Where Does Kusama Go From Here?

Governance
1

Gm Kusama community, some of you already know me from my previous work in the ecosystem. I recently took on a new role as Kusama Governance Coordinator, with a focus on the Kusama Vision Programme. Part of my work is to help make sure the programme benefits Kusama and follows the direction the community chooses. This is also why I believe we need a wider discussion about Kusama’s future now.

By approving referendum #498 we agreed that Kusama would become an experiment-focused peer of Polkadot, rather than remain only a canary network. But what does that mean in practice?

Before we start discussing Kusama and its future, it is useful to look at where it stands today.

It is not a secret that the activity has slowed down. Besides a few exceptions, many projects are inactive or have left.

According to DotLake, Kusama currently has 17 parachains (34 in 2025) and 41 allocated cores (from 139). But regular activity is concentrated in only a few projects. Many applications have chains with very few daily transactions. Average core time use has been around 27% and there were no new bulk purchases in the latest coretime sale. A large share of Kusama’s activity may come from automated systems rather than individual users.

Why is now the time to have this discussion?

In 2025, Kusama approved Referendum 573, supporting a lightweight and independent JAM for Kusama. This was the first clear on-chain indication of what Kusama’s technical future could look like.

Two recent papers by Emiel Sebastiaan and Arief Ernst brought new attention to this discussion. The first paper, Kusama Futures in the JAM Era, presents five possible paths for Kusama. These include keeping the current system, building a smaller independent JAM, sharing infrastructure with Polkadot, or moving towards a closer economic relationship between the two networks.

The second paper, A Proposal for a Kusama Future on JAM Prime, develops one of the suggested paths where Kusama could operate directly on Polkadot’s JAM Prime. The proposed starting point is 16 cores for five years, together with resources for migration, maintenance and Kusama’s state. The paper suggests $8.64 million as a price for this with the Kusama Vision program as a source. (the article and post itself already stirred this discussion and its worth of reading).

It’s important to remember that these papers are proposals not yet final decisions. Its important to leave feedback, contribute to the research or suggest other options. There is still space to challenge this direction or propose a different future.

Infrastructure is not a purpose

A repeated topic, but very important. Buying infrastructure will not solve Kusama’s strategic problems, but it helps with shaping its future.

The JAM discussion can help us decide where Kusama should run, how many resources it needs and who should provide its security. It solves the technical side of the problem and opens a discussion on how to use this infrastructure for our benefit.

This is also important for the Kusama Vision Programme. Due to technical issues, the Vision bounties only became fully operational only recently and have just started funding their first projects. With a possible migration to JAM ahead, this is a good moment to give the programme a clearer focus and a concrete long-term goal. The programme could help bring in projects that support the direction Kusama chooses.

My goal with this post is not to decide whether the JAM Prime proposal is good or bad. I want to invite a wider discussion about Kusama’s purpose and help find answers for some of the important questions.

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Do we want Kusama to remain a broad experimental network? A smaller network with one clear purpose, or a wider ecosystem open to many ideas?

What should Kusama become?

The most familiar option is to keep Kusama as an experimental network. It could stay a place for ideas that are too early or risky elsewhere. This fits its original identity and Referendum 498. But experimentation is a very broad word. We still need to decide what we want to experiment with and which people and projects we want to attract.

I believe Kusama’s experimental and cypherpunk nature is the most interesting direction. It could focus on privacy, digital freedom, art and cultural experiments. We already partially created the culture, but we didn’t do a good job at attracting interesting projects.

This way Kusama could also stay useful as a place for testing JAM technology in real conditions. But not as a testnet, but as a partner. New apps, ideas and economic models could be tried here first. This would keep Kusama connected to Polkadot without making it only a test network again. JAM is a new protocol. Even if Kusama continues to provide many of the same services, the technology underneath them will change. New code brings new risks. It took years to improve the current Polkadot technology, and we should not expect JAM to be perfect from the beginning.

We need to look outside the existing community and actively attract new people and projects. Kusama has the capacity and funding to offer incentives. At the same time, we need a new guidelines for the treasury, so we spend funds on things that will make sense.

