Kima Network

Kima Network is a cross-chain settlement protocol that lets applications and users move assets between blockchains and fiat payment systems without bridges, wrapped tokens, smart contracts on the source or destination chains, or external relayers. Its designers position it as "the world's first infrastructure-agnostic money transfer protocol" — a settlement layer that sits beneath wallets, payment apps, exchanges, and banks rather than serving as a standalone consumer product.

The Problem Kima Addresses

Traditional cross-chain bridges introduce three persistent failure modes: smart-contract exploits, oracle manipulation, and relayer censorship or failure. Token-wrapping compounds these risks by creating synthetic assets whose peg depends on the bridge's continued solvency. Major bridge hacks between 2021 and 2023 drained hundreds of millions of dollars from protocols relying on these architectures. Kima's design eliminates all three attack surfaces by removing the components responsible for them.

How the Settlement Layer Works

Kima is built on the Cosmos SDK and operates its own proof-of-stake blockchain. Rather than holding user assets in a single contract, Kima maintains native liquidity pools on each integrated Layer-1 network — including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Bitcoin. When a user initiates a cross-chain transfer, the process works as follows:

1. The user deposits an asset (for example, USDC) into Kima's pool on the source chain.
2. The Kima blockchain detects the deposit via light clients monitoring each integrated network.
3. A rotating committee of "Wardens" — nodes running inside Intel SGX Trusted Execution Environments — applies a Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS) to collectively authorize a corresponding release from the pool on the destination chain.
4. The equivalent native asset is released to the recipient address on the destination chain.

No wrapped tokens are created at any stage. The asset the recipient receives is the real native asset already sitting in the destination pool, not a synthetic stand-in. Pool balances are maintained near equilibrium by the LIMA algorithm, which dynamically adjusts fee rates and liquidity provider incentives based on pool utilization across all integrated chains. This self-correcting mechanism discourages one-directional flow that could drain any single pool.

Key Products and Features

Universal Payment Rail (UPR): A single API enabling developers to settle payments across bank accounts, stablecoins, and CBDCs without building chain-specific integrations. Designed primarily for fintech companies and payment processors that need on-chain settlement rails without standing up blockchain infrastructure.

Liquidity as a Service (LaaS): Applications tap Kima's shared liquidity pools instead of holding large asset reserves on each chain they want to support. Liquidity providers contribute to these pools and earn a share of protocol fees.

Delivery vs. Payment (DvP): A settlement primitive for real-world asset (RWA) transactions. Asset delivery and payment settle atomically — both legs complete simultaneously or neither does — eliminating the counterparty risk inherent in sequential settlement. This is accomplished using decentralized escrow accounts rather than smart contracts.

StablePro Wallet: A consumer-facing wallet integrated with Kima's rails that supports stablecoin swaps and a points-based rewards program.

Security Model

Kima's security approach rests on several independent layers:

• No bridge contracts on integrated chains. There is no smart contract to exploit on Ethereum, Solana, or any other integrated network. The only on-chain footprint is the liquidity pool itself.
• Threshold Signature Schemes. No single warden holds a complete signing key. A quorum of the committee must co-sign before any funds move, preventing unilateral asset seizure.
• Intel SGX enclaves. Warden key shares are held inside hardware-enforced SGX enclaves, making them inaccessible to the warden node operators themselves.
• Slashing. Wardens that sign invalid transactions or fail to perform their duties face slashing of their staked KIMA.
• Two-layer validator structure. A permissioned layer of established institutional validators anchors accountability; a permissionless stake-weighted layer lets broader participants join as block producers and wardens.

Because Kima does not deploy smart contracts on integrated chains, there are no on-chain contracts requiring third-party security audits on those networks. The Kima blockchain itself is a Cosmos SDK chain with standard Cosmos security properties and Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus.

The KIMA Token

KIMA is the protocol's utility and staking token, with a total supply of 210 million. It serves three functions: securing the Kima blockchain through validator and warden staking, incentivizing liquidity providers, and governance participation.

Protocol fees are set at 0.05% of transfer volume and distributed as follows: 50% to liquidity providers, 25% to Kima validators, and 25% to the Kima Foundation. Wardens who misbehave face slashing penalties; half of slashed amounts are distributed as bounties to active liquidity providers, with the remainder split between validators and the foundation.

The KIMA token sale closed in November 2024 through sales conducted across Polkastarter, Gate.io, ChainGPT, DexCheck Pad, and HTX.

Team and Funding

Kima was co-founded by Eitan Katz (CEO), Guy Vider (CTO), Tzahi Kanza (COO), and Asaf Yosifov. Katz entered crypto in 2014 with Aegis, among the first hardware wallet projects, before working at enterprise software companies including HP and BMC. The broader team draws on experience from Binance, 1inch, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC.

The project raised approximately 6 to 7 million dollars across multiple rounds. The most recent disclosed raise was a 5 million dollar seed round in June 2024. Disclosed investors include Finsec Innovation Lab — a Mastercard-affiliated fintech accelerator — alongside Blockchange, Permanent Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, and Outlier Ventures. The Mastercard connection is notable given Kima's stated focus on TradFi-DeFi interoperability and compliance.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Solana is one of the explicitly supported networks in Kima's settlement layer. Kima maintains a native liquidity pool on Solana, meaning Solana-ecosystem assets can be moved to or from any other integrated chain through Kima's protocol without ever entering wrapped-token form. For Solana applications — particularly payments apps, DeFi protocols, and wallets that need cross-chain reach — Kima offers a settlement path that avoids the security and UX trade-offs of conventional bridge designs.

The protocol's compliance posture also makes it relevant for institutional Solana use cases. Its non-custodial architecture, attestation services, and zero-knowledge proof integration position it to serve banks and fintech companies that need Solana's throughput and transaction economics while meeting regulatory auditability requirements that conventional bridge architectures cannot satisfy.

Roadmap

Published roadmap items include enabling permissionless staking and adding community wardens in Q4 2025, scaling stablecoin card top-ups with a European card issuer, activating Cosmos IBC to link the Kima blockchain directly with other Cosmos-based chains, and releasing a plug-and-play SDK for banks and fintech companies to connect to the settlement rail.