Karura

What is Karura?

Founded by the Acala Foundation, Karura is a scalable, EVM-compatible network optimized for decentralized finance (DeFi). This platform offers a comprehensive suite of financial applications, including a trustless liquid staking token protocol (liquid KSM), an automated market maker decentralized exchange (AMM DEX), and a highly customizable app platform based on Substrate. Karura stands out with micro gas fees that can be paid in any token, providing a seamless and cost-effective experience for users.

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Recent Video Interview

Main points of the interview:

• CEO and Co-founder of Acala describes Karura, their DeFi hub for Kusama, as "wild," "vibrant," and "aggressive."
• Karura will test new, bold ideas, including gamification and relaxed collateral requirements.
• Innovations on Karura aim to leverage Kusama’s fast-paced, adventurous community.

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What Does Karura Offer?

Karura's core Liquid Staking product allows users to lock up KSM tokens in exchange for L-KSM (Liquid KSM) as collateral and interest, similar to Acala's staking mechanism for DOT and LDOT. L-KSM is a fungible token that can be traded, used in payments, and applied in various DeFi applications. Additionally, Karura introduces the aUSD stablecoin, collateralized by a multi-collateral debt position (CDP), offering users the ability to borrow or lend using tokens like DOT, ACA, PolkaBTC, and KSM. Karura plans to expand its stablecoin offerings with the introduction of kUSD on its network.

Why build on Kusama?

Karura strategically leverages Kusama, Polkadot's experimental and fast-paced sibling. Kusama serves as a multi-chain network designed for radical innovation, boasting faster governance parameters and higher risk tolerance compared to Polkadot. By choosing Kusama, Karura gains a platform to explore groundbreaking financial innovations, utilizing plug-and-play security, high-capacity processing speeds, micro-gas fees, and interoperability between multiple networks, ultimately bridging to Polkadot. Karura aims to bring decentralized financial products and stable assets to Kusama's diverse ecosystem of networks.

Karura's Unique Features

Karura introduces the concept of aSEED, evolving from the Karura Dollar, offering options for aUSD holders to exit existing holdings/vaults or participate in Acala's future growth. The platform features a trustless, cross-chain exchange powered by an automated liquidity provisioning protocol, allowing users to become liquidity providers and earn through exchange fees and stability fee profit sharing from the aseed protocol. The groundbreaking micro gas fees, settled for a fraction of the gas required on other networks, are made possible by Kusama's weight-based fee model.

KAR Token - Powering Karura

KAR serves as the utility token powering Karura's DeFi hub on Kusama. Users can stake KAR to participate, and ecosystem token contributions and KAR are farmable via staked KAR. The token plays a crucial role in incentive distribution, allowing users to vote for token distribution for liquidity pools, dApps, and initiatives supporting liquidity growth.

KAR also empowers governance, enabling the community to vote, elect council members, and contribute to Karura's development. Moreover, KAR plays a pivotal role in powering micro gas fees and smart contract execution, contributing to the security of the Karura network.

Securing Karura and Interoperability with Acala

A portion of staked KAR acts as a mitigation tool in case of a shortfall event within Karura's native protocols, ensuring the security of the network. Karura operates in parallel with Acala, the DeFi Hub of Polkadot, serving users in the Polkadot and Kusama communities. Once Kusama is bridged to Polkadot, Karura and Acala will achieve full interoperability, enhancing the overall connectivity and utility of both networks.

Karura Team Background and Backers

Karura, founded by the team behind the Acala Network, consists of prominent individuals in the blockchain and technology space. Ruitao Su, the CEO of Laminar Protocol, is an award-winning software engineer and entrepreneur, having previously served as the CTO of Centrality. Bette Chen, the COO at Laminar, brings a wealth of experience in product management and entrepreneurship, holding academic degrees in software engineering and business.

With a decade of expertise in managing products in software and high-tech fields, she is a co-founder of Acala. Bryan Chen, another Acala co-founder and CTO of Laminar, is a key contributor to the Substrate codebase and holds the title of Polkadot Ambassador, showcasing his significant role in the broader blockchain community.

Karura enjoys a large number of backers, such as KR1, Digital Currency Group, CMS, Zee Prime Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Divergence Ventures, Hypersphere, Hashkey Capital, Republic, Dentons, Spartan, CoinFund...

Project Development

In a strategic move, Karura has integrated Liquid Staked Kusama (LKSM) as new collateral for Kintsugi Vaults, enhancing the security of the trustless Bitcoin bridge. Karura, Acala's experimental network on Kusama, offers various applications for the Kusama ecosystem, including the AMM-style DEX, Karura Swap, over-collateralized stablecoin aUSD, and KSM Liquid Staking (LKSM).

LKSM, an unlocked, yield-bearing staking token, allows users to maintain liquidity while earning Kusama staking rewards. Now, Liquid KSM can be utilized as collateral for Kintsugi Vaults, providing users with a seamless process to bridge their Kusama to LKSM using the Karura DApp. The simple procedure involves navigating to Karura's bridge page, selecting Karura as the origin chain, Kintsugi as the destination chain, and sending the assets to the designated account on Kintsugi.

Karura Price Analysis

As of July 3 2025 Karura has a marketcap of $2.9M. This is {{percentagefromath}} from its all time high of $13.20. In terms of its tokenomics, there's a total supply of 160M with 73% currently outstanding. Keep in mind Karura has a fully diluted value of $4M which many investors might interpret as overvalued.

Of course, don’t trust price predictions alone, always check the Coinrotator token screener to follow the trending market.