Kadena Public Chain Launches $50 Million Incentive Program, Betting on RWA Track to Seek New Opportunities

Recently, Kadena, a public blockchain established in 2016, announced the launch of an incentive program of up to $50 million. This move seems intended to re-attract attention from the cryptocurrency market through the currently popular RWA sector. After a period of silence, this series of new developments from Kadena has sparked extensive discussion in the industry. This article will delve into Kadena's recent strategic initiatives, its past development history, and its unique technical architecture, and explore whether this large-scale incentive program can bring new development opportunities, as well as its potential in the RWA field.

Financial elites create "Programmable POW" technology innovation

Kadena's development process has close ties to traditional financial institutions. Founded in 2016 by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, both of its founders have previously held positions at financial giants. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy was responsible for the development of a major bank's core distributed ledger infrastructure and created the open-source blockchain project Juno. Will Martino served as the chief engineer of the Juno project and was the technical director on the cryptocurrency advisory committee of a regulatory body. They also participated in the construction of the infrastructure for the first version of a digital stablecoin for interbank circulation.

This experience with blockchain practices originating from traditional financial institutions has given Kadena an "enterprise-level" or "institutional-level" design philosophy from the very beginning.

Kadena's core technological innovation lies in its unique Chainweb architecture, which is a scalable, multi-chain parallel proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Chainweb is not a single blockchain, but rather a network made up of multiple independent, concurrently running peer chains interconnected through a "weaving" method. Each chain mines independently and is capable of processing transactions in parallel. This design approach also differs significantly from other types of PoW chains on the market, which is why Kadena positions itself as the only programmable L1.

Under this design architecture, there is theoretically a very high throughput. In 2020, with the expansion of 20 chains, Kadena claimed that the theoretical TPS reached 480,000. This data value far exceeds that of other public chains during the same period, including a well-known public chain that is renowned for its speed.

With the halo of its financial institution background and technological advantages, Kadena once became a star among public chains since its establishment. In 2021, its token reached a peak price of $27, which was more than 100 times higher than the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, and its market capitalization once approached $4 billion. In addition, the Kadena network quickly expanded to 20 chains during its initial launch, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

High-Stakes Betting on RWA: Can a 50 Million Incentive Break the Deadlock?

However, Kadena's glory faded away with the end of the bull market in 2021. Since 2021, its price has plummeted significantly, and its market capitalization has dropped to only about $150 million. Its official blog has also not been updated since 2023, and there have been very few news updates about Kadena on social media.

On May 20, 2025, Kadena announced the launch of a $50 million incentive program aimed at promoting the development of Chainweb EVM, RWA tokenization, and AI-driven blockchain solutions. This news has also brought the market's attention back to this established public chain.

According to official information, 25 million USD from the total funding pool of 50 million USD will be specifically used to support compliant RWA tokenization projects. The remaining 25 million USD will be used to support projects built on the Kadena multi-chain EVM-compatible network (Chainweb EVM) and AI integration projects. This funding is non-equity support, meaning that funded projects do not need to give up equity.

The first RWA field recipient of Kadena's new incentive program is CurveBlock, a UK company that received $400,000 in funding in June 2025. Founded in 2018, CurveBlock is a UK real estate tech startup focused on sustainable real estate investment. In terms of background, CurveBlock is the first real estate company to be accepted into the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS)). This also means that the reason CurveBlock was able to become the first recipient of Kadena's funding is closely tied to compliance.

In addition, Kadena has proposed to provide not only financial support but also technical assistance, project development advice, marketing, and promotion.

However, Kadena has not specified how much funding each supported enterprise will receive, nor has it disclosed the specific criteria for funding. As of now, the only publicly disclosed supported enterprise is CurveBlock.

RWA is a popular track in the market in recent years, with many established public chains actively seeking transformation through this narrative. In addition to launching incentive programs, Kadena has also recently developed an RWA token standard based on its native smart contract language Pact, which references Ethereum's EIP-3643. This standard aims to enforce on-chain permissions and regulatory controls, supporting compliant asset issuance, trading, and redemption.

Previous $100 million incentive failed, funding plan becomes a difficult issue

It is worth noting that the $50 million incentive program launched by Kadena is not the first of its kind. In 2022, during a phase of overall market decline and reduced attention, Kadena also launched an incentive program with a total of up to $100 million, aimed at funding the development and adoption of projects in the Kadena ecosystem, including games, metaverse, NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and DAOs.

According to Kadena's official year-end review at the end of 2022, the $100 million incentive program received "overwhelming attention and hundreds of applications," with "a total of 9 projects among the first beneficiaries," some of which have already "achieved extraordinary results." Looking through the subsequent quarterly summaries, it can be seen that the program has gradually announced some projects; however, no overall report on the incentive program was ultimately found, and the specific funding amounts were not mentioned during each announcement of funded projects.

From the performance of the data, this $100 million incentive plan has not been able to enhance Kadena's market attention and community activity. On one hand, its price continues to decline, while on the other hand, the only visible data online related to TVL has dropped to several hundred thousand dollars, the lowest in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only $940,000, with the stablecoin market cap at approximately $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive program, the market cycle launched is also very similar to that of 2022. Both occurred after the first peak of a bull market. However, we currently cannot predict whether the subsequent market cycle will replicate the overall bear market of 2021-2022 or open up a new and larger market cycle. Nevertheless, to some extent, if Kadena's incentive measures encounter a market trend similar to 2022, it may face another challenge.

In addition, unlike other public chains that directly incentivize users, Kadena's incentives are more aimed at project parties. In the absence of a user base, project parties may face greater investment risks when choosing Kadena solely for uncertain incentives. Moreover, looking closely at some of the promotional plans Kadena has launched for users, the incentive involves at least 4 weeks of promotion followed by a lottery, where 50 lucky winners can receive 40 KDA. Based on the current price of KDA at $0.48, a user's one-month promotion might not even yield a reward of $20, which somewhat diminishes the cost-effectiveness of such incentives.

Therefore, although the narrative of RWA is popular and the $50 million incentive is substantial, it seems that Kadena currently needs to consider how to gain market and community recognition in a more sincere manner. Otherwise, this time's $50 million incentive may face significant challenges.