Blockchain interoperability protocol, Polkadot, launched its experimental “canary network” dubbed Kusama, this morning, Aug. 23. In a blog post, the team announced the first deployment in the wild of its protocol, combining “bleeding-edge technical improvements in governance, consensus and scalability.”
In order to get off the ground, Kusama was begun as a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) network. All validator nodes are currently being run exclusively by the Web3 foundation. During this initial period much of the functionality is disabled, most notably balance transfers and governance. Functionality will be limited to staking, sessions and claims modules.