Bitcoin’s recent surge past the $100,000 mark is no small feat, considering 18 months ago many pundits thought the industry was dying or would fade into obscurity. Despite Bitcoin hitting $108,000 in December before falling to under $95,000, one need only look at its price on January 1, 2024 ($42,500) to see just how far the original cryptocurrency has risen.
Rising crypto prices aren’t simply a reflection of the asset class’s usual ebbs and flows, but rather the result of a matured industry ready for growth. As 2024 winds down, decentralized finance’s (DeFi) total value locked (TVL) has increased to over $125 billion, while intriguing AI use cases and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization highlight crypto’s growth.
The Interoperability Challenge in Blockchain Technology
However, as the industry expands and successes pile up, more DeFi protocols and blockchains are launched regularly. This isn’t inherently bad, but these additions further separate the industry’s liquidity—highlighting its failure to develop genuine interoperability despite being widely viewed as a top priority.
Since blockchains operate as independent protocols featuring different coding languages and smart contract formats, they lack the inherent ability to send data and funds to one another. Additionally, different consensus mechanisms and data structures make standardization between Ethereum, Avalanche, and TRON, for example, a challenge—especially for non-native users.
Complementing Kima’s mainnet is the native KIMA utility token that powers the interoperable blockchain’s security through staking. The KIMA token also incentivizes network validators, allowing its decentralized settlement layer to facilitate ecosystem development, transaction payments, and liquidity processing.
Expanding Use Cases and Broader Impact
Kima’s underlying technology is capable of supporting an expanding list of applications that include cross-border transfers, hybrid credit cards, tokenized RWAs, borrowing and lending, Web3 gaming, Bitcoin DeFi, cross-chain wallets, and more.
Before Kima, transferring money or digital assets between different blockchains or between crypto and banks required intermediaries like centralized exchanges, making the process slow, expensive, and risky. Kima’s ability to facilitate a wide range of use cases provides more than just a solution to unify the blockchain ecosystem; it also creates a decentralized link between two competing ecosystems, benefiting both institutions and Web3 organizations