Igra Network, a decentralized EVM-compatible execution layer built on Kaspa's proof-of-work BlockDAG, has officially launched its public mainnet. The launch, announced on March 19th, 2026, from Zug, Switzerland, follows six months of testnet operation that processed over 730,000 transactions across 21 million blocks with zero state divergence.
The network is designed to unlock the latent demand within the Kaspa ecosystem, which has a market cap nearing $1 billion and over 500,000 active addresses. Despite generating $486 million in trading volume in a single day when its KRC-20 token standard launched, the ecosystem has had less than $1 million in DeFi total value locked (TVL) due to a lack of a programmable smart contract layer. Igra Network aims to close this gap by providing full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, giving Kaspa's existing user base and a global community of over 100,000 Solidity engineers a shared execution environment.
Technically, Igra operates as a "based rollup," where transaction ordering is delegated entirely to the Kaspa base layer's miners. This design provides inherent resistance to MEV extraction, front-running, and censorship at the protocol level. The network boasts over 3,000 transactions per second (TPS) with sub-second latency, powered by Kaspa's 10-block-per-second BlockDAG architecture.
The launch is supported by a clean security audit from Sigma Prime and features fifteen protocols deploying at launch across DeFi, infrastructure, wallets, and stablecoins. Key launch partners include Kaskad (for Aave V3-style lending), ZealousSwap (a Uniswap v2-style DEX), Hyperlane (for cross-chain messaging and USDC.e bridging), and several wallets and bridges. Ecosystem partners collectively manage over $5 million in TVL across Kaspa.
Kaspa's native token, KAS, wraps 1:1 to iKAS on Igra via a trust-minimized bridge to serve as the network's gas token. Looking ahead, Igra Labs plans to introduce a second-generation execution engine with Block-STM parallel processing in late 2026, alongside infrastructure for the autonomous agent economy.
A public auction for the IGRA governance and security token is scheduled for late March 2026 via the Zealous Auctions Protocol (ZAP) on Igra Network.
