"Self-described as \""Polkadot's wild cousin\"" Kusama is an experimental blockchain platform that is designed to provide a massively interoperable and scalable framework for developers.Kusama is built on Substrate — a blockchain building kit developed by Parity Technologies. Kusama has almost the same codebase as Polkadot — one of the most successful interoperable blockchains.By deploying on Kusama fast-paced projects gain access to a highly scalable interoperable sharded network with features that are not yet available on Polkadot. To that end Kusama describes itself as a “canary network.”The platform is designed to provide a testbed for developers looking to innovate and deploy their own blockchain and can be used as a preparatory network before launching on Polkadot — though many projects opt to stick with Kusama for their final product. Kusama benefits from a low barrier to entry for deploying parachains low bond requirements for validators and is most commonly used by early-stage startups and for experimentation."