Kaspa has never had a Bitcoin-style halving day. Its reward history is a staircase with very small steps: a flat start of 500 KAS per second for roughly six months, then a monthly reduction by a factor of (1/2)^(1/12) that has been running ever since, with the reward halving every twelve months. In May 2025 the Crescendo upgrade raised the block rate from one to ten blocks per second, and the reward per block was divided by ten so that the amount minted per second stayed on schedule.
This guide walks through that history with the figures from the node's own reward table, and explains how to read old and new numbers side by side without mixing them up. The live position on the staircase is on our Kaspa halving countdown.
Launch and the pre-deflationary phase
Kaspa's mainnet genesis block dates from 7 November 2021. There was no premine and no pre-sale; coins came into existence through mining from the start.
For the first part of its life the network paid a flat 500 KAS per block at one block per second — 500 KAS per second. This phase lasted until DAA score 15,519,600, which the node's parameters explain as half a year of one-second blocks (15,778,800 seconds) minus three days (259,200 seconds), because the network was down for about three days shortly after launch and those days produced no DAA score.
At one step per second, 15,519,600 DAA steps is about 179.6 days of running time. Add the three days of downtime and the deflationary phase began in early May 2022.
The chromatic phase begins (2022)
From DAA score 15,519,600 the reward follows a table of 426 monthly values. Month 0 pays 440 KAS per second; every following month pays (1/2)^(1/12) of the month before. At one block per second, per second and per block were the same thing, so month 0 paid 440 KAS per block.
The first year looked like this (per block at one block per second, rounded to two decimals):
| Month | Reward |
|---|---|
| 0 | 440.00 KAS |
| 1 | 415.30 KAS |
| 2 | 392.00 KAS |
| 3 | 369.99 KAS |
| 6 | 311.13 KAS |
| 12 | 220.00 KAS |
The step from 500 to 440 KAS at the start of the phase was the only step that was not exactly the chromatic factor.
The yearly halvings at one block per second
Because twelve monthly factors multiply to exactly one half, every twelfth month pays half of the month twelve months before:
- Month 12 (about May 2023): 220 KAS per second.
- Month 24 (about May 2024): 110 KAS per second.
- Month 35 (spring 2025, the last month before Crescendo): 58.27047018 KAS per second.
These dates are approximate: during this period the DAA score advanced about once per second, and the month boundaries fell every 30.4375 days of DAA time.
Crescendo: ten blocks per second (May 2025)
The Crescendo hard fork activated at DAA score 110,165,000, which the node's parameters place at roughly 5 May 2025, 15:00 UTC. From then on, the network targets ten blocks per second.
Two things changed for the reward, and one did not:
- The reward per block was divided by ten (and rounded up to the next sompi). A block in month 35 after Crescendo paid 5.82704702 KAS instead of 58.27047018.
- The month clock changed speed. Before Crescendo one DAA step counted as one second; afterwards ten DAA steps count as one second. That keeps the months 2,629,800 seconds long in real time.
- The amount minted per second did not change. Ten blocks of 5.827 KAS is the same 58.27 KAS per second as one block of 58.27. The emission curve continued exactly as planned.
This is the source of a common confusion: older articles say "the Kaspa block reward is 50-something KAS", newer ones say "5-something". Both were right at the time. Compare per-second figures, or convert one into the other by the blocks-per-second rate, before drawing conclusions.
Month 36 began a few hours after Crescendo, at DAA score 110,439,000, paying 5.5 KAS per block — 55 KAS per second.
Since Crescendo
At ten blocks per second the steps continued monthly. Selected months, per block (exact to the sompi), with estimated start dates assuming ten DAA steps per second since Crescendo:
| Month | Reward per block | Estimated start |
|---|---|---|
| 36 | 5.50000000 KAS | 5 May 2025 |
| 37 | 5.19130872 KAS | early June 2025 |
| 48 | 2.75000000 KAS | early May 2026 |
| 52 | 2.18267645 KAS | early September 2026 |
| 53 | 2.06017223 KAS | early October 2026 |
| 54 | 1.94454365 KAS | about 4 November 2026 |
| 55 | 1.83540480 KAS | about 5 December 2026 |
The halving pattern holds after Crescendo too: month 48 pays exactly half of month 36 (2.75 against 5.5 KAS per block).
