Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program, Betting on RWA Track

Kadena, a public blockchain established in 2016, recently announced an incentive plan worth 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 developments from Kadena has sparked widespread discussion in the industry. This article will analyze Kadena's recent strategic moves, its historical development, 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.

Financial Elites Create "Programmable POW" Public Chain

Kadena's development history has a close connection with the traditional financial sector. The project was co-founded by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino in 2016, both of whom previously worked in financial institutions. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy was responsible for the development of the core distributed ledger infrastructure for a major bank's blockchain and created the open-source blockchain project Juno. Will Martino served as the chief engineer of the Juno project and was the technical director of the cryptocurrency advisory committee at a regulatory agency. They were involved in developing the infrastructure for the first version of a digital stablecoin circulating between banks.

This blockchain practice experience derived from traditional finance has given Kadena an "enterprise-level" or "institutional-level" 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 composed of multiple independent, concurrently operating peer chains that are interconnected through a "weaving" method. Each chain mines independently and can process transactions in parallel. This design approach also significantly differs from other types of PoW chains on the market, thus positioning Kadena 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 figure far exceeds that of other public chains during the same period, including a certain high-performance public chain known for its speed.

With the halo of its financial 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 USD, which was more than 100 times the 0.2 USD at the beginning of 2020, with a market value nearing 4 billion USD at one point. Moreover, the Kadena network quickly expanded to 20 chains during its initial launch, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

High-Stakes RWA: Can 50 Million in Incentives 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 dropped to around 150 million USD. Its official blog has also not been updated since 2023, and there has been 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 drawn 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 50 million dollar fund pool 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) as well as AI integration projects. This funding is non-equity support, meaning that funded projects do not have 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 focused on sustainable real estate investment. In terms of background, CurveBlock is the first real estate company accepted into the UK Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS)). This also means that CurveBlock's ability to become Kadena's first funding recipient is closely related to compliance.

In addition, Kadena proposes to provide not only funding 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 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 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 plan becomes a challenge

However, the $50 million incentive program launched by Kadena is not the first of its kind. In 2022, during a period of overall market decline and decreased attention, Kadena also launched an incentive program totaling up to $100 million. In that incentive program, Kadena provided funding for the development and adoption of projects in the Kadena ecosystem, including gaming, the metaverse, NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and DAOs.

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 results." Looking through the subsequent quarterly summaries, it can be seen that the program has gradually announced some projects, but ultimately no overall situation report on the incentive program has been found, and no specific funding amounts were mentioned when each funded project 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 continues to decline, and on the other hand, the only observable TVL-related data on the network has dropped to several hundred thousand dollars, the lowest in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only $940,000, and the market value of stablecoins was about $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 and larger market cycle. Nonetheless, to some extent, if Kadena's incentive measures encounter a market trend similar to that of 2022, it may face another "bamboo basket fetching water" situation.

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

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