Swap Kaspa (KAS)

The numbers below were checked on 14 October 2026 against KIP-14 and the rusty-kaspa repository on github.com, and kaspa.org.

Parallel blocks, ordered

Bitcoin keeps one chain: when two miners find a block at the same time, one wins and the other is discarded, which is why its block rate has to stay low. Kaspa keeps both. Blocks form a directed acyclic graph — a blockDAG — and the GHOSTDAG protocol orders them, so a block that arrives in parallel with another still counts and its transactions are still included (unless they conflict, in which case the ordering decides). kaspa.org's phrase is that parallel blocks are not discarded, they are ordered. That is what lets Kaspa run at a block rate a chain cannot.

Ten blocks a second

Since the Crescendo hard fork, specified in KIP-14 and activated at DAA score 110,165,000 on 5 May 2025 at about 15:00 UTC, the target time per block is 100 milliseconds — ten blocks a second, up from one. KIP-14 keeps the emission schedule intact by treating the reward as a per-second figure divided across the blocks of that second, and raises the mergeset (the number of parallel blocks a block can reference) from 180 to 248. Confirmation, in the sense of a transaction's position in the ordering becoming settled, is a matter of seconds; kaspa.org puts it as transactions that confirm safely after an hour in Bitcoin confirming in seconds on Kaspa.

What the site waits for

The route data this site is built from waits for 10 confirmations on a KAS deposit. At ten blocks a second that is about a second of chain time, so the 2–5 minutes the status page shows is processing and the payout on the other network, not Kaspa.

Mining, emission and the cap

Mining is proof of work with the kHeavyHash function, and there was no premine. Emission has two phases on kaspa.org: a pre-deflationary phase from the mainnet start in November 2021 with a constant reward per second, and the chromatic phase, in which the block reward is reduced every month by a factor of (1/2)^(1/12) — a halving per year, applied in twelve smooth steps instead of one cut. The schedule runs until the reward falls below one sompi, decades out. The code's hard ceiling is 29 billion KAS (MAX_SOMPI in rusty-kaspa); the schedule ends below that, at the roughly 28.7 billion that CoinGecko lists as the maximum supply.

Fees

The fee is chosen by the sender and paid in KAS; a plain transfer is small, and with ten blocks a second there is no queue to bid against on an ordinary day. The wallet's default is enough.

Kaspa is never the slow part. Ten confirmations are a second. If a swap from KAS takes long, the status page will show the payout network waiting, not the deposit.

A Kaspa address is a bech32-style string with a network prefix. The kaspa-addresses crate of rusty-kaspa, the reference node, describes it as a bech32-encoded address combined with a network type, where the encoded part is a public key, the public key version and the resulting checksum. Checked on docs.rs on 14 October 2026.

The string after the prefix is lowercase, built from the bech32 alphabet (no 1, b, i or o), and ends in a checksum. A single wrong character fails the check, and the form refuses the address rather than sending to it. The prefix is part of the address: give kaspa:q…, not the q… part alone, and keep the colon.

The address already is the public key

On Bitcoin an address is a hash of a key; on Kaspa the address encodes the public key itself, with a version byte for the key type (Schnorr or ECDSA) and a checksum. This matters for one reason: it explains the form's second field. Kaspa has no memo, tag or payment ID anywhere in the protocol, and there is nothing a transaction could carry beside the address and the amount.

The "Public key" field

The form nevertheless shows a second field for KAS, labelled "Public key", because that is how the field is defined for Kaspa in the asset data the form is built from. The rule:

1. Your own wallet: leave it empty. A kaspa:q… address that passes the form's check is a complete destination.
2. An exchange or other service: fill it only if the deposit page shows a second value under that exact name. Almost none do, because the network has nothing to carry it in.
3. Unsure: leave it empty.

