KuCoin, the people's exchange, has revealed its whitepaper that outlines all of the essential details about KuCoin Token (KCS), and with it, the company's grand vision for the overall ecosystem and how it fits within the greater cryptocurrency landscape.

With the whitepaper now in circulation, we've had a chance to dig in and have put together this in-depth summary that includes everything you need to know and more about the current state and future of the project.

KuCoin: Past, Present, And Future

KuCoin and the native KuCoin Token have become a pivotal part of the cryptocurrency space since 2017, earning a place alongside the likes of Bitcoin. The "people's" platform and KCS ecosystem have grown as blockchain has moved from 1.0 to 2.0 and is now preparing to become the backbone of the Web 3.0 movement.

KuCoin's exchange serves over 200 different countries globally, listing more than 600 different coins, and has hundreds of billions in cumulative trading volume to show for it. The company's KCS ecosystem is truly borderless and goes beyond the basics of buying and selling cryptocurrencies, bringing unprecedented value to the industry.

KCS has been an ERC20 smart contract token on the Ethereum chain since 2017 and migrated to KuCoin Community Chain (shortened to KCC) in 2021. As the native token to the KCC chain, KCS serves as gas for the base layer of the KCC ecosystem. The total supply is locked at 200 million KCS tokens, and deflationary tokenomics are designed to destroy KCS through token burns, eventually bringing the total supply to 100 million KCS tokens.

KCS holders are responsible for the growth of KuCoin and therefore are rewarded with several incentives such as fee discounts and participation in initial token offerings. Combined, the user growth and KCS innovation have helped propel KuCoin into the top five leading digital asset platforms in the world and have placed KCS among the top 100 crypto projects by market cap worldwide.

Looking ahead, KuCoin aims to leverage its influence and reach to expand the KCS ecosystem and make it more accessible to all.

The Three Phases Of KuCoin Community Chain Development

Building an ambitious project from the ground up isn't simple and takes time to get everything right and complete proper testing. Therefore, improvements to the KCC chain and KCS ecosystem.

Phase 1.0

The KCC mainnet first launched back in June 2021. Since its inception, the chain has surpassed millions of transactions across some of today's most important DeFi, GameFi, or Web 3.0 applications. KCC 1.0 relies on the Ethereum source code and is fully compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine smart contracts. However, it is pitched as a solution to the scalability issues and high fees of doing business on Ethereum.

Phase 2.0

KCC 2.0 looks to incorporate internal subroutines to expand the potential power of the hardware without sacrificing Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility. The update will also increase the gas limit of blocks to 500 million. KCC 2.0 will also leverage three unique technologies: StormingEVM, LightningADS, and RainingDB.

Phase 3.0

KCC 3.0 begins to roll out cross-chain compatibility across the ecosystem to interact with multiple chains and assets. This phase of KCC development also focuses on fleshing out infrastructure suitable for large-scale usage and development, building a lower-cost layer 2, a KCC SDK that allows developers to develop intrachain and interchain protocols with greater privacy; In terms of a cross-chain ecosystem, KCC will gradually support the inter-chain transfer of multiple assets, support interchain DeFi, games, Web3.0 ecosystems and cross-chain accounts.

By the completion of Phase 3.0, KCC will become a viable all-in-one solution catering to all sectors of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry with support for future categories as they emerge.

In the future, KCS also plans to build out a proprietary payment system to support borderless payments that are designed to serve millions of users, a massive Web 3.0 ecosystem, and much more.

From Geeks To Mass Adoption: GoDAO And The KCS Ecosystem

With the goal of mass adoption in mind, the KCC GoDAO Foundation was formed along with the GoDAO community. The GoDAO community consists of members of the KuCoin exchange and developers of the KCS ecosystem. Together, this core team helps manage the organization and govern the methodology surrounding development.

Team members will focus on research and development to support further growth of KCC infrastructure, provide liquidity to partnership protocols, fund blockchain innovation and thought leadership, and connect resources within the KCS ecosystem.

Later on, the foundation will shift toward more autonomous and community-based development that is directed wholly based on user governance.

KCS Tokenomics: Distribution And Deflationary Mechanism Examined

As noted, the total supply of KCS is 200 million tokens. 100 million tokens were allocated to early participants in September 2017 without an initial lock-up period. 65 million tokens went to the founder and team members with a lock-up period of four years. An additional 25 million went to advisors and angel investors with a lock-up period of two years, with the remaining 10 million immediately released for KCS community rewards.

KCS will redistribute the 90 million locked KCS at the time of issuance, of which 20 million KCS will be directly burned. The KCC ecosystem will generate value for token holders by aggregating various Web 3.0-related applications across DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, etc.

The KuCoin trading platform will regularly repurchase KCS from the secondary market with a portion of the platform's revenue to continue to reduce supply through token burns and increase value for token holders. In addition, KCS will introduce EIP1559, focusing on the KCC fee mechanism.

Whitepaper Summary: What KuCoin Has Planned For KCS

From here, KCS will enter the second stage of development. KCS will become the bridge that strengthens the symbiotic relationship between the KuCoin centralized ecosystem and the KCC decentralized ecosystem. KCC will connect the centralized and the decentralized world in three distinct rollout phases:

• Building a decentralized autonomous community.
• Developing cross-chain interoperability protocols.
• Expanding performance and capacity with a much more prominent focus on creating an expansive Web3.0 ecosystem.

The future of KCS and KCC will become a self-circulating, self-sustaining platform offering unprecedented value to hundreds of millions of users around the world, who will find a diverse range of decentralized applications within the ecosystem. Mass adoption is ahead.