**
What will be next?**

My starting suggestion is that Kusama becomes an experimental network focused on digital freedom, privacy and creative work. Cypherpunk values. Kusama could also test new JAM applications in real conditions, but this should support its wider purpose rather than become its only purpose.

The Kusama Vision Programme could be a limited two-year programme, providing a starting point for early experiments and pilots. Projects that prove useful may later apply for further support from the treasury or other funding sources through separate processes. Successful ideas could also create value across the Polkadot ecosystem.

We chose a direction, protect enough funds for Kusama’s future infrastructure, run a vision program around that direction, fund projects based on results, track results, users, KSM use.

I want to stir a discussion and see opinions about what the community thinks should happen.I do not expect one post to answer all of these questions. There is now attention around Kusama. We should use this moment to talk openly. Where you see the value of Kusama? What can it become? What would you keep, change or add? And what results should we expect from Kusama over the next two to five years?

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Luuu, good post and the right question. But something’s missing from it.

You ask if Kusama should be a broad experimental network, a smaller focused one, or a wider ecosystem. Those are all questions about Kusama by itself. What Kusama can actually do depends on what Polkadot is doing at the same time, and that doesn’t come up anywhere in this thread or the JAM Prime one.

You said Kusama could test things in real conditions, “not as a testnet, but as a partner”. Agreed. But that relationship isn’t waiting for us to define it. It’s been decided already and we weren’t part of it.

Proof of personhood is the clearest example. Polkadot built and tested that whole stack without Kusama anywhere in it, on Previewnet and Paseo. The App and Trinity are both built around identity and Kusama isn’t in either. I put the detail in the JAM Prime thread rather than repeat it here.

Not complaining about that. The point is your question has another one sitting underneath it. Does Kusama choose its own role, or has that already been chosen for us? If we skip that and go straight to “what should Kusama become”, we’ll write a strategy nobody else has any reason to go along with.

Two things come out of it.

One, there’s a role here that isn’t on your list. Testnets tell you the code works. They can’t tell you what happens when something is worth stealing, because nothing on a testnet is worth anything. Collusion, Sybil farming, coercion, recovery abuse. Those need real value and real people before they show up. Kusama has both and it’s small enough that failure isn’t fatal. Nothing else in the ecosystem is set up that way.

Two, your own measurement problem. You said a lot of Kusama’s activity may be automated rather than human, and also that the programme should fund on results and track users. Those don’t work together. We’d be measuring something we’ve just said we can’t identify.

None of this makes personhood Kusama’s purpose and I’m not arguing it should be. The point is that “what does Kusama do that Polkadot isn’t doing, and what does it do first” is a sharper question than the one you asked, and we have a real case to work from instead of guessing.

On process.

The JAM Prime thread closes 16 October and feeds a Wish for Change. This one has no date at all. That’s backwards, and not just my opinion. Position 4 of the JAM Prime paper says “securing infrastructure does not give Kusama purpose”, and that the strategy has to be “specific enough to establish resource needs, dependencies, priorities and funding” before anyone commits. That concern came up repeatedly on that thread and Emiel agreed with it in post #26.

So either this discussion gets a date before the WFC, or the WFC waits. Can this thread have a closing date before then? Otherwise the number gets set by a cost model and the programme lives on what’s left.

3

Before all of this we need to make sure Kusama stays solvent for whatever it wants to do.

Currently there are no concentrated liquidity DEXes on Kusama, you can’t get collateralized loans using KSM.

How do you pretend to plan for the future when there is no present?

People need to use CEXes in order to buy or sell KSM, how is this sustainable?

Whatever you plan to do in the future will fail given the foundation of Kusama is non existent.

Kusama needs DeFi to stay alive and this is the main reason why it is dying. Before funding artists fund a viable option so liquidity comes into Kusama and there is a thriving and healthy DeFi ecosystem. Right now kusama is a korpse that can’t stand its own weight and is asking DOT DAO to fund it, this is simply not sustainable.

4

Hi @Luuu, and congratulations on your new position, much necessary for the current KV program.