What the form accepts

For a KAS payout, a mainnet kaspa: address with a valid checksum, and the "Public key" field empty or exactly what a service asked for. Everything else is refused: a testnet address, a Bitcoin or Litecoin address, a 0x… address. There is only one network for KAS on this site; a token called KAS elsewhere is a different asset.

Which address to give

1. Your own wallet: the address from its Receive screen, with the prefix.
2. An exchange: the address from its KAS deposit page, exactly as shown, after checking the page says Kaspa.
3. Another person: ask for the address and read the first and last six characters after kaspa: back.

The sending side is the mirror: the deposit address the form shows is an ordinary kaspa: address, and a withdrawal must be on the Kaspa network to reach it.

Every Kaspa transaction has a 64-character ID. The status page links the KAS side of a swap to the Kaspa explorer at explorer.kaspa.org, which was read on 14 October 2026. Anyone with the transaction ID can look it up.

The Kaspa explorer opens a transaction with the block that accepted it, the time, the number of confirmations, the inputs and outputs with their kaspa: addresses and amounts, the fee and the mass (Kaspa's measure of transaction size and cost). An address page shows the balance and every transaction in and out. Because blocks are parallel, a transaction is included in a block and then accepted by the ordering — the explorer shows the accepting block, and the confirmation count runs from there. At ten blocks a second the count climbs so fast that by the time the page loads the deposit is usually past the ten the site waits for.

A deposit you sent

1. Copy the transaction ID from your wallet's history.
2. Open it on the explorer. Not found means the wallet has not broadcast it; a wallet that lost its connection to the network when you pressed Send is the usual reason.
3. Check the outputs: the deposit address from the form, with the exact amount. If you sent from an exchange, this is where its withdrawal fee shows.
4. The status page updates on its own; with ten blocks a second, it rarely has time to show an intermediate count.

A payout you received

1. Open the transaction ID from the status page on the explorer.
2. Find your kaspa: address among the outputs. The amount next to it is "You get" from the form; the payout network fee was already taken out.
3. Open your address page and read the balance. A wallet shows the coins within seconds; an exchange credits after its own count, which is short on Kaspa.
4. Keep the transaction ID. It is the one thing support on either side will ask for.

If an exchange says the deposit is missing

Open the payout transaction, confirm that the output address is the one from the exchange's deposit page and that the transaction is accepted. Then the KAS is at the exchange and crediting it is the exchange's task; give its support the transaction ID. If the output address differs, the address in the form was wrong, and the explorer shows where the coins went. The "Public key" field plays no part here: nothing in the transaction carries it, so an exchange cannot have missed it.

What a block explorer shows about a swap does the same for other networks; Reading a swap status page explains each stage.

Kaspa's checksum keeps typos out and its speed keeps waiting short. What goes wrong is the prefix, the second field, and the usual exchange arithmetic.

The second field

The "Public key" field is the one Kaspa-specific source of confusion, and the safe rule is short: leave it empty. Kaspa has no memo or tag, and a kaspa:q… address that passes the form's check is the whole destination. The field exists because the asset data the form is built from defines it for Kaspa; a service that actually asks for a value under that exact name is the only reason to type anything there. If a deposit page shows a second value under some other name — a memo, a tag — it is not for Kaspa, and the page is probably for a different asset.

The prefix

A Kaspa address without its prefix is not a valid address; the prefix is part of what the checksum covers. Some wallets display the address with the prefix in a lighter colour or let you copy the two parts separately. Copy the whole string. The same applies in reverse when you send the deposit: the address the form shows begins with kaspa:, and a wallet that asks for the address without the prefix will usually add it itself — check the confirmation screen.

Less arrives than the form expects

Most exchanges deduct their withdrawal fee from the amount you type; the swap runs on what arrived, and under the route's minimum it cannot be processed as a swap at all. The withdrawal screen shows the amount the exchange will actually send. Minimums, maximums and fees on small swaps explains how the minimum is set; on a route from KAS it is the payout network's fee, not Kaspa's, that sets it.

