Kadena Public Chain Launches $50 Million Incentive Program, Focusing on the RWA Track

Kadena's public chain recently announced a $50 million incentive program, seemingly aimed at returning to the spotlight of the cryptocurrency market through the currently popular RWA track. This series of new developments has sparked widespread attention in the industry. Let’s delve into Kadena's strategic initiatives, development history, and technical architecture, and explore whether this large-scale incentive program can bring new development opportunities.

Background and Technical Advantages of Kadena

Kadena was co-founded by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino in 2016. Both founders previously worked at large financial institutions, where they were responsible for the development of core distributed ledger infrastructure. This blockchain practice experience, stemming from traditional finance, imbued Kadena with an "enterprise-grade" or "institutional-grade" 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 operating peer chains interconnected through a "weaving" approach. Each chain mines independently and can process transactions in parallel. This design makes Kadena the only programmable L1.

Under this architecture, Kadena theoretically has a very high throughput. In 2020, with the expansion of 20 chains, Kadena claimed a theoretical TPS of 480,000, far exceeding other public chains at the same time.

With its technological advantages, Kadena once became a star in the public chain space since its establishment. In 2021, its token peaked at a price of $27, with a market cap approaching $4 billion at one point. The Kadena network also quickly expanded to 20 chains at its launch, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

50 Million Incentive Plan Focuses on RWA

However, Kadena's glory faded 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. Its official blog and social media updates have also become sparse.

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 brought the market's attention back to this established public chain.

According to official information, $25 million of the total $50 million fund pool will be specifically used 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 and AI integration projects. This funding is non-equity-based, and the funded projects do not need to relinquish equity.

The first RWA field beneficiary of Kadena's new incentive program is the UK-based company CurveBlock, which received a funding of $400,000 in June 2025. CurveBlock is a UK real estate tech startup focused on sustainable real estate investment and is the first real estate company to be accepted into the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox.

In addition to providing financial support, Kadena also promises to offer technical assistance, project development advice, marketing, and promotional support.

Challenges Facing the Incentive Program

It is worth noting that this is not Kadena's first large-scale incentive program. In 2022, Kadena launched an incentive program with a total amount of up to $100 million to fund projects related to gaming, the metaverse, NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and DAOs. However, this program does not seem to have significantly increased Kadena's market attention and community activity.

Looking back at the current $50 million incentive program, its launch market cycle is similar to that of 2022, both occurring after the first peak of the bull market. If a market trend similar to that of 2022 occurs, Kadena may face the risk of "water being carried in a bamboo basket" again.

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. Meanwhile, Kadena's user-oriented promotion plan offers relatively small incentives, which may struggle to attract sustained user participation.

Conclusion

Although the narrative around RWA is popular and the $50 million incentive amount is considerable, what Kadena needs to think about now is how to gain market and community recognition in a more sincere manner. Otherwise, this $50 million incentive plan may face a disappointing outcome of much noise but little action. Whether Kadena can revitalize itself through this bet on the RWA track remains to be seen.