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.