Kima is the world’s first infrastructure-agnostic money transfer protocol. The Kima platform is comprised of a blockchain and a toolkit that allows the seamless transfer of assets between different protocols and platforms.
Blockchains are siloed. Web3 apps built within those ecosystems are constrained by their on-chain liquidity. Many solutions developed for these challenges, known as bridges, suffer from flaws and vulnerabilities: security, user experience, complexity, and poor capital efficiency.
Kima addresses these challenges in a unique way, by creating a Web3 settlement layer which enables interchain transactions. This approach allows liquidity to be transferred between chains in a safe, secure, and cost-effective manner, enabling a reliable omnichain solution.
Security: Kima achieves unique security by eliminating all known attack vectors (no smart contracts, no oracles, no external relayers) and adding multiple layers of security (e.g., using a Trusted Execution Environment with Intel SGX and decoupled validation). The protocol uses game theory and financial incentives to maintain liquidity equilibrium and maximize capital efficiency.
Infrastructure: Kima simplifies and accelerates the creation of secure Omnichain applications, tackling interoperability problems without causing additional liquidity fragmentation. It provides a mechanism for users to perform cross-chain atomic swaps without token-wrapping.
The Kima blockchain, built using the Cosmos SDK, employs a committee-based consensus. "Wardens" in a rotating committee ensure asset pool synchronization and authorize withdrawals based on corresponding deposits. This structure uses Threshold Signature Schemes (TSS) and operates within a Trusted Execution Environment for enhanced security.
Kima maintains liquidity pools on each integrated layer-1 blockchain (e.g., Ethereum, Polygon, Solana) and synchronizes assets across these platforms without creating synthetic ("wrapped") tokens.
Permissioned Layer: Includes validators known for reliability (e.g., funds, banks, organizations). Permissionless Layer: Allows anyone with sufficient stake to become a block producer and warden, facilitating regular changes in the warden set.
The two-layer consensus mechanism ensures stability, security, and decentralization, with four main goals:
Manage and update the warden set.
Execute platform governance (e.g., selecting blockchains and tokens, setting fees).
Create an auditable record for accountability. -Enable cross-chain messaging for interacting with contracts across blockchains.
When users request cross-chain transfers, the warden committee is responsible for:
Recording the request and monitoring the deposit on the source chain.
Completing a threshold signature to release funds on the destination chain.
Recording the finalized process, providing an auditable record of validator actions.
This architecture, proven in other Cosmos SDK-built systems, ensures a secure, decentralized, and efficient cross-chain transfer system.
To read a more detailed account of Kima's architecture and approach, read the White Paper.
This documentation shows how to:
Use Kima as an end user
Become a validator for the Kima blockchain
Leverage Kima's SDK to effortlessly integrate all Kima's functionality into your application