What Is Kaspa? How Its BlockDAG Works
Kaspa is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency that uses a blockDAG ordered by GHOSTDAG for fast transactions. It launched on 7 November 2021 with no presale.
Vahe HakobyanEditor-in-chief
Updated Oct 6, 20263 min readFact-checked
On this page
- Kaspa launched on 7 November 2021 with no presale.
- Yonatan Sompolinsky founded Kaspa and helped create GHOST.
- KAS is mined, bought, or received, and held in Kaspa wallets.
- The IRS treats crypto as property, so trading KAS can be taxable.
Kaspa's name comes from the Aramaic word for silver and money. Miners add blocks, and the design lets many blocks exist at once. Its genesis block was defined on 7 November 2021 as a fair launch with no presale.
What Is Kaspa?
Kaspa is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency. Its network uses a blockDAG, which lets many blocks be created quickly instead of one chain at a time. KAS pays miners and network fees.
How Do People Use and Store KAS?
Kaspa's genesis block was defined on 7 November 2021, and wallets that support the network have held KAS since then. You can get KAS by mining, buying on an exchange, or receiving a transfer. Store it in a Kaspa wallet, and send it to a Kaspa address.
- Back up the wallet's recovery phrase.
- Confirm the receiving address is a Kaspa address.
- Check the amount and the network fee.
- Treat the transaction as final once you send it.
How Does the BlockDAG Work?
GHOSTDAG is a protocol that generalizes the Nakamoto consensus to a directed acyclic graph of blocks. A directed acyclic graph is a structure where each block can point to more than one previous block. Miners do proof-of-work, and GHOSTDAG orders blocks so nodes agree on transaction history. Fast blocks do not mean instant finality; exchanges may wait for confirmations.
Who Created It and How Is It Different?
Yonatan Sompolinsky is known as the founder of Kaspa. He is an Israeli computer scientist who helped create the GHOST protocol. Kaspa launched on 7 November 2021 as a fair launch with no presale.
What Legal and Regulatory Issues Exist?
For US tax purposes, the IRS has treated crypto as property since 2014. Buying KAS with dollars is not a taxable event, but trading KAS for another crypto or paying with KAS can be. The SEC has brought crypto enforcement actions, including cases against exchanges in 2023, and proof-of-work rules are not uniform.
Frequently asked questions
Not natively like Ethereum. Community standards such as KRC-20 add token support.
You can run mining software at home, but competitive mining usually needs specialized hardware.
No. Kaspa was launched as its own project with a blockDAG design.
kHeavyHash is the mining algorithm Kaspa uses to find blocks that meet its difficulty target.
