Frequently asked questions

About Ksana

What is Ksana?

Ksana runs WebAssembly contracts on its own proof-of-work chain, the fast lane, and uses Bitcoin to store that chain’s data and to decide when its blocks are final. Operations are fast-confirmed in about 5 seconds, every block’s data is written to Bitcoin, and anyone can rebuild the whole state from a Bitcoin node alone. See How it works.

Is Ksana an L2?

Not in the usual sense, and it is not a sidechain or a rollup either. Unlike a sidechain, it has no peg: your bitcoin never moves to Ksana, and Ksana’s blocks become final only through data on Bitcoin. Unlike a rollup, no operator or sequencer orders operations: producers compete by proof of work, and Bitcoin stores and orders the data without executing it, while every Ksana node and indexer applies the rules itself. See How it works.

Is there a bridge for BTC?

No. Ksana holds no one’s bitcoin: BTC stays on Bitcoin, and a BTC transfer is an ordinary Bitcoin transaction. Contracts can read Bitcoin headers and transactions instead, so a contract can act on a payment made on Bitcoin, as the exchange contract does for top-ups. See Bitcoin in contracts.

Is mainnet live?

No. Mainnet has not launched, and the public signet is the network to use. Most mainnet parameters are fixed and a few wait on measurements, and before a launch the signet runs for at least four weeks without a consensus change. The work that remains includes the mainnet genesis config, runs of paths B and C with real wallets on the signet, those measurements, and an independent security audit. See Public signet.

Will the signet be reset?

It can be. A consensus change before mainnet restarts the signet from a new genesis config, and every balance starts over; its coins have no value in any case. See Public signet.

Using Ksana

Which wallets work?

Unisat and Xverse, switched to Bitcoin Signet, with a Taproot address (in Xverse, the Ordinals address). Your account is that address, so other address types cannot hold KSA. On the command line, ksana-cli keeps its own key files, and the TypeScript SDK signs with a key or through a wallet. See Signet wallet.

Do I need KSA?

No. On path C you submit an operation in your own Bitcoin transaction and pay only its Bitcoin fee, and every producer must include it once your transaction has its confirmations (2 on the signet). KSA lets you use path B, which confirms in seconds; you can buy KSA with BTC in a top-up, and on the signet the faucet gives you some for free. See Operations and fees.

How do I get test coins?

Test KSA comes from the faucet, in the web wallet or at https://signet.ksana.network/faucet: 100 KSA per account once a day. Signet BTC comes free from any Bitcoin signet faucet, and you need a little of it for path C, top-ups and settling blocks you produce. See Public signet.

What does an operation cost?

On path B you set a fee in KSA: a producer includes the operation when the fee reaches its packing floor (1 base unit by default), producers fill blocks by fee rate, and ksana-cli estimate-fee (ksana_estimateFee) suggests an amount. On path C you pay your transaction’s Bitcoin fee: a plain transfer is about 330 virtual bytes, about 660 sats at 2 sat/vB, and a top-up about 381 virtual bytes. See Operations and fees.

Who pays the Bitcoin fees?

For path B, producers do. A settlement is a commit and reveal pair of about 320 to 380 virtual bytes plus a 240-sat anchor output, about 1,000 sats at 2 sat/vB, and producers are paid in KSA: path B fees and block rewards, which unlock once the data is on Bitcoin, with a share for the block’s carrier, usually the producer whose settlement lands the data. For path C and top-ups, you pay the fee of your own transaction. See KSA and rewards.

When is my operation final?

On path B it is fast-confirmed in about 5 seconds, and on Bitcoin once the Bitcoin block that confirms its settlement is mined. It is final when that data has 6 Bitcoin confirmations: about an hour on signet and mainnet, whose Bitcoin blocks come about every 10 minutes. A path C operation first waits for its own transaction’s confirmations (2 on signet, 5 on mainnet) before a block includes it. See Confirmations.

Do BTC and KSA share addresses?

Yes. Your Ksana account is your Taproot address, so the same key holds your bitcoin on Bitcoin and your KSA on Ksana, each on its own chain. KSA sent to your address arrives in your Ksana account, and BTC sent to it arrives on Bitcoin. See Accounts.

