This is a proposal to change the denomination of KSM in the Kusama chain specification. The redenomination will be a proportional increase of allocated KSMs by a factor of 100.
The below text is basically copied and slightly adjusted from referendum #52: https://kusama.polkassembly.io/referendum/52
In brief the proposal has the following four effects:
The total allocations of KSMs will increase one hundred times from ~10 million to ~1 billion.
KSM allocation balances will increase by a factor of one hundred, such that 1 KSM (old) will be 100 New KSMs.
The distribution of KSMs does not change, and holders of KSMs still own an equal share of the network as before the change.
The precision of KSM will change from 12 decimal places to 10 decimal places.
The main benefit of this change is to avoid using small decimals when dealing with KSM and to achieve an easier calculation system, the same as in the Polkadot redenomination of DOT.
What does this proposal change?
The proposal is a change to what magnitude of units is considered the KSM, and does not imply any technical consequences. The lowest unit of the KSM, the Planck, does not change. Rather it is the number of Plancks that make up one KSM that does.
Let's consider how many Plancks constitute a single KSM before the change. Since KSM has 12 decimal places, it would be:
1,000,000,000,000 Plancks = 1 KSM
All KSM allocation holders will keep the same number of Plancks after this change, however where the decimal is being placed will be moved:
Before the change the decimal was here
v
1.000000000000 KSM
100.0000000000 KSM
^
After the change the decimal will be here
This decimal move means that:
10,000,000,000 Plancks = 1 KSM
This change does not modify the overall allocation of KSMs at the Planck level, and the network share of individual holdings remains exactly the same.
It does change the fractional divisibility of the KSM from twelve decimal place to ten decimal places.
In the most basic terms, the proposal is only to change what is called a "KSM".
What is the system remark?
The system remark is the utf-8 encoding of the first two sentences of this document.