Author: duoduo, LD Capital
KasLianGuai is a POW public chain built on the GHOSTDAG protocol. Compared with Bitcoin, the main change in KasLianGuai is the structure pattern of the blockchain. Bitcoin adopts a single-chain structure, while GHOSTDAG adopts a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure, where one block can point to multiple blocks.
The KAS token was launched in November 2021, with a total supply of 28.7 billion and a circulating supply of 19.8 billion, accounting for 69% of the total supply. Its market value is $750 million and FDV is $1.08 billion. Since the token was launched, its price has increased by a hundredfold.
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1. Team
The KasLianGuai team has a certain reputation. The founder, Yonatan Sompolinsky, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, specializing in transaction ordering and MEV. As early as 2013, he and his doctoral advisor conceived the GHOST protocol, and the related papers were cited in the Ethereum whitepaper.
The following is a partial quote from the Ethereum whitepaper:
In addition to the founder, there are 5 core developers. Michael Sutton researches parallel algorithms and distributed systems. Shai Wyborski is one of the authors of the GHOSTDAG paper and researches classical and quantum cryptography. Mike Zak and Ori Newman research distributed system development. Elichai Turkel is an applied cryptographer and a high-performance blockchain open-source developer.
2. Technical Principles
The current technical principles of KasLianGuai are mainly described in its 2021 paper “PHANTOM GHOSTDAG: A Scalable Generalization of Nakamoto Consensus”.
Bitcoin is essentially an open and anonymous node network that collectively maintains a public transaction ledger. The ledger adopts the “longest chain” principle to achieve honest blocks linking to each other and protect the security of the network. This design artificially suppresses the throughput of the network and has low protocol scalability. Currently, the Bitcoin network produces one block every 10 minutes, with 3-7 transactions per second.
Structural Model: Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)
KasLianGuai proposed the PHANTOM protocol, which is a permissionless distributed ledger protocol based on proof of work. It extends the blockchain defined by Satoshi Nakamoto to a directed acyclic graph (blockDAG). PHANTOM can reference multiple previous blocks, provide a total order of all blocks and transactions, and output a set of consistently accepted transactions.
PHANTOM includes a parameter k, which controls the tolerance level of the protocol for concurrently created blocks. This parameter can be set to accommodate higher throughput. When k=0, it means there is no fork, similar to the Bitcoin’s single-chain, longest-chain structure.
Let’s first understand several different types of blocks in a DAG. In the above figure, let’s take block H as an example:
LianGuaist(H)={Genesis, C, D, E} — — the past blocks directly or indirectly pointing to H before its creation;
future(H)={J, K, M} — — the future blocks directly or indirectly pointing to H after its creation;
anticone(H)={B, F, I, L} — — the blocks other than the past(H) and future(H) blocks, which have no direct or indirect relationship with H;
tips(G)={J, L, M} — — leaf blocks or frontier blocks, which will be referenced by the block headers of new blocks.
Identifying Honest Blocks and Malicious Blocks
PHANTOM solves the problem of identifying honest blocks and malicious blocks. A characteristic of malicious attacks is that the connectivity between blocks generated by malicious nodes and blocks generated by honest nodes is low, while the connectivity between blocks generated by honest nodes is high.
The criterion for judgment is the parameter K mentioned earlier. For a specific block X, if the intersection between anticone(X) and honest blocks is higher than the value of k, it indicates that the connectivity between block X and honest blocks is low, and X will be considered as an attack block. Otherwise, if the connectivity between block X and honest blocks is high, X is considered an honest block.
The following figure illustrates the judgment of honest blocks and attack blocks. Here, the value of K is 3. After the check, the blue part represents honest blocks, and the red part represents attack blocks.
Linear Ordering
To address the double-spending problem, the project team applies the GHOSTDAG protocol. The principle is to score each block based on its connectivity (the number of elements in the set of past blocks) and select the block with the highest total score as the main chain, forming an initial subset. The remaining blocks will then vote in the order of the main chain. The entire network will vote in a trend from high to low connectivity.
The following figure shows the process of sorting in GHOSTDAG with parameter K=3. The small circles on each block X represent their scores, which are the number of blue blocks in the past DAG.
In step 1, starting from the block M with the highest score, the blocks K, H, D, and the genesis block are selected in order and marked with a blue background and a black border, forming the initial subset. Visiting block D, the past blocks of D only include the genesis block.
In step 2, visiting block H, the past blocks of H include C, D, and E. After using the identification method for honest blocks and attacking blocks mentioned earlier, C, D, and E are determined to be honest blocks and are added to the subset, marked with a blue border.
In step 3, visiting block K, the past blocks of K include H and I. After identification, both of them are determined to be honest blocks and are marked with a blue border.
In step 4, visiting block M, the past blocks of M include K and F. K is determined to be an honest block and is added to the subset, marked with a blue border.
In step 5, block V is a virtual block, and its past blocks are equal to the entire current DAG.
The image below shows the visualization of the DAG production process on the official website of KasLianGuai.
At this point, KasLianGuai has completed the discussion of the new consensus architecture and has been used in practice. The official website displays the visualization of the DAG production process.
