What is rusty-kaspa?

Rusty-kaspa is the implemented rewrite of the Kaspa full node in the Rust programming language. This rewrite was the very first Kaspa Improvement Proposal (KIP-1), authored by Michael Sutton and Ori Newman, announced on the Kaspa Discord server in July 2022, and has since been fully implemented. For a beginner, this matters because rusty-kaspa is the live software running the Kaspa network today — understanding that it exists as a formal, community-reviewed improvement proposal shows that Kaspa's development follows a transparent, documented process.