A brief history
Kusama was founded by former Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot founder Gavin Wood in 2019. Often referred to as “the canary network of Polkadot,” Kusama is a public pre-production environment for Polkadot. This means that developers can experiment and test new blockchains or applications before releasing them on Polkadot. Kusama shares the same white paper as Polkadot and mimics most of Polkadot’s major design features. For example, Kusama, like Polkadot, uses two types of blockchain- the main network, where transactions are permanent, and parachains. Parachains are user-generated networks that can be customized for any use while leveraging the main relay chain for security. Where Kusama and Polkadot differ is in their governing parameters. Since Kusama is designed for flexibility and experimentation its governance is much less stringent and can thus expedite changes to the network. For example, on Kusama, it takes seven days to vote on a referendum and eight days to implement changes after the votes, compared to a month for each on Polkadot.

KSM in practice
When Kusama was first launched, KSM tokens were distributed with the same respect as Polkadot’s native DOT token. This means that if you participated in the DOT ICO, you would have received an equal number of KSM tokens proportional to that purchase. This served to encourage DOT token holders to use the Kusama network