III. Hashrate Situation
The KAS mining algorithm is kHeavyHash, which supports GPU solo mining or dual mining with ETHW and ETC. It also supports mining with some FPGAs and ASIC miners.
According to the official blockchain explorer, KasLianGuai’s hashrate is 2.6-2.7 PH/s. According to data from mining pools, KasLianGuai’s hashrate ranks around 30th, after BCH, BSV, and DASH, and before DOGE and LTC.
KasLianGuai’s hashrate shows a continuous growth trend. There have been four noticeable increases in hashrate in October 2022, December 2022, February 2023, and July 2023. In March of this year, a mining equipment manufacturer launched professional miners to improve mining efficiency.
From the perspective of hashrate distribution, the concentration of hashrate is not too high. In the latest 999 blocks, the top five mining pools account for 37.1% of the output; more than 56.7% of the blocks are produced by unidentified addresses.
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IV. Token Economic Model
Token Distribution
KAS was launched in November 2021 with no pre-mining, no pre-sale, and no token distribution. The total supply is 28.7 billion tokens, with a circulating supply of 19.8 billion tokens, accounting for 69% of the total. The market value is $750 million with a fully diluted valuation of $1.08 billion.
Token Release
According to the emission schedule, the production of KAS is reduced every month according to a given method, resulting in a halving of the annual production. The following diagram illustrates the token release, showing a higher release rate in the early stages, allowing early miners to accumulate a large number of chips. The specific release date table can be found on the official website (https://kasLianGuai.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/KASLianGuai-EMISSION-SCHEDULE.pdf).
Based on the token emission schedule, the monthly emission and release value of KAS tokens from July 2023 to June 2024 are calculated and shown in the table below. If calculated at a price of $0.037, in July 2023, KAS will release tokens worth $19 million, gradually decreasing thereafter, and by June 2024, it will release tokens worth approximately $10 million.
According to f2pool’s data, KasLianGuai currently ranks fourth in terms of 24-hour output value, second only to Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Litecoin, and higher than ETC and BCH.
Token Holdings
There are a total of 267,000 addresses holding 1 or more KAS tokens. The token ownership is relatively concentrated, with the top 10 addresses holding 17.299% of the tokens, mainly exchange wallets; the top 100 addresses hold 26.13%; and the top 1000 addresses hold 61.35%.
In terms of token movement, in the past 30 days, addresses holding 100–10K tokens have been decreasing, while those holding 0–100 tokens and addresses holding 10K or more tokens have been increasing. In the past 7 days, addresses holding 100–10K tokens and Humpback addresses holding 100m to 1b tokens have been decreasing, while other addresses have been increasing.
V. Current Progress and Development Plans
The official website has disclosed some important developments and recent development plans since 2023.
Completed
In February 2023, core developer Michael Sutton published a paper on DagKnight Consensus, an evolution of the GHOSTDAG consensus mechanism that theoretically lays the foundation for faster transaction and confirmation times.
In Testing
Rewriting the code in Rust programming language
Currently, KasLianGuai is written in the GoLang programming language. Michael Sutton is rewriting the code in Rust programming language, which will improve the performance and transaction speed of KasLianGuai.
Mobile wallet development
There is a strong demand for high-performance mobile wallets from users, and the development is expected to take 3-4 months.
Integration of KasLianGuai for use on Ledger
Users will be able to send and receive KAS using the hardware wallet Ledger.
In Research and Development
Upgrading the consensus mechanism according to DagKnight Consensus
Further increasing the number of blocks per second and transactions per second
Currently, KasLianGuai produces 1 block per second, with a target of increasing it to 32 blocks per second. The current testnet can achieve 10 blocks per second.
Release project whitepaper
There are several research papers on the technology behind KasLianGuai, but the official project whitepaper has not been released yet and is being prepared.
Improvement of archive nodes
Currently, the standard nodes of KasLianGuai can only access transactions from three days ago. By improving the archive nodes, more historical data can be retrieved.
Development Plan
Implementation of smart contracts and establishment of ecosystem
KasLianGuai aims to implement smart contracts, DeFi, and Layer 2 applications on its public chain, establishing a corresponding ecosystem.
The development and deployment of smart contracts are the most important factors for further development. If smart contracts can be deployed in a timely and smooth manner, and an ecosystem with a certain level of activity can be established, there is still room for KasLianGuai’s market value to rise. However, if smart contract deployment is not smooth and the ecosystem fails to develop, there will be significant bottlenecks in future development.
6. Conclusion
The project team has strong technical capabilities and a solid foundation for development. They have proposed a new blockchain model and are exploring new directions for development. They have acquired mining power transferred from Ethereum in the early stages, and the mining power continues to increase.
The market value is relatively high, having increased by over a hundred times. Currently, the market value of KAS is 750 million US dollars, ranking around 60th. The valuation of the technical team and the growth of mining power by the market is already relatively sufficient. Future growth will require stronger expectations to support it.
There is a potential selling pressure on the tokens. Early miners hold a large number of low-priced chips, and there is also continuous daily production. If they sell off, it will cause significant price fluctuations.
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