If you’re not familiar, Kaspa is a blockchain project that’s been quietly forging a name for itself by blending elements of proof-of-work security with a directed acyclic graph (DAG)-style protocol. Instead of a single linear chain, Kaspa’s protocol—rooted in the PHANTOM and GHOSTDAG research—organizes blocks into a DAG and leverages parallel block creation to scale throughput.
Even before this hardfork, Kaspa’s mainnet was already processing blocks faster than many other traditional proof-of-work networks. But with Crescendo, Kaspa is attempting to push the speed envelope even further.
The Centerpiece: 10 Blocks per Second
The main headline for Crescendo is the jump from 1 BPS to 10 BPS. That might sound like a simple parameter tweak—just produce blocks more frequently, right? But in a proof-of-work system with DAG-based consensus, speeding up block creation has a domino effect:
- Ghostdag Parameter Changes: One of the key adjustments is the tuning of a consensus parameter known as the “Ghostdag K.” This parameter helps the network figure out how to order blocks in the DAG and who the “selected parent” is. With blocks popping out more rapidly, the protocol must account for an increased rate of parallel creation to maintain security and chain clarity.
- Performance and Bandwidth Demands: More blocks mean nodes in the network must handle additional data—and do it more quickly. That affects storage, bandwidth, and the difficulty calculation that determines how easy or hard it is to mine a new block.
- Recalibration of Time-Based Settings: Kaspa’s default “Finality Depth,” “Merge Depth Bound,” and other time-based parameters (like coinbase maturity) have traditionally been measured in terms of block counts. With 10 times as many blocks per second, these must be scaled up to preserve the same real-world durations.
For the tech-savvy crowd, there’s plenty of nuance under the hood regarding how the difficulty adjustment window is recalculated (the network basically has to “forget” the old window when it switches to 10 BPS) and how exactly the reward schedule changes to keep inflation under control.
Rust Rewrite: The Foundation for Crescendo
A less flashy but equally important part of this story is Kaspa’s “Rust Rewrite,” known among insiders as KIP-1. This rewrite shifts the core Kaspa software from Go to Rust, aiming for better performance, memory safety, and long-term maintainability.
Why does that matter for the Crescendo Hardfork?
- Performance Gains: Rust-based nodes (dubbed “Rusty Kaspa” or RK) have shown they can handle the increased workload of 10 blocks per second. Think of it like repaving a highway to handle heavier traffic.
- Stability: The Rust infrastructure has been tested in a dedicated testnet (TN11) running 10 BPS for over a year, suggesting the code is stable enough for a broader mainnet rollout.
Crescendo formally closes out the rewrite effort by making Rust the official foundation for Kaspa’s consensus engine—perfect timing for a more demanding environment.
Taming State Bloat and Enabling Smart Contracts
Kaspa might be known for its speed, but speed is only half the story in a healthy blockchain ecosystem. Crescendo also activates two major upgrades (KIPs 9 and 13) that aim to curb runaway storage demands:
- KIP-9: This is about Storage Mass, a mechanism designed to regulate how much persistent data each transaction can force onto the network. In other words, it prevents a situation where malicious or careless activity can balloon the size of the blockchain’s UTXO set.
- KIP-13: This deals with Transient Storage Mass, targeting short-term data usage. It’s basically the second piece of the puzzle to ensure the network can handle spikes in transaction data without choking.
On top of these resource-management changes, KIP-10 brings new “introspection opcodes” to Kaspa’s scripting engine, enabling so-called “covenants.” Covenants can enforce rules on how funds can be spent in the future, unlocking advanced use cases like additive addresses for microtransactions and more sophisticated conditional transactions. Think of it as giving developers more fine-grained control, bridging the gap between a barebones UTXO model and full-blown smart contract environments.
What Does This Mean for Users?
If you’re already using Kaspa, the Crescendo Hardfork could mean faster transaction confirmations. Ten blocks per second doesn’t just make the chain produce blocks more often; it can also reduce waiting times for finality—though some finality improvements come from other parameters and the specific properties of DAG-based consensus.
For miners, it’s a moment of transition. Mining difficulty and reward calculations get more granular, effectively dividing the block reward by 10 but delivering it more often. The long-term emission schedule doesn’t change in value—just in how it’s accounted for.
The Activation Strategy: Avoiding a Messy Transition
In the world of hardforks, how you flip the switch matters a lot. Kaspa’s plan is:
- Activate by DAA Score (Selected Parent): The network looks at the “selected parent” block’s DAA score to decide whether it’s time to switch to new rules—this avoids complex circular logic in which the difficulty algorithm is trying to determine its own activation.
- Reset the Difficulty Window: By resetting certain metrics at activation, the chain avoids the potential meltdown of difficulty calculations that would happen if it tried to average 1 BPS and 10 BPS blocks in the same window.
- Gradual Pruning Adjustments: Because the new chain retains blocks further back (due to a higher block rate), the “pruning point” (the oldest block the network is required to keep) won’t jump around too chaotically. It will move forward only once enough new blocks are in place under the 10 BPS regime.
Enabling Transaction Payloads and Cov-lite Experiments
Finally, Crescendo lifts restrictions on transaction payloads for non-coinbase transactions. This is crucial for second-layer experimenters—it lets them store arbitrary data on-chain, bridging the gap for more advanced features or even bridging to external smart contract layers.
Before you sound the spam alarm, Kaspa’s devs have introduced new checks—like the aforementioned transient storage mass—to ensure you can’t just flood the network with massive amounts of data. It’s a measured step toward deeper programmability without the pitfalls of unbounded bloat.