Kilt

6 min readSep 1, 2021

Last updated: September 3rd, 2021 10:55 PM CDT

The Technology

Kilt is undoubtedly the most popular parachain project in Kusama’s second round of auctions and is seemingly poised to win the 7th parachain slot to become the 6th auction winner in the ecosystem. Kilt is a stand-alone parachain that has no canary network — their plan is to launch onto Kusama first to iron out the technology before moving over to a Polkadot parachain slot.

In a nutshell, Kilt is a credential curating network where users control their credentials and services verify these credentials in a trustless and decentralized manner. Think of it as an ID powered by blockchain. Users submit claims to the network to have their documents scrutinized by a sub-ecosystem called a token-curated attester (TCA). If the TCA approves the claim the user is given a credential which they can use with any service that utilizes Kilt. The TCA is constructed in a way to ensure that credentials are not given out without due consideration. Prospective curators for a particular TCA buy into the TCA by bonding/exchanging their KILT for the TCA’s own subtoken, so there is an economic incentive for the curator to maintain the TCA’s integrity. Curators select quality experts for the TCA who judge all claims submitted to their TCA. The idea is that curators would select the best experts to remain competitive against other TCAs. If a TCA is better than others, more Kilt users will pay for its services bringing in more money for the curators and their experts. This economic incentive is the mechanism that secures the integrity of the credentials generated by the Kilt network.

Anyone can configure a TCA by bonding KILT; when a TCA is first created its founder has complete ownership of all of its subtokens and thus has total control of its governance. Once a TCA is established other curators can buy into it with KILT and become token holders for that particular TCA. These subtokens are used to vote on parameter changes for the TCA and to hire experts who apply to it. As soon as a TCA has a listed expert, it can begin accepting claims and issuing credentials.

Once the Kilt network is firmly established and consists of a diverse selection of TCAs, services will be able to utilize the technology. Users who have attested credentials choose which services get to see those credentials giving the user complete control of their privacy. When a credential is submitted to a service, the service checks the Kilt blockchain for the checksum of the credential. A checksum is an encrypted hash which is written on the Kilt blockchain by the TCA that attested the user’s claim and issued the credential. Since the checksum is an encrypted hash, it contains no private information about its associated credential — it only serves as proof that the credential is attested. Since the checksum is permanent and transparent, attestation of a credential only needs to occur once instead of everytime it needs to be verified by a service. This ensures scalability limited only by the number of transactions that the Kusama relay chain is limited by, which is a lot (something like 15,000 per second).

Kilt could be used for voting in a democratic election. A government could set up a number of TCAs and ask its citizens to obtain a voter credential from one or more of these TCAs. Voters could vote from home by providing their voter credential, and vote, to an online government-created voting service. The government would only need to verify the existence of the credential’s checksum and ensure that the voter has not voted before in the same election. 150 million votes cast in this manner could be processed by the network in under 3 hours and counted in minutes. Of course this example would need to be engineered carefully but I don’t see why it would not be possible with Kilt.

The KILT Token

Kilt plans on preminting a total supply of 150 million KILT but will only make 34 million KILT available initially. The remaining 116 million KILT will be released over 6 or 60 months depending on where it is allocated. The KILT token can be used to pay for attestation of a claim, verifying a credential’s checksum, staking on validators that secure the network, establishing your own TCA, hiring experts for your TCA, and voting in Kilt governance.

Kilt plans on offering 3% of its total token supply to crowdloan participants, a lower proportion compared to other projects. However, its original strategy was to completely self fund its auction bid. While the reward might not be as savory as other project rewards the token has more utility than others. You can earn passive income by staking your KILT or you can earn active income by configuring your own TCA or by becoming an expert claim checker. The KILT token opens the door to income opportunities that other projects simply do not offer.

KILT inflation will diminish over time and the total token supply will reach an asymptote of 290,560,000 KILT making it a fundamentally deflationary token.

The Crowdloan Reward

3% of initial TGE of 150,000,000 KILT (i.e. 4,500,000 KILT)
25:1 KILT to KSM ratio
50% unlocked on launch, 50% vested linearly over 6 months

Kilt has ensured that every KSM contributed to their crowdloan will receive 25 KILT upon token launch. Half of these KILT tokens will be unlocked right away whereas the other half will be vested linearly over 6 months allowing for token holders to begin engaging and developing the ecosystem.

Let’s explore some possible price outcomes. Again, like my previous articles, these figures are purely speculative.

Please note that with LKSM staking on Karura’s platform, there is a workaround to contribute to crowdloans while still earning stake rewards which means that the last column is moot for those who use the tools available on Karura.

Overall Evaluation

Risk: Low

Reward: Low

Novelty: Medium

Utility: High

Kilt is already firmly established in the Kusama community and it is a well known name to many. The team has many partnerships and is ready to begin providing credential solutions to the world upon launch which makes it a low risk project. But with low risk comes a low reward — the PLO is a relatively low proportion of the total token supply. Fortunately there’s nothing quite like Kilt on the Kusama relay chain — it’s not just another defi technology. The credential generating ecosystem offers exciting possibilities and also opportunities to earn income. The KILT token has a robust utility beyond staking and governance making it both novel and useful. It will be a proud addition to Kusama’s community of parachain slot auction winners.

Special Medium Bonus!!!

***this bonus has been claimed***

If you follow along I’d like to reward you with an opportunity to grab 0.025 KSM and an exclusive NFT! The private key to the wallet that contains these things is the following:

0xb6cd53402d0f3d4ee0a3fb022f2a6e8ff4d6773af67f5af65590e453629eb939

Here’s a link to the NFT on Singular. Good luck!