Kaspa Delivered 23,000% Gains, But ZKP Crypto Could Replicate the Breakout Even Faster!

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Looking back, every major crypto winner seems obvious. Of course, Kaspa (KAS) was going to climb 23,000% from its 2022 lows. It tackled blockchain speed limits, launched fairly with no venture capital control, and built a strong base of miners and engineers. For many, it became the best crypto to buy only after the move was already clear.

But in real time, Kaspa did not look obvious. It looked low-key. It looked technical. It was an infrastructure project sitting behind louder, hype-first names. By the time the wider market caught on to what Kaspa really was, a major repricing of Layer 1 value, the early window had already closed.

As the market shifts in January 2026, analysts are now scanning for the next asset that matches this same setup: a core Layer 1 solving a real bottleneck, launching with fair tokenomics, and still trading before the hype cycle. Many are calling this search a hunt for the best crypto to buy before the crowd arrives.

The name showing up more often in these talks is Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP). Kaspa benefited from the growing demand for speed. ZKP is aiming at rising demand for privacy in an AI-heavy future. And with an aggressive supply burn mechanic running right now in Stage 2 of its presale auction, it may be set to move through its repricing phase faster than Kaspa did.

What Drove the 23,000% Kaspa Repricing

To understand why some analysts see ZKP as the best crypto to buy in this kind of cycle, it helps to break down what Kaspa did right while so many projects did not. Kaspa did not rely on big marketing budgets or celebrity hype. It had three structural strengths:

Fair Launch: No VCs unloading unlocked supply onto retail participants.
Innovation: It solved a real engineering issue (Proof of Work scalability) instead of cloning existing chains.
Organic Price Discovery: Value rose alongside network hash rate, which helped create a stronger floor.

Most projects in 2026 fail this “Kaspa Test.” They are either heavily venture-backed, which adds selling pressure, or they offer little that is technically new.

ZKP is one of the few that appear to pass.

ZKP and the Kaspa Comparison in a Privacy-First Era

Zero Knowledge Proof reflects the Kaspa story, but it applies that framework to what many see as the core challenge of 2026: protecting data inside artificial intelligence systems.

In the same way that 2022 focused on making blockchains faster, 2026 is centered on making them private. As AI systems process financial records, health data, and biometric information, the need to confirm computation without exposing raw inputs has become essential.

ZKP uses zero-knowledge cryptography to make this possible, allowing results to be verified without revealing sensitive data. For some analysts, this puts it on the radar as the best crypto to buy among early infrastructure plays.

The Kaspa parallel runs deeper than function alone. It is also about how the network came to market.

Kaspa gained attention for having no early allocations. ZKP extends this idea through its Initial Coin Auction model. There are no private sales and no discounted insider entries. Every participant in the daily presale auction pays the same effective price. This removes the venture capital overhang that often weighs down newer Layer 1 networks.

ZKP is also not a promise on paper. The team committed more than $100 million of internal funding to build the network, testnet, and full four-layer architecture before any token sale began. That includes $17 million spent on hardware production for Proof Pods and $5 million used to secure the zkp.com domain. Like Kaspa, ZKP enters the market as a working system, not a prototype.

How Stage 2 Changes the Speed of Scarcity

Where ZKP starts to separate from the Kaspa path is in how supply tightens.

Kaspa depended on mining emission cuts over time to reduce supply. ZKP reduces supply at every single stage.

The project is now in Stage 2 of its presale auction, and that matters for two clear reasons:

Limited Daily Output: Daily availability has fallen to 190 million ZKP, and that number cannot be exceeded.
Built-In Burn Rule: Any tokens not taken during the daily window are permanently destroyed.

This creates a use-it-or-lose-it setup that Kaspa never had. In mining systems, unused supply can still appear later. In ZKP’s presale auction, missed tokens vanish for good. This hard-coded reduction means that if demand holds while supply steps down across the 17 stages, pricing pressure increases by design.

This setup forces repricing through structure, not emotion. It does not depend on hype cycles. It depends on mathematics. For those watching infrastructure trends, this dynamic is a key reason some are calling ZKP the best crypto to buy at this stage of the cycle.

Why Infrastructure Often Delivers the Biggest Returns

By January 2026, much of the market will be moving away from safety trades. Bitcoin provides stability, not large multiples. The strongest upside usually appears in infrastructure that the broader market has not fully priced yet.

When Kaspa made its move, it shifted from a niche mining asset into a Top 30 project once speed was recognized as core infrastructure. ZKP now sits in a similar position. The market is only beginning to accept that privacy is also infrastructure. For investors searching for the best crypto to buy before wider adoption, this gap matters.

If ZKP captures even a small share of enterprise compute demand by allowing banks, hospitals, and AI labs to operate on-chain without exposing data, today’s valuation structure may look disconnected from future reality.

History rarely repeats exactly, but patterns do echo. Kaspa proved that a fair-launch, technically strong Layer 1 could return 23,000% by solving a fundamental problem. ZKP is following that same blueprint, with an added burn mechanism that compresses the scarcity timeline. For anyone focused on the best crypto to buy in this cycle, the opportunity to act before the Stage 2 supply shock is fully understood is getting smaller each day.