Kaia Public Chain: A New Star Rising in the South Korean Stablecoin Market?

The Kaia public chain has recently become the focus of the crypto market with its strong token growth. Since its launch in August 2024, Kaia has been continuously pushing forward in terms of technical performance and ecological development. Recent actions in stablecoins and payment scenarios have made it a hot topic among industry investors. The foundation's CEO publicly stated, "The summer of Kaia's stablecoin is coming soon," indicating that its fiat-pegged token plan is about to enter the implementation phase.

With the new government supporting the issuance of stablecoins pegged to the Korean won, the Kaia team announced plans to collaborate with several super applications to launch a Korean won stablecoin. Following the announcement, related stock prices soared, and the Kaia token also surged, with its price rising from nearly $0.10 to a peak of $0.17, indicating market optimism about the prospects of local stablecoin projects in South Korea.

Riding the Policy Wind, Kaia Stablecoin Project Launch

After the new South Korean government proposed policies to support local currency stablecoins in 2025, Kaia quickly responded and announced plans to launch a Korean won stablecoin. Following the release of this news, related concept stocks surged, and the market is filled with expectations for the Korean won stablecoin.

The Korean won stablecoin project proposed by Kaia is jointly promoted by multiple parties and is currently still in the planning stage, with no specific issuance timetable yet. With its digital wallet infrastructure and QR code payment system, a certain payment platform is also widely regarded as a potential beneficiary of the local stablecoin.

The current South Korean government is brewing the "Basic Law on Digital Assets" and actively discussing a regulatory framework that allows private institutions to issue stablecoins. The draft bill aims to permit non-bank institutions and payment service providers to issue stablecoins and relax the rules for cryptocurrency exchanges. Under this proposed framework, the approval authority for stablecoin issuers will fall under the Financial Services Commission. The bill also significantly lowers the regulatory threshold, reducing the capital requirement for issuers from the previously proposed 5 billion KRW to 500 million KRW (365,000 USD).

However, according to the South Korean Constitution, the issuance of legal currency is the prerogative of the central bank, and private institutions face legal obstacles in issuing fiat-backed tokens. The Bank of Korea has expressed concerns over these proposals, believing that indiscriminately issuing stablecoins denominated in Korean won could lead to "currency runs," thereby affecting the competitiveness of the won.

In terms of policy orientation, the head of the Digital Asset Committee of the ruling party in South Korea stated that it will support private issuance and plans to clarify the legal provisions for stablecoin legalization in the "Basic Law." The group that Kaia relies on itself has large-scale payment and financial infrastructure, which provides a convenient channel for the practical use of stablecoins in the future.

Despite the enthusiastic market feedback, the prospects of the Kaia stablecoin project still face challenges. Issues of monetary sovereignty and compliance with anti-money laundering regulations are still difficult to overcome, and the issuance and redemption mechanisms of the stablecoin itself need to be validated. In addition, several potential competitors are also targeting this market. Several major banks in South Korea have publicly announced plans to jointly issue stablecoins.

Therefore, although Kaia's stablecoin plan has generated much anticipation, whether it can obtain regulatory approval and be successfully implemented still faces many uncertainties.

Social giants join forces, with 250 million potential users

Kaia public chain is a large blockchain network mainly aimed at the Asian region, formed by the merger of two major background chains, and is officially launched in August 2024. Its goal is to reach hundreds of millions of Asian users by seamlessly integrating Web3 services with mainstream social applications.

These two major social platforms have a very high penetration rate in their respective markets, with a cumulative distribution capability of over 250 million users, making Kaia one of the "potential stocks" for promoting the popularization of cryptocurrency applications. This year, the Kaia Foundation has raised external funds from multiple investment and financing institutions to support ecological incubation and market promotion.

Before merging into Kaia, both original chains achieved significant results. One chain saw its user base grow by 1,100% in 2023, reaching 873,000; the other chain provided an NFT platform internally, accumulating over 5.6 million users and completing approximately 560,000 NFT transactions. After the merger, Kaia inherited the ecological advantages of both chains, achieving technical and user complementarity. The official vision emphasizes that Kaia will "place Web3 at the fingertips of hundreds of millions of users in Asia" and create an efficient platform to support the development of large-scale decentralized applications.

