specialized parachains for DeFi primitives, asset hubs that track multi-asset states, and experimentation with staking/nomination economics. Kusama's native token, KSM, drives governance, staking, and parachain bonding; it is also used to pay transaction fees and as an economic security bond for parachain auctions and slots. The ecosystem includes a mixture of custodial and non-custodial wallets, major centralized exchanges, and developer tooling, which together enable both retail and developer participation while preserving the network’s experimental character.\n\nTokenomics for Kusama are inflationary by design: issuance and staking rewards are governed dynamically and tied to staking participation rates and treasury flows rather than a fixed hard cap. Historical snapshots referenced in the provided materials report circulating supply figures around ~17.5M KSM and an issuance/inflation profile that has been described near ~10% annually in some historical contexts; treasury and validator reward splits are managed on-chain through referenda and council decisions rather than a single centralized allocation. Initial distribution was not a fair-launch in the strictest sense but rather an airdrop to Polkadot contributors (1:1) and a temporary faucet for some participants. Governance also controls treasury allocations and post-launch funding via on-chain proposal mechanisms, ensuring that protocol-level funding and developer grants remain subject to community oversight.\n\nGovernance on Kusama is explicitly on-chain and designed for speed: referenda, council motions, and fast enactment cycles allow token-holder decisions to move from proposal to runtime change quickly, a design that aligns with Kusama’s role as a canary network. The ecosystem is supported by Parity Technologies and the Web3 Foundation for development and grant administration, but the chain itself is governed by token-holder voting and council processes, making it effectively DAO-like in structure. The network maintains an active development cadence with multiple runtime and asset hub upgrades recorded in 2025; this demonstrates both high developer velocity and the operational trade-offs of rapid upgrades, including occasional finality hiccups that required governance-led interventions. Looking ahead, Kusama’s roadmap and community activity emphasize ongoing work in elastic scaling, parachain lifecycle management, and improved runtime stability for parachains and relay-chain interactions.",
  "methodology": "https://blockindex.ai/dscore",
  "classification": {
    "layer": "Layer 1",
    "isToken": false,
    "consensus": "PoS",
    "parentChain": null
  },
  "dScoreComponents": {
    "autonomy": 5,
    "ageHistory": 10,
    "governance": 25,
    "nodeDistribution": 28,
    "initialDistribution": 0
  },
  "decentralizationVerdict": "Decentralized"
}