Kaia: Joining hands with LINE and Kakao, two major Asian social giants, with the potential of 250 million users ready to unleash.

On January 16, 2024, Klaytn and Finschia, two leading blockchain platforms in Asia, announced the launch of a unified mainnet plan. These two mainnets originate from South Korea and Japan's internet giants Kakao and LINE, respectively. On August 29, 2024, the merged Kaia mainnet officially went live. By combining their respective ecosystems and assets, Kakao and LINE plan 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, leading the development and operations of Klaytn. Prior to that, he was the Chief Technology Officer at GroundX(, Kakao's blockchain subsidiary), and worked as an assistant computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.

The joint support of the two giants Kakao and LINE has injected strong momentum into the development of Kaia. Kakao has a usage rate of up to 96% in South Korea and has significant influence in Vietnam. LINE is favored by users in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, and together, they combine to give Kaia a potential user base of over 250 million, significantly enhancing global coverage. With such a large user base, Kaia is expected to greatly improve the popularity and acceptance of blockchain technology in the East Asian market, laying a solid foundation for the large-scale application of blockchain technology; thus creating a vast and vibrant Web3 ecosystem, the largest in Asia. Other investors in Kaia include Hashed, IDG Capital, and others.

Kakao and Klaytn

Kakao Talk is one of the most popular instant messaging applications in South Korea, with nearly 49 million monthly active users in Q3 2024, 90% of whom are from South Korea. The company has over 17k employees, and the operating profit for Q3 2024 was 130.5 billion KRW (9348 million USD ), a year-on-year increase of 5%. The platform division, including Kakao Talk, achieved growth, with revenue increasing by 7% to reach 943.5 billion KRW (7.0763 million USD ).

Klaytn has been designed from the very beginning for DApp developers and enterprises. This ecosystem allows developers to unleash their creativity and enhance user experience. It provides a strong technological foundation for Kaia. Klaytn's cumulative transaction volume is $376 billion, with over 29 million Web3 wallet users and more than 240k community members. The ATH Onchain TVL has reached over $1 billion, and it also has a strong influence in Singapore and Vietnam.

The South Korean market is inherently crypto-friendly, and its local exchange Upbit has become a leading exchange in the crypto industry. Web3 projects take pride in being able to list on Upbit. Against the backdrop of the entire population of South Korea trading cryptocurrencies, the ceiling for Kaia will undoubtedly bring us endless imagination.

LINE and Finschia

As the most popular communication platform in Japan, LINE covers 70% of the Japanese population and also dominates markets in Thailand, Taiwan, and others. In Japan, the monthly active users reach 92 million, while the number of users in Thailand exceeds 51 million. ( is the most popular social platform in Thailand ), with the number of users in Taiwan reaching 21 million, and the Indonesian market also having 13 million users. This high user penetration rate provides a solid foundation for its advertising, payment, and content services. For example, in the 2024 Nielsen LINE Usage Behavior Survey, it was found that 92.1% of Taiwanese people aged 15-65 used LINE in the past seven days, with nearly half of the users being heavy users, checking LINE an average of 14 times a day for messages.

Compared to other social platforms, LINE's unique ecological integration capabilities stand out remarkably. Users can consume its rich content products on LINE, including over 300,000 comic books and nine games that integrate social interaction. This diversification of features gives LINE a significant advantage in maintaining user engagement. Moreover, the average usage time of over 4 hours per week highlights its irreplaceability in users' daily lives.

This comprehensive ecosystem provides Kaia with a unique strategic advantage. LINE's users are highly concentrated and active, and the integration of its advertising and payment functionalities allows brands and services to precisely reach their target audience. Additionally, LINE's regionalized strategy ensures that its platform content closely matches users' cultural needs, creating an efficient pathway for Kaia's localized promotion.

LINE's payment ecosystem also demonstrates its potential in the blockchain economy. With 40 million monthly active payment users and an annual transaction volume exceeding $12 billion, LINE Pay has provided its users with a seamless digital payment experience. This payment infrastructure, combined with its highly refined advertising delivery capability, has an average monthly reach of over 200 million users, providing a natural advantage for blockchain projects to land and expand in the Asia-Pacific market.

Particularly worth noting is the LINE Miniapp plan, which serves as a bridge connecting Web2 and Web3. This feature not only allows existing users to easily access decentralized applications but also builds a highly compatible development environment through deep integration of its payment, advertising, and communication ecosystem.

Finschia, a blockchain under LINE, was launched as early as 2018. After about 5 years of development, it has more than 5.6 million Web3 wallet users, over 170k community members, and holds an important position in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Abu Dhabi.

LINE's strategic direction indicates that in the future Web3 world, it will not only be a participant but also a promoter and accelerator, helping the entire industry bridge the critical gap from technology to mainstream application.