As a Layer 1 public chain compatible with Ethereum, Kaia technically inherits and optimizes the IBFT consensus framework. Its consensus algorithm is based on the optimized Istanbul BFT, enabling rapid final confirmation of blocks and supporting multiple node participation. The official documentation states that the Kaia network can handle up to 4000 transactions per second, with a block generation time of only 1 second and instant transaction finality. Unlike conventional PoW/PoS, Kaia adopts a BFT consensus aimed at enterprise and service scenarios, ensuring that once a block is produced, it is finalized, eliminating the traditional risk of block rollback.

In terms of technical features, Kaia supports functions such as account abstraction and fee delegation, significantly simplifying the user experience; at the same time, it integrates identities and payment channels from mainstream social platforms, allowing ordinary users to use on-chain services without additional registration. Kaia also maintains equivalence and compatibility with EVM chains such as Ethereum and plans to support CosmWasm smart contracts; its industry-leading cross-chain bridge integration capabilities provide developers with flexible multi-chain interoperability.

Expand from the gaming field to financial services

When Kaia was first launched, user and capital indicators were still in the preliminary stage. By mid-2025, Kaia is expected to rank around the top fifty globally in DeFi TVL, reflecting the scale of its early-stage ecosystem. In terms of on-chain activity, Kaia's official sources have disclosed that over 40 million users have visited the Mini DApp portal. The number of wallets and trading volume grew rapidly in the early stages after launch, but overall levels are still below those of mainstream public chains.

Ecologically, Kaia has merged the original application ecosystem, forming a comprehensive ecosystem covering multiple fields such as DeFi, NFT, GameFi, and Real-World Assets (RWA). According to official statistics, after the merger, there are already over 420 decentralized applications and game services that have been or are planned to be launched on the Kaia network.

In addition, with the launch of the Kaia mainnet, a builder support program called Kaia Wave has also been introduced. This program aims to provide multifaceted support for promising Dapps, enabling them to reach consumer users in both Web2 and Web3, and gain additional advantages from multiple channels. According to official documents, the Kaia Wave program will offer a total value of 10 million USD worth of KAIA tokens, specifically for user acquisition and rewards.

In the DeFi space, Kaia has already launched multiple decentralized exchanges and staking, lending projects, and the platform also supports stablecoins, cross-chain bridges, and other infrastructure; in terms of NFTs, Kaia inherits the user base of the original platform, and its GameFi ecosystem benefits from the user groups and partner resources of two major social platforms, with some game developers beginning to launch mobile games, NFT items and other content on Kaia.

Inspired by Telegram and the Ton blockchain, the Dapp Portal is one of the main levers for the development of the Kaia ecosystem in terms of Mini DApp distribution and user reach. The Dapp Portal is built on the Kaia chain and is accessible to users through the official accounts of social applications, allowing them to access games, social interactions, trading, and other Mini DApps within the chat interface without the need to download or install any new applications. In January of this year, the first batch of 32 Mini DApps was launched, enabling users to create wallets, play games, claim rewards, trade NFTs, and more with just one click, all without needing to install a separate client.

In its official strategy, Kaia is gradually expanding from the gaming sector to financial services and general applications: by early 2025, it has launched a USD stablecoin yield product on one end, with future plans including the introduction of lending, perpetual contracts, payment, and asset tokenization DeFi protocols, as well as achieving seamless exchange functionality between the Korean won and stablecoins.

In May of this year, a well-known stablecoin officially deployed its USD stablecoin on Kaia, providing stablecoin payment and cross-border remittance services to nearly 200 million users, marking further expansion of Kaia's layout in the international stablecoin ecosystem. Overall, Kaia is accelerating the construction of a platform-level ecosystem, jointly promoting the usage scenarios of "message as entry, on-chain as payment" with industry partners.