Kusama serves as a public, pre-production platform for Polkadot, enabling developers to experiment and validate new blockchains or applications before they go live. Essentially, Kusama functions as a sandbox for initial testing of Polkadot projects, with real cryptocurrency transactions in an open market setting. Additionally, before official Polkadot enhancements are rolled out, they are first trialed on Kusama. Aimed at facilitating testing, Kusama provides developers with increased flexibility to perfect their Polkadot projects, offering less rigorous governance parameters compared to Polkadot.

While Polkadot and Kusama share significant portions of their code and can be likened to relatives, they remain autonomous networks with unique focuses. Kusama, being dynamic and swift, is an ideal environment for audacious trials and preliminary rollouts. On the other hand, Polkadot takes a more cautious approach, emphasizing stability and reliability. After all, even kin have their distinct characteristics.

KSM is the digital currency that fuels Kusama, a mechanism designed for facilitating transfers of any data or assets across various blockchains. Kusama seeks to boost security and scalability by integrating multiple blockchain networks. As the protocol's governance token, KSM can be staked to fortify the network or used to link ('bond') new chains. Kusama serves as an experimental network or 'canary' for Polkadot (another protocol sharing the same coding framework), providing a platform for developers to rapidly experiment with new applications that can be launched on both networks.

There is a SDK for XCM transactions that supports Kusama and Polkadot.