Kadena bets $50 million on RWA incentives to see if it can return to the spotlight

Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program, Betting on RWA to Help It Return to Market Spotlight

Recently, the public chain Kadena, established in 2016, announced the launch of an incentive program of up to $50 million, seemingly aimed at regaining 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 a "Programmable POW" Dark Horse

Kadena's development history has deep connections with traditional financial giants and regulatory agencies. Kadena was co-founded in 2016 by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, both of whom had extensive experience in the financial sector prior to founding Kadena. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy led a large bank's blockchain excellence center, responsible for the development of the bank's core distributed ledger infrastructure and created its open-source blockchain project. Will Martino served as the chief engineer for this project and was previously the technical director of a cryptocurrency advisory board at a regulatory agency. They were responsible for the development of the first version of a well-known digital stablecoin's infrastructure.

This experience in blockchain practices originating from traditional finance 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 made up of multiple independent, simultaneously 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 also significantly different from other types of PoW chains on the market, 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 value far exceeded that of other public chains at the same time, including a certain well-known public chain renowned 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, which is more than 100 times higher than the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, with its market capitalization nearing $4 billion at one point. In addition, the Kadena network quickly expanded to 20 chains in its early launch, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

The veteran public chain Kadena launches a $50 million incentive program, betting on RWA as a cure or a repeat of past mistakes

High-Stakes RWA: Can 50 Million 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 value has dropped to around 150 million dollars. Its official blog has 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 an incentive program totaling $50 million, aimed at promoting the development of Chainweb EVM, RWA tokenization, and AI-driven blockchain solutions. This news has also brought the market's attention back 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 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 (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 RWA recipient 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. Background-wise, CurveBlock is the first real estate company accepted into the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS)). This also means that CurveBlock's ability to become Kadena's first funding recipient is closely tied to compliance reasons.

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

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

RWA is a popular sector 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 has also been expanding in this direction recently. In addition to launching incentive programs, Kadena has also 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 established public chain Kadena launches a $50 million incentive program, betting on RWA as the cure or a repeat of past mistakes

The previous 100 million USD incentive failed, and the funding plan has become a difficult problem.

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 in the Kadena ecosystem, including games, 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 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, but ultimately no overall description of the incentive program was found, and no specific funding amounts were mentioned when each funded project was announced.

From the performance of the data, the 100 million USD incentive plan has not been able to enhance Kadena's market follow and community activity. On one hand, its price is still on a downward trend, and on the other hand, the only visible TVL-related data online has fallen to several hundred thousand USD at its lowest in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only 940,000 USD, and the market value of stablecoins was about 180,000 USD.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive program, the market cycle launched is extremely similar to that of 2022. Both are after the first peak of a bull market. However, we cannot predict whether the subsequent market cycle will replicate the overall bear market of 2021-2022 or open up a new, 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".

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 by choosing Kadena solely 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, users may not even earn $20 in rewards after a month of promotion, making the cost-effectiveness of such incentives seem somewhat lacking.

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 time the $50 million incentive may again end up being a lot of noise with little effect.

Veteran public chain Kadena launches $50 million incentive plan, betting on RWA as a cure or a repeat of past mistakes

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StableGeniusDegenvip
· 07-28 18:36
Just dig the hole and it's done. Those who understand, understand.
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LiquidationAlertvip
· 07-28 18:25
Only getting on board RWA now? Not very optimistic.
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DAOdreamervip
· 07-27 08:11
Only fifty million? That's like giving alms.
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CryptoComedianvip
· 07-27 08:11
The meal money is for food, the coin money is a scam.
View OriginalReply0
GasGuzzlervip
· 07-27 08:10
Old projects riding on new concepts are just following the trend.
View OriginalReply0
AirdropHunter007vip
· 07-27 08:10
Fifty million has gone down the drain, right? The sense of presence is too low.
View OriginalReply0
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