KaKao and Line’s Kaia Blockchain Goes Live: Everything You Need to Know
KaKao Talk is South Sorea's most popu'ar messaging app. Photo by Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.
Key Takeaways
- The Kaia mainnet went live on Thursday, Aug. 29.
- Kaia is the result of a merger of the Klaytn and Finschia blockchains.
- Klaytn and Finschia were developed by the leading Asian communication apps KaKao and Line.
KaKao and Line, two popular Asian communication platforms, have joined forces to create a new integrated layer-1 blockchain—Kaia.
Formed through the merger of the Klaytn and Finschia blockchains that were initially developed by Kakao and LINE, respectively, Kaia is positioned as “Asia’s largest Web3 ecosystem,” bringing together two digital media giants with a combined user base of over 250 million.
What is Kaia?
Given the similar trajectory the two companies have shared, KaKao and Line are natural partners. Both companies offer a broad range of digital services that are centered around their respective communication apps.
In their domestic markets, they are by far the most popular messaging services, with KaKao accounting for 95% of the South Korean market and Line taking a 65% share of the Japanese markets.
With the launch of Klaytn and Finschia in 2019, KaKao and Line ventured into the Web3 space to foster new decentralized applications (dApps) optimized for phones.
The launch of Kaia represents the conclusion of a long-running project to integrate the two platforms and sees KLAY and FNSA merge into a new token, KAIA.
Upon the launch of the new token, KLAY balances will automatically be migrated one-for-one. Meanwhile, FNSA holders must swap their tokens with a fixed exchange rate set at 148:1.
Architecture and Features
The Kaia blockchain leverages Finschia’s core components, including its consensus mechanism and smart contract capabilities, while also integrating elements from Klaytn, such as its service chain structure and user-friendly development tools.
Positioned as an “enterprise-ready and service-centric” blockchain platform, Kaia’s forkless architecture is designed to achieve instant finality.
The Kaia Mainnet currently supports a theoretical throughput of 4,000 transactions per second, with a one-second block generation interval. Over 50 consensus nodes participate in the Consensus Node Network (CNN), with plans to further optimize and expand this number as the platform evolves.
For each new block, 6.4 KAIA are minted, equivalent to a 5.2% annual inflation rate. Block rewards are shared according to a four-way distribution:
- Block proposer rewards: 10%
- Staking rewards: 40%
- Ecosystem Fund 25%
- Infrastructure Fund 25%
DApps on Kaia
According to the project’s website, the newly unified ecosystem supports 356 projects spanning Decentralized Finance (DeFi), blockchain gaming, NFTs, Web3 wallets, and more.
Kaia’s greatest potential lies in the possibility of in-app integration with KaKao and Line. To that end, the Kaia Foundation has teamed up with Line’s Web3 division to launch a software development kit for “mini DApps” that run within Line Messenger.
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