Kaia is one of the largest chains most Western developers have barely touched — and that's a distribution opportunity. Formed in August 2024 by merging Klaytn (Kakao's chain) and Finschia (LINE's chain), Kaia is an EVM Layer 1 with a built-in path to hundreds of millions of messaging-app users across Asia. For developers, the good news is that connecting to it is almost identical to Ethereum. Here's the map.
The essentials
Kaia mainnet is chain ID 8217 (inherited from Klaytn). It's an EVM-compatible Layer 1 running BFT proof-of-stake consensus with ~1-second block times and immediate finality. The native token is KAIA (18 decimals). Because it's EVM-compatible, standard Ethereum tooling connects without changes:
import { createPublicClient, http } from "viem";
import { kaia } from "viem/chains";
