Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program, Betting on RWA for Breakthrough

Kadena, a public blockchain project established in 2016, recently announced an incentive plan of up to $50 million, seemingly aimed at regaining market attention through the currently popular RWA track. After a period of dormancy, this series of new moves by Kadena has sparked widespread discussion in the industry. This article will delve into Kadena's recent strategic initiatives, its past development history, and its unique technological architecture, as well as explore whether this large-scale incentive plan can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

The Birth of "Programmable POW"

Kadena's development has deep roots with traditional financial giants and regulatory agencies. The project 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 its open-source blockchain project. Will Martino served as the chief engineer for the project and previously held the role of technical lead on a cryptocurrency advisory board at a regulatory agency. They were involved in developing the foundational infrastructure for the first version of the financial institution's digital stablecoin.

This experience with blockchain practices originating from traditional financial giants gives 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 composed of multiple independent, concurrently operating peer chains that are interconnected in a "weaving" manner. Each chain mines independently and can process transactions in parallel. This design approach is significantly different from other types of PoW chains on the market, and as such, 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 high-performance public chain known for its speed.

With its unique background and technological advantages, Kadena became a star among public chains since its establishment. In 2021, its token reached a peak price of $27, rising more than 100 times from the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, with its market value approaching $4 billion at one point. Additionally, 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 significantly, and its market capitalization has dropped to around 150 million USD. Its official blog has not been updated since 2023, and news about Kadena is rarely heard 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 drawn the market's attention to this established public blockchain.

According to official sources, 25 million dollars of the total 50 million dollars funding pool will be specifically allocated 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) as well as AI integration projects. This funding is non-equity support, meaning that funded projects do not need to give up equity.

The first recipient of funding in the Kadena new incentive program's RWA sector is CurveBlock, a UK company that received $400,000 in funding in June 2025. Founded in 2018, CurveBlock is a UK property 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 Kadena's first funding recipient is closely related to compliance.

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

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

RWA has become a popular sector 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.

The previous $100 million incentive has failed, making the funding plan 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 totaling up to $100 million to fund the development and adoption of projects such as gaming, 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 attention and hundreds of applications," with "a total of 9 projects funded in the first batch," some of which have already "achieved extraordinary accomplishments." Looking through the subsequent quarterly summaries, it can be seen that the program has gradually announced some projects, but ultimately no overall explanation regarding the incentive program was found, and the specific funding amounts were not mentioned during each announcement of the funded projects.

From the performance of the data, this $100 million incentive plan has not managed to increase Kadena's market attention and community activity. On one hand, its price continues to decline, while on the other hand, the only visible data on the network related to TVL has fallen to several hundred thousand dollars at its lowest in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only $940,000, and the market value of stablecoins was approximately $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive program, the market cycle launched is remarkably 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, larger market cycle. Nevertheless, to some extent, Kadena's incentive measures may face another challenge if it encounters a market trend similar to that of 2022.

In addition, unlike other public chains that directly incentivize users, Kadena's incentives are more targeted towards project parties. In the absence of user volume, project parties may face greater investment risks when choosing Kadena solely for uncertain incentives. Looking closely at some of the user-oriented promotional plans launched by Kadena, the incentives involve 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 promotion over a month may not even yield a reward of $20, making the cost-effectiveness of such incentives somewhat lacking.

Therefore, although the narrative around RWA is popular and the $50 million incentive is substantial, it seems that what Kadena needs to consider right now is how to gain market and community recognition in a more sincere way. Otherwise, this $50 million incentive may face significant challenges once again.