Currently, Kaia has confirmed that it will launch the SDK for Line mini programs and will release the first batch of Line mini program applications in January 2025, while meeting regulatory requirements. Regarding Kakao, among Kaia's six council members, three are from Kakao's blockchain Klaytn. In addition, Kakao and its affiliates hold about 9.8% of Kaia's total supply and are actively involved in its governance. However, the current regulatory uncertainty in South Korea hinders Kakao from playing a more active role in blockchain initiatives, such as launching mini dApps like LINE. However, once these regulatory uncertainties are resolved and LINE's mini dApp service succeeds, Kakao is expected to fully embrace blockchain integration.

Token Economics

The native token KAIA of Kaia plays a core role in the blockchain economy, used to pay transaction fees when creating or executing smart contracts or transferring KAIA. It is not only a means of payment for transactions but also provides the driving force for the normal operation of the entire system:

1. Incentive Mechanism: The platform's clients incentivize consensus nodes (Consensus Nodes,CNs) by paying KAIA, as these nodes are responsible for validating transactions and executing smart contracts. Simply put, the nodes provide computing power and resources, and users pay KAIA in return, creating a mutually beneficial relationship.

2. Promote Development Quality: The fees paid using KAIA are proportional to the complexity of the smart contract and resource consumption. If a developer's code is too inefficient or redundant, executing this code will be more expensive. This mechanism encourages developers to optimize code quality and avoid wasting computational resources.

3. Maintaining Network Health: CN nodes support the operation of the network by consuming computing power and bandwidth. The rewards obtained from KAIA can incentivize more nodes to participate in the consensus process, thereby ensuring the decentralization and stability of the network.

Each new block will automatically issue KAIA tokens, with an initial annual inflation rate of 5.2%. The block reward distribution is as follows:

1. CCO and Community: 50% ( 20% Block Creator Reward, 80% Staking Reward )
2. KEF( Kaia Ecosystem Fund ): 25%
3. KIF( Kaia Infrastructure Fund ): 25%

This distribution model can both incentivize network participation and support the growth and development of the Kaia ecosystem.

The on-chain governance system implemented by Kaia aims to achieve fairness and inclusivity.

1. Voting rights are proportional to the number of KAIA tokens invested.
2. The cap on voting rights can prevent the opinions of a minority from being suppressed.
3. Allow voting rights delegation.
4. All governance proposals are recorded on-chain to ensure transparency.

Governance Council

With technological advancements driving the rapid growth of the metaverse, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and developers are becoming important forces in the new economic form. Kaia is keeping pace with this trend by launching the Kaia Governance Council (Governance Council, GC), consisting of 31 trusted early members, most of whom are top institutions. These include: Kakao, a certain trading platform, Google Cloud, GS HomeShopping( the number one multimedia retailer in South Korea), LG Uplus( which is part of the largest enterprise in South Korea, LG Corporation), Hanwha Systems( the second largest non-bank financial group in South Korea), Everrich Group( a real estate developer mainly operating in South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia), HashKey( a leading fintech group headquartered in Hong Kong, focusing on blockchain development), NEOPLY( a leading startup accelerator under NEOWIZ, which is a large South Korean online gaming company specializing in blockchain investment), among others.

Through this choice, the Kaia platform successfully achieved stable operation of the mainnet, ensuring rapid and efficient advancement of technological stability and operational implementation in the early stages of the platform's development, laying a solid foundation for subsequent innovations in governance models.

Moreover, Kaia has expanded the membership of GC from traditional enterprises to DAOs and builders, to meet the needs of the new era. Kaia's ultimate vision is to become a fully decentralized "DAO of DAOs," unifying the voices of all governance entities through on-chain mechanisms. This is not only a technological innovation but also represents a true transformation of governance structures - empowering all stakeholders with greater voice and setting a new benchmark for decentralized development in the metaverse.

Kaia's governance framework is not only a core pillar of its platform development but also a key highlight that attracts global developers, communities, and organizations to participate. Through a governance mechanism that combines foresight and flexibility, Kaia is laying a solid foundation for the sustainable growth of the blockchain ecosystem.

In addition, Kaia has also closely collaborated with government departments. For example, the Bank of Korea has chosen its parent company Ground X as the main technology provider for the blockchain-based digital won simulation.

Technical Architecture Principles

Kaia is a highly optimized public blockchain based on BFT( Byzantine Fault Tolerance, which refers to the ability of a decentralized network to reach consensus even in the presence of malicious nodes or failures), aiming to meet enterprise-level reliability and performance standards.

Kaia Blockchain provides:

1. 1 second block generation and confirmation time.
2. Can process 4000 transactions per second.
3. Low gas prices, about 1/10 of a certain well-known public chain.
4. EVM compatible, supports Solidity contracts.
5. The Kaia Governance Committee, composed of globally renowned enterprises, carries out governance.

Kaia's network structure is divided into three logical sub-networks:

1. Core Cell Network (CCN): Consists of core units responsible for transaction validation, execution, and block creation (CC).
2. Endpoint Node Network ( Endpoint Node Network, ENN ): Consists of endpoint nodes ( EN ).