How is Kaspa's new transaction mass formula being rolled out without a hard fork?

Kaspa's new mass formula is being deployed first as a P2P and mining policy, meaning it can go live immediately without requiring every node to upgrade through a coordinated hard fork. In a blockchain network, a hard fork is a protocol change so fundamental that all participants must adopt it at once — skipping that process allows faster deployment, but it means the network initially relies on miners voluntarily following the new rule rather than being forced to. Because of the urgency of this update, the formula is rolling out as a node and mining rule now, while also being scheduled for inclusion in the next upcoming hard fork to make compliance mandatory. For users, this means the stricter transaction validation is already active in practice, even before it becomes an enforced consensus rule.