$KAS surges to 5 cents as vProg goes live!

Hey, welcome to Kaspa Daily Pulse, here's what the Kaspa community's been buzzing about today.

First up, price action completely transformed the mood. KAS climbed from around 3.8 cents to roughly 5 cents, gaining about 15 to 20 percent while Bitcoin was nearly flat. Traders also pointed to strength in the KAS-to-Bitcoin chart and a possible breakout from a year-long range. After months of frustration, the chat suddenly sounded VERY bullish. Still, some holders warned that 5 cents could bring heavy selling pressure, and leveraged traders were already discussing exits around 5.3 to 5.5 cents.

On the development side, the first vProg proof of concept, a tic-tac-toe game, was reported live on testnet. The community later clarified that the game is available, while standalone vProgs are apparently still being tested internally. That distinction matters, but the larger takeaway was clear: technology people had discussed as a concept is beginning to materialize. DarkKnight and a broader vProgs testnet remain the major anticipated milestones.

There was also plenty of discussion around KCC. Community members testing it described KCC assets as native to Kaspa's layer one, without requiring a conventional bridge-backed wrapped KAS token. KCC-23 was mentioned as a way to attach metadata to native assets. The big question now is whether native decentralized exchanges can capitalize on Kaspa's speed and MEV resistance.

Not everything was celebratory. The Kasplex KRC-20 indexer remains offline, preventing wallets from displaying layer-one KRC-20 balances normally. According to the shared update, those tokens are not gone, layer-two trades remain valid, and KAS bridges to Igra and Kasplex remain open. However, KRC-20 bridge routes are closed, and there is no finalized recovery plan yet. The incident reinforced strong community skepticism toward centralized indexers and non-trustless bridges.

Finally, infrastructure and custody became major themes. Network hashrate was quoted at about 376 petahashes per second, but an API correction reportedly showed only around 300 to 400 active nodes, prompting calls for easier node deployment and a community campaign. Meanwhile, one holder's funds remained stuck on Bitget, triggering another loud reminder: self-custody matters, especially for meaningful balances.

That's it for today's pulse. Let's see what tomorrow brings. Catch you then.