Kaia: The Blockchain Infrastructure Created by Asian Social Media Giants

1. Background Overview of Kaia

1.1 Project Introduction

1.1.1 Establishment and Development History

On January 16, 2024, Klaytn and Finschia announced the launch of a unified mainnet. The merged Kaia mainnet will officially go live on August 29, 2024. 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, where he was responsible for leading the development and operation of Klaytn. He also served as Chief Technology Officer at GroundX and worked as an assistant computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.

The joint support of Kakao and LINE has injected strong momentum into Kaia. Kakao has a usage rate of 96% in South Korea, while LINE is favored by users in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, and combined, Kaia's potential user base exceeds 250 million. Kaia is expected to greatly enhance the popularity and acceptance of Blockchain technology in the East Asian market, laying the foundation for the large-scale application of Blockchain technology; thereby creating the largest and most vibrant Web3 ecosystem in Asia. Other investors in Kaia include Hashed, IDG Capital, and others.

1.1.2 Important Milestones

January 16, 2024: Klaytn and Finschia announce merger August 29, 2024: Kaia mainnet officially launched

1.1.3 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 its operating profit in Q3 2024 was 130.5 billion KRW (9348 million USD ), a year-on-year increase of 5%. Among them, the platform division's revenue grew by 7%, reaching 943.5 billion KRW (7.0763 million USD ).

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

1.1.4 Line and Finschia

LINE covers 70% of the Japanese population and also holds a dominant position in markets such as Thailand and Taiwan. The monthly active users in Japan reach 92 million, while the number of users in Thailand exceeds 51 million, in Taiwan it reaches 21 million, and the Indonesian market has 13 million users.

The ecological integration capability of LINE is particularly prominent. Users can consume its rich content products, including over 300,000 comic books and 9 games that integrate social interaction. An average usage time of more than 4 hours per week highlights its irreplaceability in users' daily lives.

LINE's payment ecosystem showcases its potential in the blockchain economy. LINE Pay has 40 million monthly active payment users and an annual transaction volume of over 12 billion USD. This payment infrastructure, combined with its highly refined advertising capabilities, reaches over 200 million users monthly, providing a natural advantage for blockchain projects to land and expand in the Asia-Pacific market.

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

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. As for Kakao, among the 6 council members of Kaia, 3 come from Kakao's blockchain Klaytn. In addition, Kakao and its affiliates hold about 9.8% of Kaia's total supply and actively participate in its governance. However, the current regulatory uncertainties in South Korea hinder Kakao from playing a more active role in blockchain initiatives, such as launching mini dApps like LINE. Once these regulatory uncertainties are resolved and LINE's mini dApp service succeeds, Kakao is expected to fully embrace blockchain integration.

( 1.2 Token Economics

)# 1.2.1 Token $Kaia

The native token KAIA of Kaia plays a central 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 necessary power for the normal operation of the entire system.

1. Incentive Mechanism: The platform's clients incentivize the consensus nodes ###Consensus Nodes,CNs### by paying KAIA, as these nodes are responsible for validating transactions and executing smart contracts.

2. Promote Development Quality: The fees paid using KAIA are proportional to the complexity of the smart contract and resource consumption. This mechanism encourages developers to optimize code quality and avoid wasting computational resources.

3. Maintain Network Health: CN nodes support network operation by consuming computing power and bandwidth. The rewards of 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 distribution of Block rewards 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%

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

1. Voting rights are proportional to the amount 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 the blockchain to ensure transparency.

Since Klay was renamed to Kaia and went live on the trading platform, the coin price has been rising continuously.

(# 1.2.2 Governance Council

Kaia has launched the Kaia Governance Council ), GC###, consisting of 31 trusted early members, most of whom are top institutions. These include: Kakao, major exchanges, Google Cloud, GS HomeShopping (, the number one multimedia retailer in South Korea ), LG Uplus (, a subsidiary of South Korea's largest corporation LG Corporation ), Hanwha Systems (, the second largest non-bank financial group in Korea ), Everrich Group (, a real estate developer with a primary business focus in 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 major South Korean online gaming company specializing in blockchain investment ), etc.

Kaia also expands 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.

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.

( 1.3 Technical Architecture Principles

Kaia is a highly optimized, BFT-based public Blockchain designed 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 price, about 1/10 of Ethereum.
4. EVM compatible, supports Solidity contracts.
5. Governance is conducted by the Kaia Governance Committee composed of globally renowned enterprises.

The network structure of Kaia is divided into three logical sub-networks:

1. Core Cell Network ) CCN ###: Composed of core units ( CC) responsible for transaction validation, execution, and block creation.
2. Endpoint Node Network (: Composed of endpoint nodes ), responsible for handling RPC API requests and serving chain data.
3. Service Chain Network (: An auxiliary Blockchain that operates independently by DApps, connected to the main chain through EN.

)# 1.3.1 共识算法(Consensus Algorithm)

To address the communication bottleneck issue of PBFT while achieving high performance, Kaia has adopted an optimized version of Istanbul BFT. In Kaia, there are three types of nodes: CN( consensus nodes ), PN### proxy nodes (, and EN) endpoint nodes (.

1. Consensus Node ), CN(: Responsible for generating Blocks, managed by the core node operator ) CCO (.
2. Proxy Nodes ), PN (: Transmit data between consensus nodes and users. Provide network interfaces, transmit transaction requests, and propagate Blocks.
3. Core unit )CC(: Composed of one consensus node )CN( and two proxy nodes )PN(.
4. Terminal node )EN(: Acts as a network endpoint, handling API requests and data processing. Connects users and the network, providing access services.
5. Bootnode ): A special node operated by Kaia, used to help new nodes join the Blockchain.

Since validation and consensus are performed for each Block, forks will not occur, and once consensus is reached, the finality of the Block can be guaranteed immediately.

By utilizing a randomly selected committee, the issue of increased communication volume in the BFT algorithm is addressed. The CN collective forms a committee, and during the generation of each Block, a verifiable random function (VRF) ( is used to select a portion of them as committee members. The main process is:

1. Randomly Select Committee: Use VRF to fairly randomly select a group responsible for generating and validating Blocks called the "committee".
2. Generate Block: The selected proposer will generate a new block.
3. Verification and Signing: Validators in the committee will review whether the block submitted by the proposer is correct. If more than two-thirds of the validators approve and sign, the block will be added to the Blockchain.

![With Line and Kakao, two major Asian social giants, and the potential of 250 million users ready to unleash, can Kaia replicate the myth of TON?])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-275e81b1388261a820b2b6938cd7235e.webp(

)# 1.3.2 Block Generation and Propagation(

Kaia's block generation and propagation design is simple and efficient, ensuring the stability and scalability of the system. The specific features are as follows:

1. Quickly generate a Block: The goal of each round of operation is to generate a Block within 1 second.
2. Random yet deterministic election process: The election of proposers and committee members is random, but the process is determined by an algorithm, and all nodes can verify this randomness.
3. Two-thirds signature rule: A new block can only be added to the Blockchain after more than two-thirds of the committee members have signed in agreement.
4. 多通道传播)Multichannel Propagation(: Blocks and transactions are propagated independently, greatly reducing latency and conflicts.

)# 1.3.3 Kaia Virtual Machine ( KVM )

The virtual machine of Kaia ### KVM ( is a core component for running smart contracts, with a design philosophy focused on compatibility and scalability. Its main features include:

1. Based on Ethereum