Thanks for creating this forum thread, which complements well the discussions on @emielsebastiaan’s 2 papers, to which the community has been participating and contributing to for the past month. I think a lot of progress has been done already, however, as a few of us have concluded in those discussions, we, as the community, need to define the purpose and the strategy of Kusama before committing to an infrastructure approach and budget. I believe your post agrees with it too and it matches the paper’s introduction to Section 4:

“The community should identify whom Kusama will serve, the capabilities it intends to provide, KSM’s role in them and whether it is willing to commit scarce resources to those purposes. Before final commitment, the strategy must be specific enough to establish resource needs, dependencies, priorities and funding.”

I also think this comment summarizes it well:

To achieve those goals you raise a good point:

I agree with this and I think we need to have a clear picture of what exists on Kusama today, including:

  • Parachain teams and projects still active today
  • Validators/Nominators
  • Current KV program from W3F

Some of this information has been answered in previous comments by teams and devs, and it is also queryable onchain (such as the coretime data you quoted). We can also see the validators and nominators with and without onchain identity and their stake. The question of the current KV program is a bit less transparent at the moment. There have been a few transparency reports from each of the 3 bounties at various points of the year but we still need to answer what is written on Emiel’s paper, Section 4, asking the W3F and the current program operators to:

“provide substantive input on existing commitments, funding constraints, experience with participating projects and realistic delivery options.”

Maybe @bill_w3f, @Luuu and/or any of the current curators can help here. I am unable to tag more than 10 people on a post but here is what I believe to be an updated list: GabrielJ, Northvane, oliversarmy1, IrenaSat, wabkebab, jslusser, RustSyndicate, olanod, raza, jordan.

I think we already have plenty of answers and ideas in the comments from various community members on both posts for Emiel Sebastiaan and Arief Ernst’s papers, as well as sections 4 and 5 of their 2nd paper, and I would suggest we start from there, as to avoid duplicating efforts.

I suggest we start narrowing down the questions, like the one from @Rom1.io or other key ones, by using tools such as OpenSquare which AFAIR allows you to create onchain polls on Kusama where the community can participate and we can move on efficiently so we do not further delay and can make decisions about the Future of Kusama.

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Thanks @Luuu for opening this thread. I think this is probably the right discussion to have now.

We have quite a few ideas now, but most of them are still pretty high level.

Maybe we should first agree on what we actually want Kusama to be, and go from Philosophy → Society → Tech.

Philosophy: what do we actually want Kusama to stand for?
Society: what kind of people, communities, builders and economy do we want to attract? What does that actually look like in practice?
Tech: then what infrastructure do we need to make that possible?

The KSM part probably needs to be part of that discussion too. What is KSM actually supposed to do in that future economy?

Once we have a better idea of that, it should be much easier to figure out what kind of infrastructure we actually need, and whether independent JAM, JAM Prime, another JAM-based approach, or even no JAM at all makes sense.

I think the privacy economy is probably a good example of something we could start making more concrete.

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Gm Luuu, thanks for opening this discussion.

I believe Kusama is the ideal place for an incubator. Early experimental projects need some protection for their ideas, and being fully open source from day one doesn’t always suit them at launch. The infrastructure is ready to be loaded and experimented on, and building alongside JAM is key.

We should be honest that, as a community, we’ve struggled to identify what to fund and to track projects once funded. That isn’t a criticism of anyone. Reviewing proposals and verifying milestones is skilled work, and today nobody is paid to do it. Governance runs on goodwill, and unsupported ventures fail at 60–80% rates regardless of the ecosystem.

To me, the core problem of this network is a lack of experimentation and vision. Cypherpunk ideals are a good foundation, but the real target should be disrupting incumbents that profit from their users. We need to stop following trends and start creating them. That takes experience and structure, and this is the gap we’ve been working, among other things at Two Pebbles with OpenGov 2.0: OpenGov 2.0 — Two Pebbles Ventures

In short, it gives the Vision Programme the tools it currently lacks:

  • Professional curators who review proposals and verify each milestone before the next tranche is released, with on-chain reputation that rises or falls with the results of their calls.
  • Milestone-gated funding instead of lump sums, with proposal-scaled bonds so curators have real skin in the game.
  • Axon, a signal layer that combines curator scores, quadratic funding and conviction votes into an allocation recommendation Kusama can read, without ever holding funds.
  • Rewards for active voters and delegators, so participation grows beyond the same few voices.

