Do You Know the Etymology of Klaytn?
> DISCLAIMER: This is a personal blog and is not intended to be a solicitation for investment. It is not an official statement of the Klaytn Foundation and may contain personal opinions.
한국어 버전은 이 링크에서 보실 수 있습니다.
I hope everything is going well. I’m Colin from the Klaytn Foundation, and this time we’re going to talk about the etymology of Klaytn. Do you know the etymology of Klaytn?
In fact, I’ve used the picture above in several of my presentations. If you’ve seen my talks, you might be familiar with it, but this is the first time I’ve written about it.
Klaytn is a blockchain protocol developed by GroundX, a subsidiary of Kakao, in 2019. It was developed by forking geth, one of Ethereum’s execution clients. I joined GroundX in June 2018 and developed the core together.
At that time, I remember that we held a public recruitment and voting for the name of our platform. Anyway, in the end, Klaytn is an acronym for K + Clay + Stone. If you don’t understand what I mean by this, I’ll try to explain it by unpacking the words one by one while looking at the picture above.
Magma
At the bottom of the diagram, you can see the term ‘Magma’. Inside the Earth, Magma is formed by the melting of rocks. The brand identity of Klaytn 2.0 is inspired by the planet’s Metamorphic Cycle, where rocks are created, changed, and cycled. ‘Magma’, which gives birth to clay and stone and emits powerful energy, is the evolved brand motif of Klaytn 2.0. That’s why you can see the Klaytn logo in the bottom right corner, which is red like magma.
Krust
Geologically, the Earth is divided into an inner core, outer core, mantle, crust, and lithosphere. Magma is located in the mantle and crust. Krust Universe is a company dedicated to the development and operation of the Klaytn mainnet in 2022. Krust is named by utilizing the K in Kakao. (By the way, the same goes for Kakao, where cacao is the original English word and Kakao is the name of the company. 😀)
GroundX
Above the Earth’s crust is the ground. GroundX is the company that first developed the Klaytn platform and launched the mainnet. Currently, it is developing KAS (Klaytn API Service) and Klip, a wallet connected to KakaoTalk, as its main products.
Klaytn
On the ground, there is clay and stone. The word Klaytn is based on the motif of clay and stone. Since it was started by Kakao, we also use the letter K, and combine clay and stone. K + Clay + Stone = Klaystone = Klaytn. This is how the name Klaytn was born.
Cypress
But that’s not the end of the story — the tree that rose from the clay and stone is Cypress. Klaytn’s network names are followed by the name of trees: Aspen, our earliest alpha testnet; Baobab, which is still a testnet today; and finally Cypress, which became our mainnet. In alphabetical order, we used the names of trees as network names.
Kaikas & Caver
There are also two ecosystem tools that are important to Klaytn: Kaikas and Caver. Kaikas comes from the name of a god of wind. Kaikas is the name of Klaytn’s main wallet. Caver is the name of the breeze that blows in the Hebrides. Caver is the name of Klaytn’s SDK. Both are derived from the wind, and if you think about the wind blowing by the side of a tree, it’s easy to see the connection.
To summarize, from the bottom, Magma -> Krust -> GroundX -> Klaytn -> Cypress -> Kaikas -> Caver, I think it’s easy for all of you to see that they are all connected.
Now you have a better understanding of Klaytn’s world and its etymology. In my next post, I’ll explain a bit more about the characters on the right side of the image, so stay tuned!
Finally, this image shows the characters from the Klaytn story camping in Cypress. Isn’t that cute? 😁
NOTE: The images used in this blog are copyrighted by Klaytn Foundation, and we allow any variations and derivative works. However, please note that we may take sanctions if they are used maliciously. Thank you.
This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
