Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Majella add networks comparison #951

Merged
merged 15 commits into from
Sep 24, 2020
Binary file added docs/assets/Cousins_2.png
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.
87 changes: 87 additions & 0 deletions docs/learn-kusama-vs-polkadot.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
---
id: learn-kusama-vs-polkadot
title: What is the difference between Polkadot and Kusama?
sidebar_label: Comparing Polkadot and Kusama
---

Although they share many parts of their code, Polkadot and Kusama are independent, standalone
networks with different priorities.

Kusama is wild and fast; great for bold experimentation and early-stage deployment. Polkadot is more
conservative, prioritizing stability and dependability.

## What the two networks have in common

Kusama was released as an early version of the same code to be used in Polkadot, which means they
share the same underlying architecture: a multichain, heterogeneously-sharded design based on
Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS). Both networks also share key innovations like on-chain governance,
hot-swappable runtimes for forkless, on-chain upgrades, and Cross-Chain Message Passing (XCMP) for
interoperability. Governance on both Polkadot and Kusama is designed to be decentralized and
permissionless, giving a say in how the network is run to everyone who owns the native token (DOT
for Polkadot, KSM for Kusama). Therefore, **over time the networks will evolve independently,
converging or diverging according to the decisions of their respective communities.**

## Key differences

There are a few important distinctions to be made.

![polkadot_vs_kusama](assets/Cousins_2.png)

### Speed

The first key technical difference between Polkadot and Kusama is that Kusama has modified
governance parameters that allow for faster upgrades. Kusama is up to four times faster than
Polkadot, with seven days for token holders to vote on referendums followed by an enactment period
of eight days, after which the referendum will be enacted on the chain. This means stakeholders need
to stay active and vigilant if they want to keep up with all the proposals, referenda , and
upgrades, and validators on Kusama often need to update at short notice. On Polkadot, votes last 28
days followed by an enactment period of 28 days. This does not mean that the Kusama blockchain
itself is faster, in the sense of faster block times or transaction throughput (these are the same
on both networks), but that there's a shorter amount of time between governance events such as
proposing new referenda, voting, and enacting approved upgrades. This allows Kusama to adapt and
evolve faster than Polkadot.

### Lean setups

Teams wishing to run a parachain need to bond tokens as security. The bonding requirement on Kusama
is likely to be lower than on Polkadot. Kusama validators can also benefit from the
[1000 Validators Program](https://polkadot.network/join-kusamas-thousand-validators-programme/),
which helps them kickstart their Kusama nodes with nominations from Web3 Foundation and Parity
Technologies. For those who want to validate on Kusama _and_ Polkadot, the same setup and
infrastructure can be used for both networks.

### Use cases

Polkadot is and always will be the primary network for the deployment of enterprise-level
applications and those that entail high-value transactions requiring bank-level security and
stability. The initial use case for Kusama is as a pre-production environment, a “canary network”.
Building on Kusama first allows teams to test things out in a live, fully decentralized and
community-controlled network with real-world conditions and lower stakes in the event of problems or
bugs than on Polkadot. Many projects will maintain parachains on both networks, experimenting and
testing new technologies and features on Kusama before deploying them to Polkadot. Some teams will
decide just to stay on Kusama, which is likely to be a place where we see some exciting
experimentation with new technologies going forward. Projects that require high-throughput but don’t
necessarily require bank-like security, such as some gaming, social networking, and content
distribution applications, are particularly good candidates for this use case. Kusama may also prove
to be the perfect environment for ambitious experiments with new ideas and new innovations in areas
like governance, incentives, monetary policy, and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations).
Future upgrades to the Polkadot runtime will also likely be deployed to Kusama before Polkadot
mainnet. This way, not only will we be able to see how these new technologies and features will
perform under real-world conditions before bringing them to Polkadot, but teams who have deployed to
both networks will also get an advance look at how their own technology will perform under those
upgrades.

## Going forward

Ultimately, Kusama and Polkadot will live on as independent, standalone networks with their own
communities, their own governance, and their own complementary use cases, though they will continue
to maintain a close relationship, with many teams likely deploying applications to both networks. In
the future, we’re also likely to see Kusama bridged to Polkadot for cross-network interoperability.
Web3 Foundation remains committed to both networks going forward, providing crucial support and
guidance to teams building for the ecosystem.

## Explore more

- [About Kusama](https://kusama.network)
- [The Kusama Wiki](https://guide.kusama.network)
- [Kusama on Polkadot-JS Apps](https://kusama.dotapps.io)
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions website/sidebars.json
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -68,6 +68,7 @@
"type": "subcategory",
"label": "Polkadot Comparisons",
"ids": [
"learn-kusama-vs-polkadot",
"learn-comparisons-ethereum-2",
"learn-comparisons-cosmos",
"learn-comparisons-dfinity",
Expand Down