What is Kava (KAVA)?

Kava is a Layer-1 blockchain that aims to combine the speed and scalability of the Cosmos SDK with the developer support of Ethereum. Kava tries to empower developers to build for next-gen blockchain technologies through its Kava Rise program. Specifically, Kava seeks to enable:

• Seamless Interoperability: Kava provides operation between Cosmos and Ethereum EVM, which can enable developers to build in whichever environment they want without sacrificing access to users and assets.

• Protocol Growth: The on-chain incentive program called Kava Rise aims to ensure that the best builders in the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems are properly rewarded for driving growth on Kava.

• Optimized Scalability: The Kava Network's architecture enables the free flow of users, assets, and projects between Kava and the industry's most relevant ecosystems at scale, all powered by the lightning-fast Tendermint Core consensus engine.

The KAVA token is essential to the security, governance, and mechanical functions of the platform. There are 3 main use cases for the KAVA token:

1. Security: The top 100 nodes validate blocks by a weighted bonded stake in KAVA tokens. Economic incentives for validators come in the form of earning KAVA as block rewards and as a portion of the network's transaction fees. Validators risk losing KAVA via strict slashing conditions such as failing to ensure high uptime and double signing transactions.

2. Governance: KAVA is used for proposals and voting on critical parameters of the Kava Network. This includes but is not limited to the types of supported assets and Dapps, their debt limits, and acceptable assets to use as debt collateral, collateral ratio, fees, and the savings rate for various financial instruments introduced to the network. The KAVA token is also used to vote in proposals that would affect the Kava Rise program and treasury allocation, such as programmatically rewarding projects built on the ecosystem through Kava Rise,  rewarding infrastructure initiatives, providing safe coverage for users of qualifying protocols, and more.

3. Incentives: A portion of KAVA emissions is distributed as incentives for scaling the network. These incentives go directly to top projects on each chain to drive growth, encourage competition, and improve the health of the Kava ecosystem.

The KavaDAO

The Kava DAO is a fully decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that governs the Kava Network. Made up of the Kava stakers and validators that help to secure and run the network, the DAO operates on a liquid democracy model and determines how the network functions, what changes should be made to it, and most importantly - how the unique on-chain developer incentives are distributed between the two chains.As a truly decentralized organization, the Kava DAO has no headquarters, no directive, and no leadership. Contributors to the security and stability of the Kava Network are also tasked with providing direction. The DAO self-governs maintains its standards in line with the expectations of the Kava community. This ensures that the Kava Network continues to aim to serve users' interests and the people who build on it.