Blocks and mining

Why are idle blocks minutes apart?

Because of two-speed difficulty: a block with no entries needs 12 times the usual work, and each further empty block in a row doubles that, up to 120 times. While nothing happens, blocks come about 1, 2, 4, 8 and then 10 minutes apart, which keeps the number of headers written to Bitcoin low, and the reward per unit of time stays the same. The first operation that arrives brings blocks back to about 5 seconds apart. See Mining.

Why Argon2id and not SHA-256?

Merged mining with Bitcoin was ruled out, because its proof of work would have to land on Bitcoin with every header. On a chain of its own, SHA-256 would let rented Bitcoin mining hardware overwhelm the fast lane and would shut ordinary computers out. Argon2id with 2 MiB of memory lets CPUs mine and browsers verify; GPUs keep an advantage, estimated at 10 to 30 times but not yet measured, far smaller than that of SHA-256 ASICs. See Mining.

Can I mine on my computer?

Yes. A node mines on one CPU thread when you give it --producer and your account, and the blocks it finds pay their rewards to that account once their data is on Bitcoin. To settle your own blocks you also need a funding key holding a little signet BTC; without one, other producers carry your blocks’ data and take the carrier’s share. See Mining.

Can I run a node myself?

Yes. A node needs its own bitcoind on the same Bitcoin network, with -txindex; on signet its first sync takes a few hours and about 30 GB of disk. The project develops on Ubuntu 22.04, and in its latest 10-hour devnet soak tests each node ended at about 130 to 150 MiB of memory. Open TCP port 9000 if you want other nodes to connect to yours. See Run a node.

Safety

Can producers censor me?

A producer can leave your path B operation out of its blocks, but any other producer can include it. Path C cannot be left out: once your Bitcoin transaction has its confirmations, every block must include it, and a block that does not is invalid. Bitcoin miners still decide when your transaction confirms, as for any Bitcoin transaction. See Security.

Can a payment be reversed?

Before it is final, yes: an attacker with a share of the fast lane’s hashrate can reverse a fast-confirmed payment, with a chance that falls with every minute you wait and is higher while the chain is idle. Rely on a fast confirmation only for small amounts, wait about 5 minutes on a busy chain for moderate ones, and wait until final for large amounts or on an idle chain. Undoing a final payment takes a reorganization of Bitcoin itself, which grows harder with every Bitcoin block after it. See Security.

What if Bitcoin reorganizes?

A Bitcoin reorg of at most ANCHOR_DEPTH blocks (1 on signet, 2 on mainnet) leaves every Ksana block in place. A deeper one takes the Ksana blocks anchored on the orphaned Bitcoin blocks off the main chain, and their operations are included again on the new branch. A final block can be undone only by a Bitcoin reorg, and each Bitcoin block mined after it became final makes that harder. See Security.

What if a block never settles?

Other nodes land it for the producer: any node can broadcast the settlement the block carries, rebuild it with its own funding if it is stuck, or republish the block’s data, and later producers carry the data of blocks without a settlement. Until it lands, the rewards and fees of that block and of every block after it stay locked, and after 6 Bitcoin blocks new blocks may hold only path C operations. A block whose data could not fit in a payload is invalid in the first place. See Security.

What if every node vanished?

The chain’s data stays on Bitcoin. An indexer rebuilds the whole state from a Bitcoin node alone, a new node with no peers follows the finalized chain by rebuilding its blocks from Bitcoin data, and producers can mine on from there. Only blocks whose data never reached Bitcoin would be lost, and none of them was final. See Run an indexer.

Has Ksana been audited?

Two internal security audits reviewed the code in October 2026, and their consensus fixes are now rules; the second report is in the repository. They do not replace the independent audit that is listed before mainnet. Simulations, fuzzing and long soak tests run alongside them. See Security.

KSA

Is there a premine or sale?

Not in the protocol. Mainnet has no genesis allocation (a mainnet genesis config with one cannot start), and KSA comes into existence only as block rewards. The signet’s genesis allocation of 110,000,000 test KSA funds its faucet and its operator, and is worth nothing. See KSA and rewards.