The model was built and tested: five FRAME pallets (curator, reputation, milestone, allocation, signal) ran on Paseo with full test coverage. I’ve since taken the testnet down for lack of interest, but the code is ready to redeploy if Kusama wants to put it to work.

My suggestion: Kusama is the right place to run this for real. A two-year Vision Programme with a clear thesis, a small curated first cohort, milestone-based tranches and a public dashboard of results would test both the projects and the governance model at the same time. If it works, Polkadot inherits a proven system. If it doesn’t, we learn cheaply, which is exactly what Kusama is for.

Happy to present the framework and lead this to successful completion.

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Would like to support this direction, as I think that Kusama serves as a great home for radical, edgy, “challenge the status quo” type of projects. Going back to the roots, Would Polkadot even be possible without Bitcoin?

Without the 2008 bank fuckery that pushed people to wanting more honest systems that don’t cheat them, which became the base for Bitcoin, we would not be here. The world needs systems that are Transparent and Verified.

I think the best approach would be to go full steam ahead, gas on the pedal. Lets capture the moment of all web3 builders.

Kusama Should move forward in rapid speed

Let’s not loose momentum, the Kusama treasury has, as of writing this 4,763,848 USD of funds in the treasury that can be utilized. The DAO can incubate tons of smaller 20k USD grants for projects wanting to build out some idea. 238 projects, with $3,848 left over for pizza. While asking these projects to give Kusama a slice of the transaction fee/ Incubated projects if controversial enough, will bring good press coverage(like priest chat idea).

The current state of Kusama is not great, but that should change to provide a long term home for

Giving Kusama its own Unique Selling Point

Kusama can onboard, nurture and bring projects that wants to utilize and extremely efficient tech stack, do cryptography stuff that is impossible or cost your kidney in gas fee’s on EVM to do.

The Kusama Vision programs provides a solid base to be utilize to onboard new teams, assist in substrate related problems, look at incoming teams from

The Vision program is just one piece in the Puzzle, we could run competitions to attract projects to build a Kusama Project on their weekend, utilize the precompiles, make a parachain that hyper charges performance compared to Base, Monad, Ethereum and other, anyone can suggest proposals to the treasury. The Kusama DAO can do things much easier without the legal hurdles that cryptography projects have to struggle with due to VC related regulatory pressure. Kusama can incubate projects that truly embodies the less trust, more truth.

Benchmarks

I made some benchmarks based on zk emails noir work: GitHub - zkemail/polkavm-noir-verifier: Generate native PolkaVM (RISC-V) smart contracts that verify Noir/UltraHonk ZK proofs on Polkadot Asset Hub · GitHub then hacked together a pallet and used a template node to get some type of PVM smart contracts vs Revm vs sepoila vs as a parachain/parathread

tablebench
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(could not paste in my markdown table… )

Moar Kusama Coretime Usage and Parachains

The Kusama DAO should via opengov, offer new teams that want to build and ship with substrate to cover their coretime fee, allowing them .

Purpose and vision,

  • Stand up for resilient execution of applications and True web3 values

  • Incubate new blood and projects that stay for the long term.

  • Utilize the substrate tech stack for the benefit of stable and fast cryptography

  • Drive radical experimentation that challenges the status quo.

  • Provide a home for Cyberpunk Applications that do not bend the knee based on regulatory pressure

  • Kusama needs to be more than a hobby

  • Collective Productive Collaboration
    You don’t have to like everyone, but as a group of Kusama supporters we can achieve much more if we collaborate, use the products being built, advocate for the substrate tech stack. Rep the bird.

“Do not give into to Evil, but march boldly towards it” - Ludwig von Mises

In the short term

  • Provide more liquidity to Kusama AH dex(pallet conversion pallet, see more detailed view about the Kusama ah liquidity here: kheosswap)

  • Signal to projects to come to Kusama

Right now what would be really needed is for the Kusama Treasury to provide more liquidity to the Kusama Assethub dex. Their is a very low amount of liquidity for KSM/DOT token. This could be a joint effort between the two DAO’s, the DOT DAO and Kusama DAO. Since all of the assets on Polkadot is accessible and can be sent to Kusama land via the trust less bridge and grandpa light clients that make sure packages are sent between the two.

