From Infrastructure to Onchain Finance: Kaia’s 2025 Recap and 2026 Direction

If 2025 was the year Kaia built the foundation, 2026 will be the year we activate capital and scale real onchain finance.

Following the merge between Klaytn and Finschia, our primary focus was integrating the necessary infrastructure to make Kaia viable for institutional and retail usage. With that baseline established, our direction now shifts from laying the tracks to building a robust engine for capital markets.

We are moving beyond simple transactions to complex onchain finance, creating a venue where institutional capital meets retail agility. This recap covers what actually mattered in 2025, and how we are transitioning into a platform for capital markets and onchain finance in 2026.

Infrastructure: Where The Invisible Work Begins

Long-term value capture requires a fair and efficient protocol layer. In 2025, we implemented a transparent MEV framework to align incentives between validators, searchers, and users. 

Our roadmap now focuses on refining these protocol-level mechanisms to ensure the network captures value from economic activity. We will continue to prioritize EVM compatibility, performance scaling, and identity solutions to support the financial layer we are building, while enabling wide-scale distribution.

In addition to developments around our MEV framework, our 2026 roadmap prioritizes three major technical evolutions. 

First, we are upgrading to KaiaBFT, targeting 10,000 TPS and 1-second block times to ensure institutional-grade high availability. Second, we are transitioning to a fully permissionless network, moving from a closed group to autonomous, self-registered validation. Finally, we are integrating zkKYC and confidential transactions directly into the protocol, solving the critical privacy and compliance needs of stablecoin issuers and real-world asset markets.

Distribution: The LINE Integration

The hardest problem in Web3 is onboarding, as most chains are fighting for the same small pool of existing crypto natives. Kaia’s advantage lies in accessing Web2 user bases. In 2025, we launched Kaia Wave and our Mini Dapp experiments to validate the hypothesis that Web2 users would interact with Web3 applications if the friction was removed.

Building on this is Project Unify: a native integration designed to live inside the messengers you already use. We are building a stablecoin super-app within LINE to ensure that finding and using Web3 finance is as easy as sending a text. By embedding the Kaia Stablecoin Orchestration Layer directly into the user interface, we remove the friction associated with wallet connecting and network switching.

Moving forward, Project Unify will take us beyond experiments. We are building a unified SDK that brings real financial flows, notably payments, savings, and yield, directly into the messenger UX. Our goal is to make onchain finance invisible to the end-user, scaling activity beyond the crypto-native bubble and driving sustainable network fees by providing access to stablecoins and onboarding stablecoin issuers.

The Financial Layer: Stablecoins

A blockchain without stablecoin liquidity cannot support DeFi, payments, or Real World Assets (RWA). To move beyond theoretical infrastructure, Kaia needed to integrate the industry standard. This year, we secured native USDT issuance on Kaia and achieved integration with major exchanges like Upbit, Binance, and Bithumb. We also began establishing local rails with currency-specific stablecoins like JPYC and IDRX to serve key Asian markets.

The results are already visible: on several local exchanges, Kaia USDT has become the network of choice that the majority of users select for transfers, driven by our settlement speed and low fees.

For 2026, our strategy shifts from availability to circulation. Availability was step one; usage is step two. We are adopting a "one chain, multiple local rails" approach where global liquidity interacts seamlessly with local fiat-pegged stables. This is the mechanism that will turn idle KAIA capital into productive assets via DeFi and payments.

Tokenomics & Value Capture

Infrastructure growth must translate to value for the community. 

We are revamping our tokenomics to prioritize scarcity and sustainability. This includes initiatives to reduce inflation and mechanisms to redirect revenue from our core financial engines, such as Project Unify, SuperEarn, and AlphaSec, directly into token-related programs like buybacks and burns. 

Every transaction and every yield-bearing product is being designed to contribute to the health of the KAIA token economy.

Products: The Engines of Capital Markets

Infrastructure is only as valuable as the products built on top of it.

In 2025, we kicked off development on the core financial engines that will drive the ecosystem, including SuperEarn for stablecoin yield, AlphaSec for efficient capital execution, Hann Finance for collateralized debt position, and our FX Engine for stablecoin swapping. 

Beyond digital-native assets, we are anchoring real-world value with Galactica, a joint venture with PT. Pelayaran Korindo that pioneers tokenized ship financing in Asia, unlocking fractional investment in traditionally illiquid maritime assets. We are also bridging the credit gap with Forest Jalan, a micro-lending initiative leveraging Grab JOOB’s vetted user base to convert real-world economic activity from Indonesian SMEs into sustainable onchain yield.

These new primitives mark our shift towards a product-first ecosystem focused on onchain finance. The Foundation’s role is to provide the incentives and infrastructure that allow these products to capture value, transforming KAIA from a passive asset into working capital.

Ecosystem Partners

None of this infrastructure works in a vacuum. We are proud to be working with partners like Tether for native liquidity, OpenEden for tokenized treasuries, and regional stablecoin issuers like JPYC, IDRX, and MYRC. 

To the validators, builders, exchanges, and integrators who worked with us through the merge and into this new phase: thank you. 

Summary: How Value Compounds in 2026

Our strategy for the coming year is built on the following pillars:

1. Services: Growing core products (SuperEarn, DEX, Lending).
2. Infrastructure: Expanding local stablecoins, FX rails, and on/off-ramps.
3. Users: Expanding distribution via Project Unify integration in LINE, and other regional super-apps.
4. Technology: Ensuring the chain remains performant and scalable.
5. Capital Markets: Enabling active capital formation by integrating new DeFi primitives and establishing deep onchain liquidity.

With the setup phase complete, our focus for 2026 shifts towards activating idle capital, generating sustainable fees, and proving real-world usage.

We remain dedicated to delivering a transparent ecosystem where value flows efficiently to its participants, and look forward to realizing this vision together with our community in 2026.