What could go wrong
Kaspa risks and open questions
The case for Kaspa is seven separate claims; any one can fail while the rest hold.
Seven risks, and what would settle each one
| Verification cost |
Ten blocks a second raise the bandwidth, CPU, and disk a node needs; push far enough and only well-funded operators can check it. Settled by many separate node, API, explorer, and indexer operators, not fast blocks alone. |
| Security budget |
New coins pay miners, shrinking on a schedule fees aren't replacing: as income falls, so does attack cost. Settled by fee demand replacing new coins. Price the gap below. |
| External cost |
Proof-of-work security is bought with electricity, chips, and supply chains; a faster chain doesn't shrink that bill. Nothing settles this one: the price of the security model, paid daily. |
| Liquidity |
Market depth, custody, and exchange support don't follow from good design; they take years of money and legal work. Settled by getting in and out, holding your own keys, trading at depth, not holder counts or volume. |
| Mining concentration |
A few firms control ASICRuns kHeavyHash fast; can't be reprogrammed. supply; pools and geography still cluster into few hands, open protocol or not. Settled by production spread across many addresses over long windows. No premine doesn't mean no early concentration: fair-launch comparison. |
| Roadmap execution |
Toccata activated on mainnet; vProgs, DAGKnight, and native DeFi are separate tracks, separate timelines. A testnet demo of one isn't evidence for the others. Settled by a mainnet release with proof it activated: wallets, indexers, accepted transactions, repeat use. Status tracks each. |
| User demand |
Low fees and spare room are what apps need to exist, not proof anyone uses one twice. Settled by people returning because an app beats an ordinary server. |
Try it
Who pays Kaspa's miners
Miners sell hash power to whoever pays; total pay falls, hash rate follows, so does attack cost.
Jump to
of miner pay comes from fees
- New coins
- $58,358 a day
- Fees
- $5.17 a day
- Gap
- fees are 11,293x too small
New coins at $0.0292121 (22 Aug 2026 CoinGecko), held flat; schedule steps down 5.61%/month, halving every 12. Fees at measured median $0.000063.
Source: this site's twenty-chain dataset, Kaspa row, 22 Aug 2026; rusty-kaspa's coinbase.rs; emission demo.
Not Kaspa-specific: Bitcoin has run the same subsidy its whole life, still the priciest chain to attack. Watch whether the gap closes. Attack-cost calculator prices the other side.
What to watch
Separate node/API/indexer counts. Roadmap items becoming apps with repeat users, not demos. How fast live/testnet/roadmap/research flatten into one hype story. Price/hash-rate version: the mining cycle.