  • Do NOT allocate the Kusama Vision funds to fund the JAMKB
    The vision program is the only(?) movement that is tunneling new teams and eyes on Kusama. Reallocating these funds to Jam that is not suppose to be ready until next year. Jam still has not been stable, JAMKB has still not had proper release schedule or tokenomics.

Act, rise up and do cool stuff on Kusama

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A good quote from the frens at web3 privacy: “Do more than wear a black t shirt with some text”

The worse thing you can do during the revolution is to sit by and passively do nothing.

Kusama going full independent

Paseo testnet is right now operating with a very low cost, around 60k USD per half a year. Kusama could break free from Polkadot fellowship that maintains the runtime and go full independt. What it be an idea worth exploring? Right now Kusama has access to All of polkadot’s assets but as foreign assets. so funds could move into the network.

(What would not be a good idea)Kusama Becomes a coretime service on Polkadot

Majority of the KSM tokens are locked in staking, cutting all Kusama Nominators, will leave to a large chunk of the token will be liquid and not staked anymore, causing people to move the token where they see the KSM liquidity is(Which is Centralized exchanges with very high potential of dumping). Going this route may brick the token, not good.

Kusama on Jam

We do not know yet which of the several jam implementations that Polkadot will run on, we don’t know the JAMKB, as Gavin Wood says “It needs to go out and be a very slow drip”. I don’t think a good idea. No Jam team has delivered all milestones and gotten them approved and estimated delivery is next year. Lets put Jam on ice until we figure out and get more builders under the wings of the bird(build on kusama).

Allegality:

Would like to share my favourite gav talk:

Let’s build real trust less systems. Let’s utilize the resilient network for Kusama,

We need cool projects that go viral, attract users, make the news, push the social limits, edgy

Some ideas of projects like this:

Priest Chat
The idea of using religious laws that protect client <> priest conversation(its very illegal to listen in on confessions/privileged priest <> average Joe conversations).

This we can utilize as an art project, basically using ancient legal laws to make it illegal to listen in. Can we fork the Polkadot chat? can we utilize webrtc for it? This type of project would most likely get lots of media attention. Anyone can just pick this up, the community has connections to the church of kopimism
base: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/kusama-rfp-idea-priest-chat-a-holy-anti-chat-control-idea

Support journalists and Activists! Let’s make Kusama the go place for running applications that are prone to censorship, support non profits and 501(c)3’s that are driving positive change.

https://ddosecrets.org/ After calling up my buddy who has been into human rights activism and freedom of speech space for a while, this person mentions that Journalists today need:

This is apparently what journalists are asking for.

Ask yourself right now. Can you come up with an alternative version of any of these tools that run on Kusama?

Collaborate and Organize
Let’s collaborate with open source privacy and value aligned collectives projects, such as Veilid, Tor, Nym, the Seattle people running riseup.net, Calyx Institute, EFF, etc

Bring back Applebaum!
Jacob Appelbaum, a privacy advocate and goat has been silenced for way to long! Bring Jacob back into the light.

Push the boundaries, don’t give in to the system, Roger Ver.

Don’t ask for permission, just deploy it. - “Just Bird it”

We have tech now like never before

Right now, this unit of time is very interesting, we have resilient tools, support for new teams wanting to build on Kusama in the form of KV, in history there has never been more people working on Cryptography and privacy on a global scale, than now. Looking at other ecosystem, they are light years behind on developer tooling! For example is Zcash that still don’t manage to solve their consensus nor light clients.

Can we utilize Kapa Sigma Mu?

Over 200 people are walking around with Kusama Tattoos. The network could do more cool projects together with the Kusama Society, bring the pro Why don’t we utilize the Kusama Society more? tap into it, utilize the army of dedicated Kusama fans. Over 200 people is walking around with a tattoo of the representation of the Kusama network.

Look at the world, today!

