# Kusama | Moonbeam | Moonriver ## Kusama Kusama is a public pre-production environment for Polkadot, one that allows any developer to experiment and test new blockchains or applications before releasing them on this network. In this way, it can be said Kusama acts as a kind of sandbox for developers looking to test early versions of Polkadot projects, but with real cryptocurrency traded on an open market. Official Polkadot upgrades are also tested on Kusama before their release. ## Moonriver The Moonbeam Foundation created Moonriver to be an Ethereum-compatible blockchain environment on the Kusama (KSM) network. Moonriver is intended to operate on Kusama as a parachain, helping crypto projects expand their reach to new users and markets with a multi-chain approach. Moonriver is intended to function as the “canary network” for Moonbeam on Polkadot, meaning that new code would ship to Moonriver first, where it can be tested and verified under real economic conditions, before being shipped on Moonbea