Why a monthly staircase instead of one big cut
The chromatic design is a deliberate choice, and the history shows what it buys. A Bitcoin-style halving removes half of all new coins overnight. Miners whose costs were sized for the old reward suddenly earn half as much for the same work, and the network's security budget drops in one step. Kaspa's schedule spreads the same reduction over twelve months, so the change on any single day is about 5.6%. Miners, pools and anyone budgeting around new supply see a smooth curve rather than a cliff.
It also means there is no single "Kaspa halving day" to mark on a calendar, and no special event the network has to survive. The node simply switches to the next table entry when the DAA score crosses the next month boundary. Nothing is announced and nothing is voted on; every node computes the same reward from the same rule.
The name comes from music: a chromatic scale moves in twelve equal semitone steps per octave, and an octave is a doubling (or halving) of frequency. Kaspa's reward moves down by twelve equal steps per halving in the same way — each step is the twelfth root of one half.
What did not change along the way
Through launch, the start of deflation and Crescendo, three things stayed fixed:
- The table itself. The 426 monthly values have been the same since the deflationary phase was defined. Crescendo changed how the table is applied — per block versus per second — not the values in it.
- The length of a month, 2,629,800 seconds.
- The total intended issuance. Because Crescendo divided the per-block reward by exactly the factor it multiplied the block rate by, the curve of coins per second did not move.
Reading history figures correctly
- Per second or per block? Before May 2025 they are the same number. After it, per block is a tenth of per second.
- Calendar month or subsidy month? A subsidy month is 30.4375 days long, so its start drifts through the calendar.
- Exact or estimated? The DAA score of every step is exact; the date of every step after Crescendo in the table above is an estimate at the ten-per-second target.
Our emission page lists the last twelve and the next twenty-four steps with their exact DAA scores, and it shows the measured blocks-per-second rate from our own samples.
How the history shaped supply
The flat 500 KAS phase and the early chromatic months minted coins quickly: in the first two years of deflation the per-second reward fell from 440 to 110 KAS, but the network was still adding tens of millions of KAS a day. Since then each year mints half as much as the year before. The public Kaspa REST API reports both the circulating supply and a maximum supply of about 28.7 billion KAS; the Kaspa emission schedule guide explains how the remaining coins are spread over the decades ahead.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure in this article is computed from the reward table in rusty-kaspa (consensus/src/processes/coinbase.rs) and the mainnet parameters (deflationary_phase_daa_score, pre_deflationary_phase_base_subsidy, crescendo_activation). The official kaspa-rest-server uses the same table to answer /info/blockreward. We have not copied figures from third-party trackers.
Timeline at a glance
- 7 November 2021 — mainnet genesis; 500 KAS per block at one block per second.
- Shortly after launch — about three days of network downtime, later subtracted from the pre-deflationary phase.
- About May 2022 — DAA score 15,519,600; chromatic emission starts at 440 KAS per second.
- About May 2023 — first yearly halving within the chromatic phase: 220 KAS per second.
- About May 2024 — 110 KAS per second.
- About 5 May 2025 — Crescendo at DAA score 110,165,000; ten blocks per second, reward per block divided by ten.
- Hours later — month 36 begins: 5.5 KAS per block, 55 KAS per second.
- About May 2026 — month 48: 2.75 KAS per block.
- About November 2026 — month 54: 1.94454365 KAS per block.
All dates are approximate; every step's DAA score is exact.
Our recommendation: For day-to-day crypto news alongside the data, these Telegram channels are options to consider: @cryptoresearch, @Altcoin_News_Today, @Crypto_MarketWatcher and @Digital_Asset_Daily. Check sources yourself before relying on any of them.
Summary
- 2021–2022: a flat 500 KAS per second for about six months.
- From about May 2022: the chromatic schedule, starting at 440 KAS per second and falling by (1/2)^(1/12) every month.
- Every twelve months the reward halves: 220 KAS per second in 2023, 110 in 2024, 55 in May 2025.
- From May 2025: ten blocks per second, so the reward per block is a tenth of the per-second figure; the emission curve is unchanged.
To see where the staircase is today and when the next step comes, open the Kaspa halving countdown, and read When Is the Next Kaspa Halving? for the years ahead.