Kaspa’s ecosystem continues to expand with the release of Rusty Kaspa v1.1.0, while developers advance covenant tooling ahead of the upcoming hard fork. At the same time, new Layer-2 infrastructure, stablecoins, oracle systems, and experimental applications—from messaging platforms to AI assistants—emerge.
Kaspa development, across core and third-party ecosystem applications, is in full force - at the likes of which we've never seen before. DAGKNIGHT developmentment is finally in testing, covenant and zk R&D is expanding, and a wave of new apps are finally coming to fruition as we all march towards Kaspa’s Real-Time Decentralization vision.
This week, we gain foresight and a vision of what real money and Bitcoin was meant to be: real-time, decentralized, unforgeable costliness, i.e., “Real-Time Decentralization." Moreover, we cover how Kaspa is targeting two aggressive 2026 hard forks. Lastly, the Covenants++ timeline is targerted in May to finalize covenant-based state machines, zk verification, and canonical rollup bridging.
In this edition, we cover how Kaspa is accelerating toward its 2026 covenant-centric hardfork as Silverscript (its first high-level L1 smart contract language) launches on Testnet-12 This is huge! Moreover, KIP-20 is announced enabling scalable stateful covenants and vProgs node reliability advances. Finally, THE Kaspa ecosystem momentum is building rapidly as we past 600M transactions with expanding DeFi, messaging, gaming, and hackathon activity.
Kaspa is advancing a May covenant-focused hard fork introducing native assets and new programmability features—merged on-chain zero-knowledge verification and upgraded testnet capabilities. Moreover, the ecosystem is growing massively!
It’s only up from here. Let’s take a look at new insights into vProgs programmability, covenants, fee-market design, and DagKnight’s dynamic-DAG testing, alongside expanded execution-layer and cross-chain infrastructure. Moreover, we saw new on-chain apps, analytics tools, and community initiatives — from messaging and AI-agent payments to retro games and global events. Are you ready for the up only?
Kaspa’s ecosystem saw major momentum this week as vProgs opened to the public with a clear execution roadmap toward covenants++ and zk-anchored L1 scalability.
Check out recent ZK Knowledge updates and Covenant ++ resources. At the same time, real apps in gaming, education, markets, and commerce are launching, alongside steadily growing developer participation.
The Kaspa ecosystem is advancing! Spanning core protocol direction (Covenant++ toward zk execution and vProgs), major performance optimizations, new oracle research grounded in no-arbitrage price discovery, and early institutional settlement infrastructure via ISO 20022 bridging.
Kaspa’s 2026 introduced Testnet 12, which introduced KIP-17 covenants to expand base-layer programmability without sacrificing PoW decentralization, while core contributors outlined a long-term ZK vision centered on Cairo’s provable safety. Alongside renewed debate with Ethereum over the blockchain trilemma, growing external coverage, and Igra Labs’ mainnet preparations, these signals point to rising visibility and ecosystem maturity heading into 2026.
Thu Jan 01 2026
Jennifer GhelardiniThe Kaspian 2025 was defined by the Crescendo hard fork, which increased throughput to 10 blocks per second, and the release of the vProgs white paper to ensure shared liquidity across Kaspa L2s. With the base layer stabilized, the ecosystem shifted toward Layer 2s, applications, KRC20 tokens, NFTs, and expanded developer infrastructure.
Kaspa’s recent updates show real momentum, with an early DAGKnight prototype already running core consensus logic. Alongside this, we have a clearer direction on vProgs and an upcoming covenant hard fork. Moreover, early DeFi, oracle, and media applications are on their way!
