About

Karura is the sister chain of Acala. It operates as a parachain connected to Kusama, whereas Acala plans to be a Polkadot-based parachain. Karura designed its network to be the financial hub of the Kusama ecosystem. Like Acala, Kurara has modeled itself after Ethereum's Maker protocol. It will feature two core products: a liquid staking protocol that will let KSM stakers mint a derivative of their staked KSM and a lending protocol that will enable the creation of a crypto-collateralized stablecoin, called kUSD. The chain's native token, KAR, allows token holders to govern the network and its core applications.

History

In October 2020, the Acala Foundation announced it would launch Karura, a sister chain to the project's primary network Acala, on Kusama once parachain support went live. Karura would serve as an experimental version of Acala while being a liquid staking and stablecoin protocol for the Kusama ecosystem. The project began its crowdloan in May 2021 and won Kusama's second parachain slot (first auctioned slot, since Statemine received the first slot). It raised more than 500,000 KSM to secure its lease, which will last 48 weeks.

After winning its parachain auction, Karura's genesis block arrived on Jun. 23, 2021. It has since activated its on-chain governance system, handing network control from the Acala Foundation to KAR token holders. The network's decentralized exchange, Karura Swap, is also live.