The veteran public chain Kadena launches a large-scale incentive program, betting on whether RWA can regain momentum?

Recently, the public blockchain Kadena, established in 2016, announced a $50 million incentive program, seemingly aimed at regaining market focus by leveraging the currently popular RWA sector. After a period of silence, this series of new developments from Kadena has attracted widespread attention in the industry. This article will delve into Kadena's recent strategic initiatives, development history, and technical architecture, exploring whether this large-scale incentive plan can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

Financial elites create the "programmable POW" dark horse

Kadena's development history is closely linked with financial giants and regulatory agencies. The public chain was co-founded by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino in 2016, both of whom previously worked at a large financial institution. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy led the institution's blockchain excellence center, responsible for the development of core distributed ledger infrastructure, and created the open-source blockchain project Juno. Will Martino served as the chief engineer for the Juno project and was the technical director of the cryptocurrency advisory committee at a regulatory agency. They participated in the development of the infrastructure for the first version of a digital stablecoin circulating between certain banks.

This blockchain practice experience, rooted in traditional financial institutions, has given Kadena an "enterprise-grade" or "institutional-grade" design concept 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 that are interconnected through a "weaving" method. Each chain mines independently and is capable of processing transactions in parallel. This design approach is significantly different from other types of PoW chains on the market, hence 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 certain well-known public chain known for its speed.

With the halo of its financial institution background and technological advantages, Kadena became a star among public chains since its establishment. In 2021, its token price peaked at $27, an increase of more than 100 times compared to the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, with a market value approaching $4 billion at one point. In addition, the Kadena network rapidly expanded to 20 chains shortly after its launch, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

High-Stakes 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, and its market capitalization has fallen to around 150 million USD. Its official blog has not been updated since 2023, and there is also little news 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 once again brought the market's attention to this established public chain. Will it also begin to reshape its brand like a certain public chain did in the past?

According to official information, 25 million dollars of the total funding pool of 50 million dollars will be specifically used to support compliant RWA tokenization projects. The remaining 25 million dollars 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 the funded projects do not need to give up equity.

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

In addition, Kadena 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. So far, the only publicly disclosed supported enterprise is CurveBlock.

RWA is a popular track in the market in recent years, and many established public chains are actively seeking transformation through this narrative. For example, a well-known public chain is also expanding in this direction recently. 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 program implementation becomes a challenge

However, 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 totaling up to $100 million. In that incentive, Kadena funded the development and adoption of projects related to gaming, the metaverse, NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and DAOs within the Kadena ecosystem.

According to Kadena's official annual review at the end of 2022, the $100 million incentive program received "overwhelming interest and hundreds of applications," with "nine projects in total being funded in the first batch," 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, a comprehensive statement about the overall situation of the incentive program was ultimately not found, and there was no mention of specific funding amounts when each round of funded projects was announced.

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 is still on a downward trend, while on the other hand, the only visible data on the network is related to TVL, which fell to several hundred thousand dollars at its lowest in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only $940,000, with a stablecoin market value of about $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive plan, the launched market cycle is very similar to that of 2022. Both occurred after the first peak of a bull market. However, we are currently unable to 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 that of 2022, it may once again lead to a "futile effort."

In addition, unlike other public chains that directly incentivize users, Kadena's incentives are more focused on project parties. In the absence of user volume, project parties may face greater investment risks in choosing Kadena merely for uncertain incentives. Looking closely at some of the user-oriented promotional programs introduced by Kadena, the content of the incentives involves at least 4 weeks of promotion followed by a lottery, where 50 lucky winners can receive 40 KDA each. Based on the current price of KDA at $0.48, users may not even earn $20 in rewards after a month of promotion, making the cost-effectiveness of such incentives somewhat questionable.

Therefore, although the narrative of RWA is popular and the $50 million incentive is substantial, it seems that what Kadena needs to consider now is how to gain recognition from the market and the community in a more sincere way. Otherwise, this $50 million incentive may end up being yet another case of much ado about nothing.