Dust

Kaspa carries a dust rule like Bitcoin's — an output too small to be worth spending is not accepted — and the swap's minimum is far above it. A KAS payout fee is small, so a route into KAS has one of the smaller fixed parts here.

Nothing here is reversible. Once a transaction is accepted into the ordering it is final within seconds, and a transfer can only be returned by whoever received it. The checksum and the empty second field are the protections that work before the fact.

Kaspa has changed more in its protocol than any other proof-of-work coin on this site, and the changes have been toward more blocks, not different addresses. Three matter to someone sending or receiving KAS; sources are kaspa.org, KIP-14 and the rusty-kaspa releases on github.com, read on 14 October 2026.

Launch, November 2021. kaspa.org records a fair launch — no premine, no hidden allocation — with the mainnet starting in November 2021. The site also explains the genesis proof: Bitcoin block hashes placed in the genesis coinbase as timestamps, so that every coin traces back to an empty genesis and a hidden premine can be ruled out. The pre-deflationary phase paid a constant reward per second from the start.

The chromatic phase. kaspa.org describes the emission that followed: the block reward halves once a year, but smoothly — every month it is reduced by a factor of (1/2)^(1/12). The schedule runs until the reward falls below one sompi, decades from now, and the sum of it is the maximum supply of roughly 28.7 billion KAS that CoinGecko lists; the code's MAX_SOMPI constant sets a hard ceiling of 29 billion. For a sender this is background.

Crescendo, May 2025. The Rust rewrite of the node, Rusty Kaspa, reached version 1.0.0 with Crescendo built in, and the release notes scheduled activation at DAA score 110,165,000, projected for 5 May 2025 at about 15:00 UTC. KIP-14 lists what changed: target time per block from 1,000 to 100 milliseconds (one block a second to ten); the reward treated as a per-second figure divided across the blocks of each second, so emission was unchanged; the mergeset from 180 to 248; finality depth corresponding to 12 hours instead of 24; coinbase maturity to 1,000 blocks; a pruning period rounded to 30 hours. kaspa.org says Kaspa could not have moved to ten blocks a second on mainnet without the rewrite. For a sender the visible effect is that the 10 confirmations this site waits for went from ten seconds to one.

What has not changed. kaspa: addresses, 8 decimals, no memo, a fee chosen by the sender, proof of work with no premine. A wallet from 2022 makes valid transactions today, and an address from then still receives.

Kaspa was designed as a proof-of-work coin that keeps Bitcoin's security model and removes its waiting, so the comparison is between two chains that agree on almost everything except the block rate. Sources: KIP-14 and rusty-kaspa on github.com, the Bitcoin Core source and the Bitcoin page on this site, 14 October 2026.

Time. This is the whole difference for a sender. Two Bitcoin confirmations are twenty minutes on a good day; ten Kaspa confirmations are one second. A swap from BTC is the slowest on this site and a swap from KAS is among the fastest — and both deposits are secured by proof of work, which is the point Kaspa set out to make.

Fees. Bitcoin's block space is scarce and the fee is a bid; a cheap transaction can wait hours, and the Bitcoin page's Network section is about choosing it. Kaspa's block space is plentiful, so the wallet default is enough and there is nothing to decide.

Addresses. Both use a bech32-style encoding with a checksum (Bitcoin only for its bc1 forms), so typos are caught on both. Bitcoin has four formats from four eras; Kaspa has one, with the network name as its prefix. Neither has a memo — and only Kaspa's form shows a second field anyway, which the Addresses section explains.

Supply. Both are capped and both reduce the reward on a schedule. Bitcoin halves at once every 210,000 blocks; Kaspa halves over a year in twelve monthly steps. Kaspa's cap is a thousand times larger in units, which is why its price per coin is in a different range and why amounts in the form are large numbers.

Routes. BTC has many route pages. KAS has none yet: pick it as either side in the form on the home page, and the form shows the rate and the minimum. Bitcoin's page has the long version of its addresses and fees.