There is always action in some pocket of the crypto market even when the headline numbers don’t show much going on, just as the still surface of a pond can mask the extent of the dynamic ecosystem below.

That’s been the case recently. Since last Friday, the negative price action in bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) has pulled the total market value of digital assets lower by 3.4% to $2.22 trillion, painting a dour picture of the crypto market.

That decline, however, obscures the 26% surge in the Kaspa blockchain’s KAS token. The token, ranked 27th in market value, has topped 18 cents and is nearing the record high of $0.196 reached early this month, according to data source CoinGecko. That makes KAS the best-performing coin among the top 100 digital assets in terms of market value.

The outperformance follows bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (MARA)’s decision to diversify its revenue stream by adding KAS mining. The company said it has mined 93 million KAS tokens since September.

Kaspa’s proof-of-work blockchain utilizes the GHOSTDAG (Greedy Heaviest Observed Sub-Tree Directed Acyclic Graph) protocol to enhance its performance and scalability.

GHOSTDAG prioritizes not just the longest chain but also additional blocks referenced by other blocks in the network, thereby making the blockchain more secure and resilient. Traditional blockchains tend to select the longest chain to achieve final consistency, which slows down the network’s transaction throughput.

KAS’ weekly gain is accompanied by a 58% surge in futures open interest to $65 million, with funding rates holding positive, according to data source Coinglass. That shows an influx of new money on the bullish side and validates the rally in price.