Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program, Betting on Whether RWA Can Make a Comeback?

Recently, the public blockchain Kadena, established in 2016, announced the launch of an incentive program of up to $50 million, aiming to regain the spotlight in the cryptocurrency market through the currently popular RWA track. 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 moves, its past development history, and its unique technical architecture, and explore whether this large-scale incentive program can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

Financial Elites Create "Programmable POW" Public Chain

The development history of Kadena has a profound relationship with traditional financial giants. Founded jointly by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino in 2016, both founders previously held positions at a large financial institution. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy led the blockchain excellence center of the institution, responsible for the development of core distributed ledger infrastructure and created its open-source blockchain project. Will Martino served as the chief engineer of that project and was the technical director for the cryptocurrency advisory committee at a regulatory agency. They participated in developing the infrastructure for the first version of the institution's digital stablecoin.

This blockchain practice experience, originating from traditional financial giants, gives Kadena from the very beginning a design philosophy of "enterprise-level" or "institutional-level".

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; rather, it is a network of multiple independent, concurrently operating peer chains interconnected through a "weaving" method. Each chain mines independently and can process transactions in parallel. This design approach also distinguishes it significantly from other types of PoW chains on the market, and thus, 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 at the same time, including a certain high-performance public chain known for its speed.

With the halo of its financial background and technological advantages, Kadena has become a star among public chains since its establishment. In 2021, its token reached a peak price of $27, up more than 100 times compared to $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, with a market cap that once approached $4 billion. Additionally, the Kadena network quickly expanded to 20 chains at its initial 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 value has dropped to around $150 million. 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 also drawn the market's attention back to this public chain. Will it begin to reshape its brand like a certain public chain did in the past?

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

The first RWA sector beneficiary 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 proptech startup focusing 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 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 have they disclosed the specific criteria for funding. As of now, the only publicly known funded 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 certain public chain has recently expanded in this direction. 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.

A $100 million incentive failed, making the funding plan difficult to implement.

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, which provided funding for the development and adoption of projects such as 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 attention and hundreds of applications," with "a total of 9 projects among the first batch of funded recipients," some of which have already "achieved remarkable success." Looking through the subsequent quarterly summaries, it can be seen that the program has gradually announced some projects, but ultimately no overall description of the incentive program was found, and specific funding amounts were not mentioned during each announcement of funded projects.

From the performance of the data, the $100 million incentive program has not been able to enhance Kadena's market attention and community activity. On one hand, its price is still on a downward trend, and on the other hand, the only visible data online related to TVL has fallen to several hundred thousand dollars at its lowest point 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 also extremely 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, if Kadena's incentive measures encounter a market trend similar to that of 2022, it may face yet another challenge.

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 when choosing Kadena solely for uncertain incentives. Looking closely at some of the user-oriented promotional plans launched by Kadena, the incentive content requires 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 month-long promotion may ultimately yield less than $20 in rewards, making the cost-effectiveness of this incentive somewhat lacking.

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