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.
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.
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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?