Kaia: A Web3 Ecosystem Built by the Asian Social Giant

On August 29, 2024, the Kaia mainnet officially launched, marking the completion of the merger between two leading blockchain platforms in Asia, Klaytn and Finschia. This merger is backed by the collaboration between South Korea's Kakao and Japan's LINE, aiming to create a giant blockchain in Asia and gradually lead the global Web3 market.

Sam Seo, the chairman of the Kaia Foundation, holds a PhD in high-performance computing and previously served as CKO at KrustUniverse, where he was responsible for leading the development and operations of Klaytn. The joint support from Kakao and LINE provides strong momentum for Kaia. Kakao has a usage rate of 96% in South Korea, while LINE is very popular in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, resulting in a combined potential user base of over 250 million for Kaia.

Kaia's native token KAIA plays a central role in the blockchain economy, used for paying transaction fees and incentivizing consensus nodes. The initial annual inflation rate is 5.2%, with block rewards distributed to CCO and the community, KEF, and KIF. Kaia implements an on-chain governance system, where voting power is proportional to the amount of KAIA tokens staked.

In terms of technical architecture, Kaia adopts an optimized version of the Istanbul BFT consensus algorithm, addressing the issue of increased communication volume by randomly selecting committees. The target block generation time is 1 second, and a multi-channel propagation method is used to avoid network congestion. The Kaia virtual machine (KVM) is compatible with Ethereum smart contracts and includes some specialized precompiled contracts.

The Kaia ecosystem covers multiple tracks:

1. DeFi track: including projects like Neopin, Lair Finance, CapybaraExchange, etc.

2. Payment Track: Collaborating with Alchemy Pay to provide zero-fee $KAIA bridge service.

3. AI Track: Projects like FlareAI and FDN are integrating AI with blockchain technology.

4. Mini DApps on LINE: The first batch of 20 Mini DApps is scheduled to launch in January 2025, covering various fields such as gaming, social networking, and prediction markets.

Kaia also supports ecosystem development through activities and programs such as Kaia Wave and Line Next. Kaia Grants and the Kaia Ecosystem Fund provide funding and technical support for DApps.

Overall, Kaia is expected to become an important bridge connecting Web2 and Web3 due to its unique positioning, large user base, and comprehensive ecosystem, promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology in Asia and even globally.