We have an surveillance like never before but we also have a booming cryptography research boom happening now, never has so many people worked on cryptography as now. Every week there is a new Zero Knowledge white-paper, but where will all these papers gets materialized to ? Cryptography tools are everywhere, for your instance messenger, at every website you visit etc etc. Kusama can be the resilient network that runs the future research, where teams can get a tech stack they can build on, and then mature over at Polkadot.

Privacy is trending

On twitter Privacy is trending, but newer project mostly end up on some EVM stack, lets break this loop. Get them under the wings of the Kusama network, doing zero knowledge apps all requires the users to pay to verify whatever data they have. Pay for this verification in gas,

Web3 foundation

Should honor their mandate of bring more decentralized technology to the world and support projects with Cypherpunk values, Vote in favor of those in opengov.

We have a recruitment problem in Kusama.

Limited people with limited amount of hours in the day, we need fresh blood to keep pushing true web3 values loudly. Can we learn from BD failures made in Polkadot land? While did Poke` fail? While did the heathrow airport pilot fail? Lets onboard, attract and nurture new edgy web3 projects.

Build Cryptography with the Bird:

ZK & Advanced Cryptography Bounty is actively operating in the Best interest of the Kusama Network.

With a very selective view, funding important research such as the new type of Truly trust-less bridging that the Cardano ecosystem is just standing by the sidelines looking in, while its being made. Over 800K USD

Collaborate with others:

ZK bounty chat:
You're invited to talk on Matrix

Kusama Privacy chat:

I think the worst thing you can do now is to do nothing, pitch your crazy Kusama project, get building, showcase and reiterate.

Hopes of a bright encrypted future with less trust more truth.

Note:

This is a personal opinion/rant

~ flipchan

8

Thank you for this @flipchan !

While kv goes through a potential period of limbo again we could push ahead with onboarding projects and helping them receive funding via opengov with scheduled payouts. Curators of the zk-bounty could commit to be treausry guardians: keep an eye on projects, verify deliverables and cancel/delay scheduled payouts if milestones are not satisfactory.

We need to do better at communicating Kusama’s USP. Both in clarity/simplicity and also in reaching the right audience. Your cost comparison is a great start!

This could just be Kusama’s golden time. Let’s not lose momentum!

Hopped into the chats to coordinate next steps.

9

Thank you, everyone, for contributing. There are useful ideas and great opinions. I will just summarize briefly.

My approach will be based on my own research and discussions with people about where they want to see Kusama go. Once you read through all current discussions, you realize that we are all in the same boat, wanting to see Kusama thrive again. And suggestions are similar.

Two main things are happening now. A decision on what Kusama’s infrastructure will look like on JAM and what we want Kusama to be, what’s the purpose. And since the infrastructure decision is coming first in a few weeks, the community will decide. Emiel and Arif are going to propose options; anyone who has other ideas should also be ready to go out of the forum to counter-propose.

With JAM’s future, which I believe is inevitable, we cannot stay behind. We also need to think ahead: what stuff can we build now that will also find itself later on JAM. And there needs to be a bit more research into how exactly projects will build on JAM. What it will look like and what the possibilities are. How we can prepare them now, to avoid funding projects to

Kusama used to differentiate itself as a Polkadot testnet. We grew apart quite a lot so being a testnet is no more an interesting option. We might be still useful in this matter in future, but it should not be the main focus. Kusama should keep its culture and distinct character. Its anarchic spirit, its wild, dark, flashy and unapologetic nature. The freedom to be provocative and a little “unhinged”. That is the part that origianly made Kusama interesting.

But we also need to turn those values into things people can use. After talking with many people, privacy tools, private payments, censorship-resistant communication, ZK applications, digital freedom and all cypherpunk values are the most likely directions. With the splash of art to it help build this philosophy. @RustSyndicate Your comment gives a good example of how Kusama could make privacy a priority.

Kusama Vision funded only 3 projects, which either received the first milestone or are still in development. Next for the KV - It will become a tool for the Kusama strategy. Incubating only projects that will bring users or direct impact. Focused on Cypherpunk, but useful to all. A base to attract projects and the main point for outreach.