MIXDoor 1
Beginner · New to crypto
Beginner. Kaspa is digital cash that does not need a bank. Miners spend energy so nobody can rewrite a payment for free. That is proof of work. This door names the parts, then tells you what they do not mean.
Start here
You do not need a course. You need a few words, one picture of a payment, and a place to try the rules without risking real money. That is this door, then the playground.
What this is
Ordinary money is an account at a company. They can freeze it, reverse it, or go down. Crypto, in the original sense, is a public ledger that anyone can check. You hold keys. You sign a payment. Miners spend electricity to propose the next records. Other computers check the work. Nobody in the middle has to approve you.
That energy is not decoration. It is the cost of lying about history. If rewriting the ledger were cheap, a thief could spend the same coins twice. Proof of work makes that expensive. Proof of stake replaced that cost with a vote of who already holds the coin. Kaspa did not take that turn. It is still proof of work.
Words you will see
Read these once. Come back if a later sentence uses them.
- Keys. Secret numbers that prove a payment is yours. If you lose them, the coins are gone. If you share a recovery phrase, you have given the coins away.
- Wallet. Software that holds keys and builds payments. It is not a bank account. An exchange account is a claim on a company, not keys you hold.
- Ledger. The public list of coins and who can spend them. Anyone can download it. Nobody asks permission to read it.
- Miner. A machine that spends electricity to propose the next records. Mining is not a salary from Kaspa. It is a race to find valid work.
- Node. A computer that stores the ledger and checks the rules. You can run one. You do not have to. Someone still has to.
- Block. A batch of payments plus proof of work. Kaspa can have more than one honest block at the same time. That bunch of blocks is a blockDAG, not a single chain.
- Fee. A small amount paid to get into a block. It is not a bank wire fee. If the network is quiet, it can be tiny. If it is busy, it rises.
A payment in four beats
- You send. Your wallet signs. The payment is now a message on the network. Sending is not settling.
- It is included. A miner puts it in a block. Inclusion is not the same as “done.”
- It is accepted. The network’s agreed history now treats that payment as the spend. The old coins cannot be spent again.
- The recipient waits as they choose. A coffee and a house sale do not need the same wait. Kaspa does not pick that policy for them.
The playground slows this down so you can press the stages. Use it after this page, not instead of reading.
Where Kaspa sits
Bitcoin is the same idea: miners, keys, no premine as a fair-launch story. Bitcoin is a chain. When two honest miners find a block at the same time, one block is thrown away. Kaspa is a blockDAG. Honest parallel blocks stay. GHOSTDAG puts them in order. About ten blocks per second on mainnet today. That is a target rate, not a promise that your coffee is irreversible in a tenth of a second.
Most later coins sold speed by changing the security story: staking, a small set of validators, or a company sequencer. Kaspa’s bet is the opposite. Keep Bitcoin’s root. Make the ledger fast enough that payments and, later, spending rules can live on it without a second chain.
What still costs you
If you lose the keys, the coins are gone. If mining concentrates, a few operators matter more than the diagram suggests. Nodes still have to hear every block. Ten blocks per second is work for the network, not free throughput. Inclusion in a block is not the same as acceptance in the agreed history.
How to start without getting hurt
- Do not paste a recovery phrase into a website, a chat, or this site. Nobody here can recover a seed.
- Learn on Testnet-10 first. tKAS is faucet money. It is not mainnet KAS.
- Watch the Graph Inspector on this page for the live picture. If it stops, treat it as paused, not as a dead network. A candle chart is not that picture.
- Price talk is not a source. If someone leads with a target, close the tab and come back here.
- When you have a question, say what you did, which network, and the error text. Ask in Help, not in a random reply.
Door 2 is next if you already know Bitcoin or Ethereum and only need Kaspa placed. If you are still new, open Using KAS, then the playground.
Kaspa intel · Parker’s model
Two miners. Parallel blocks stay.
Bitcoin throws one honest block away. Kaspa keeps both and orders them. Inclusion is not acceptance. The recipient still chooses when a payment is settled.
Miner 2 found C before hearing about B. Both blocks build on A.
Arrows reference earlier blocks.Select A, B, C, or D in the scene to see its references.
Found B at 100 ms.
Found C without knowing B.
Inspect the timing
Adjust the delay and inspect a block
An illustrative two-miner model. Discoveries stay fixed at 100 and 400 ms. The same delay applies both ways. Packet positions show elapsed delivery, not physical distance.
Model assumptions and event times
Delivery occurs before discovery at an exact tie. Real mining is random. D is a possible later block, not a timed discovery. This example calculates neither GHOSTDAG nor confirmation confidence.
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| 0 ms | Both miners know A. |
| 100 ms | Miner 1 finds B, referencing A. |
| 400 ms | Miner 2 finds C, referencing A. |
| 600 ms | Miner 2 receives B. |
| 900 ms | Miner 1 receives C. |
A payment through the network
This sequence has no clock or confirmation count. Inclusion, acceptance, and a recipient’s confidence are different things.
Optional film · Kaspa Silver
Explore from here
Learn on the models. See the live DAG. Try a spend only if you brought test coins.
Kaspa Graph Inspector
The live blockDAG. This is the picture. The rest of the door is text.
Open kgi.kaspad.netI am… these people land on this door.
Continue
The playground is the mechanics. These pages are the next lesson and the extra reading.
Try it
Same for every door.