Why did Kaspa adopt oPoW, and what happened to it?

Kaspa adopted oPoW (optical proof-of-work) before mainnet launch because the team believed it could reduce energy waste and be more decentralized than ASIC mining — but the hardware never materialized and the effort ultimately wound down. oPoW was chosen partly because it is as secure as SHA-256, and its energy-efficiency benefits were expected to kick in only once specialized optical hardware existed. In the meantime, the network remained mineable by anyone with a CPU or GPU. The external group developing that hardware dissolved, and DAGlabs (the for-profit entity behind early Kaspa development) also dissolved — meaning no insider group ever held hardware advantages or a premine. For a beginner, the key takeaway is that Kaspa's mining history shows it launched on genuinely open terms: no pre-mined coins, no special hardware for insiders, and no single company still controlling its direction.