Which Stablecoins Can Earn KAIA Rewards? Kaia DLT Foundation Adds JPYC from 21 October

JPYC Enters Kaia's Reward Pool

Which stablecoins will Kaia pay its contribution rewards in? From 21 October the answer includes the yen. The Kaia DLT Foundation will recognize JPYC, Japan's yen-pegged stablecoin, as an accepted reward asset in its Contribution Reward (CR) program alongside USDT, per the foundation's announcement on 14 October. The change takes effect at block 230,342,400 of the Kaia blockchain, expected around 09:40 on 21 October, and applies from the fourth settlement cycle onward. JPYC deposited in earlier cycles receives no retroactive credit. The CR program pays only participants who can show a concrete contribution to the network. It replaced an earlier proposal reward that handed a flat 10% of block rewards to the governance council, and it was introduced in July through an on-chain governance vote. To qualify, a participant must deposit a recognized stablecoin into a designated protocol and stake KAIA in the same wallet, at 10 KAIA for every $1 of stablecoin held. That paired position is the yardstick for calculating how large a contribution a participant has made. USDT has so far been the only accepted asset. From the fourth cycle, JPYC held in a Unify wallet will satisfy the same test. Since JPYC is denominated in yen, the foundation converts it into USDT value using the settlement-cycle average rate produced by Orakl, the blockchain oracle serving the chain. JPYC itself is issued as an electronic payment instrument under Japan's Payment Services Act, a licensed category that separates it from offshore stablecoins. The foundation frames the addition as a widening of Kaia's reward economy toward Asian stablecoins, with the yen next in line after the US dollar, a shift whose market test will surface in the Kaia price once the fourth cycle opens.

4,905,146 KAIA Slated for Burn

The same announcement fixes a date for the program's first supply reduction. At the close of the first settlement cycle on 21 October, Kaia will burn on-chain the 2,463,579 KAIA left unpaid, a step originally scheduled for November and now brought forward. A second settlement cycle's unpaid balance of 2,441,567 KAIA follows in November, which puts confirmed burns at 4,905,146 KAIA. Burn transactions are on-chain records, so each executed quantity can be verified independently rather than taken on trust. Unpaid has a precise meaning here. The CR program's monthly reward budget is fixed at 2,500,000 KAIA, and any portion left unclaimed because participants did not meet the deposit and staking conditions is not held by the foundation. It is burned, so it never re-enters circulating supply. The foundation has committed to confirm the unpaid quantity at the end of every settlement cycle and burn it, with the transaction history and cumulative totals published in monthly operating reports on the governance forum. That cadence hands the market a recurring, dated data point on how much of the budget participants actually absorb. Foundation chairman Seo Sang-min tied the two measures together in the statement accompanying the announcement: rewards, he said, are designed so they reach participants who genuinely contributed to the network, while unused rewards are kept from circulating in the market. He also set out the regional ambition, an ecosystem in which stablecoins from across Asia, JPYC among them, are put to use on Kaia. That ambition already has a public stage in the Kaia-backed Block Festa 2026 in Seoul, where a won stablecoin agenda featured on the program.

A Yen Bet on Kaia's Supply

Our reading: the burn converts the CR budget from a guaranteed handout into a deflationary remainder, and it does so on a fixed monthly clock rather than at the foundation's discretion. That gives KAIA a rule-bound, if modest, piece of tokenomics, one whose effect scales only with participation. The JPYC addition is the live variable. Every $1 of yen stablecoin deposited pulls 10 KAIA into the same wallet under the chain's delegated proof of stake design, so any genuine Japanese demand tightens supply twice over, first through lockup and second through a larger claimed share of the fixed budget. Whether yen deposits actually arrive is the open question, and the first JPYC-inclusive settlement cycle after 21 October, read against the monthly governance report, will answer it.