On December 16 at 4 PM, I was watching the KITE Chiang Mai dev party live on Discord. The venue was packed. OpenBuild, 4seasDeSoc, and ETHChiangMai co-hosted the event, with dozens of digital nomads gathered around a whiteboard discussing how to use USDC to buy API services. The air was filled with the aroma of coffee and the sound of keyboards typing. This isn't a crypto roadshow; it's genuine technical exchange.
@GoKiteAI's tour kicked off from Dubai to Chiang Mai and Seoul, it's just that fierce. The official recap tweet on December 17 said builders gathered ideas, flew energy unmatched, 6000 views, 87 likes. It's not bragging, it's real feedback. Chiang Mai has transformed into a digital nomad haven over the past two years. Remote-working engineers and entrepreneurs are gathering here, with strong technical skills and sensitivity to new technologies. There's a high demand for cross-border payments. A Thai designer might simultaneously hire Indian coders, Filipino operators, and Brazilian copywriters. Traditional remittances are excessively expensive. KITE's state-channel zero Gas millisecond payments exactly hit the pain points.
Someone at the scene demonstrated automated replenishment for proxies. They set a rule to pause when the exchange rate fluctuates by 3%. When the RMB crashed in November, it helped him avoid a loss of 800,000. This is not a PPT dream; it is a real case that has been run smoothly. I later chatted with this guy. He said he ran it on the testnet for three months. Dynamic constraints that would take months to develop in traditional ERP systems can be handled with just a few lines of smart contracts on KITE.
On the same day at 7 PM, Perplexity Café in Seoul was buzzing. CEO Chi Zhang personally delivered a keynote on post-TGE progress. The guest was someone from Perplexity AI discussing the agentic internet revolution. Community feedback on electric energy. The recap tweet on December 19 received 7286 views and 111 likes. Upbit and Bithumb in Seoul have top trading volumes. Retail investors are active, but more importantly, Samsung, LG, and the government are investing in AI. KITE is focusing on the B-end breakthrough.
Someone asked how Upbit exchanges for USDC as a proxy payment. Chi, the answerer, mentioned that the mainnet Q1 supports it. Koreans love to be practical. This wave of expectations is full. Perplexity's guest shared a viewpoint that left a deep impression on me. He said that AI Agent technology can now accomplish complex tasks, but is stuck at the payment layer. ChatGPT can help you check flights but cannot directly buy tickets because it has no wallet. Notion AI can write documents but cannot help you buy a premium subscription. This gap is exactly what KITE is filling.
Tokyo Station is next, RSVP is open. Hong Kong, Singapore, San Francisco, and Denver are following up. This route is not random; it has strategic intent. Dubai is the crypto hub in the Middle East, Chiang Mai is the base for Southeast Asian expatriates, Seoul is the market for Korean enterprises, Tokyo is the tech high ground in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are financial hubs, San Francisco is the home base for VC and AI companies, and Denver is part of the North American crypto community. KITE is not scattering pepper; it is precisely positioning itself at key nodes.
The true purpose of the tour is not to promote but to filter builders. I noticed that the co-hosts of each event are local developer organizations that are deeply rooted; they are not just randomly finding a venue and calling people in. OpenBuild has strong influence in Southeast Asia. ETHChiangMai is an active member of the Ethereum community. Through these collaborations, KITE quickly connects with high-quality developers instead of fishing for needles in a haystack.
The feedback on-site was very interesting. Some people complained that the testnet UI was still lagging, while others loved the three-layer key design. The root key is held by the user, the delegated key is used by the proxy, and the session key is discarded after a single use. For enterprises with multiple proxies, the AA wallet is smooth. Someone forked the x402 V2 open-source protocol to try cross-border procurement. Perplexity’s guests in Seoul supported a deeper discussion among Koreans. What the agentic internet lacks is precisely the payment layer, which KITE fills with protocols like A2A and MCP. Their agent calls KITE to pay PYUSD, seamlessly integrated.
The timing of the tour is also quite delicate. The mainnet will launch in Q1 2026. It is now the end of December, about 2 to 3 months before the launch. This window is just right for the final ecosystem preparations, collecting developer feedback, establishing business contacts, and nurturing seed users. Once the mainnet is live, a batch of ready applications and users will directly migrate. It's not a cold start; it’s a warm-up followed by a sprint.
In comparison to Fetch and Bittensor's tours, they are more about making grand claims. KITE is about practical workshops. They demonstrated proxy collaboration on a whiteboard on-site. How to allocate Shapley values? Reputation-driven methods are more effective than shouting slogans. A modeling agent contributing 60% gets the lion's share, while data crawlers only get 8% as the leftovers. The market will sift out quality services on its own.
Community feedback has been enthusiastic. The tweet received 15,000 views and 130 likes. Weekly updates get 6,000 views and 83 likes. There is no FUD; it's just builders aligning. KOLs like Brevis and Manta founders endorse the white paper. Princeton, Uber, Crypto.com, and Coinbase are all from top-tier backgrounds. Trust is hard currency.
I also noticed the tour behind @KITE AI $KITE
#KITE On December 14, they hired a Head of Product Designer and Infra Engineer. Yiguo Wang joined in November, a veteran of Rust Web3. CTO Scott said to raise the engineering bar. The door is open for open-source contributors. The tour is a talent pool, with talent acquired in Chiang Mai, Seoul, and Tokyo. Local costs are low, and execution is strong, providing better cost performance than Silicon Valley.
From December 11, during ADF Week, Chi, along with executives from BlackRock and Circle, saw that the tour is not just community operations; it is paving the way for the B-end. PayPal Ventures leads the PYUSD adaptation, while Coinbase Ventures promotes the x402 protocol. This connection is not just about retail investors; it is about product, market, and technology advancing together. Before the mainnet, 33M was burned in financing to exchange for ecosystem growth.
The KITE dev tour is not about showing off muscles; it is about filtering real builders. Chiang Mai and Seoul ignite the proxy economy. 1.7B testing interactions will turn into production-level applications. The mainnet’s takeoff in Q1 relies on this group of people. #GoKiteAI The tour revolution started from Chiang Mai and Seoul.
