Kadena launches a $50 million incentive program, betting on whether RWA can become a turning point?

Recently, the public chain Kadena, established in 2016, announced the launch of an incentive program of up to $50 million. This move seems aimed at regaining attention in the cryptocurrency market through the currently popular RWA track. After a period of silence, Kadena's series of new developments have 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 program can bring new opportunities for development and its potential in the RWA field.

The "Programmable POW" Public Chain Created by Traditional Financial Elites

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

This blockchain practice experience, rooted in traditional finance, has endowed Kadena with 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 made up of multiple independent, concurrently running peer chains that are interconnected through a "weaving" method. Each chain mines independently and can process transactions in parallel. This design approach also differs significantly from other types of PoW chains on the market, positioning Kadena as the only programmable L1.

In this design architecture, there is theoretically a very high throughput. In 2020, under 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 certain high-performance public chains known for their speed.

With the background halo and technological advantages of its founding team, Kadena once became a star among public chains since its establishment. In 2021, its token price peaked at $27, an increase of over 100 times compared to the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, with a market value that once neared $4 billion. 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, and its market value has dropped to around $150 million. 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 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 established public chain.

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 the funded projects do not need to give up equity.

The first RWA field 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 real estate tech 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 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 officials have not stated how much funding each funded enterprise will receive, nor have they disclosed the specific criteria for funding. As of now, the only publicly disclosed funded enterprise is CurveBlock.

RWA has become a popular track in the market in recent years, with many established public chains actively seeking transformation through this narrative. For example, a well-known public chain has recently also been expanding 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 previous incentive of 100 million USD failed, making the funding plan a challenge.

It is worth noting that the $50 million incentive plan launched by Kadena is not the first of its kind. In 2022, during a period of overall market decline and reduced attention, Kadena also launched an incentive plan totaling up to $100 million. In that incentive, Kadena funded the development and adoption of projects related to gaming, the metaverse, NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and DAOs within the Kadena ecosystem.

According to Kadena's official year-end review at the end of 2022, the $100 million incentive program received "overwhelming interest and hundreds of applications," with "a total of 9 projects among the first batch of recipients," 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 did not find an overall situation report on the incentive program, and the specific funding amounts were also not mentioned during each announcement of the funded projects.

From the performance of the data, the $100 million incentive plan has not been able 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 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 cap of stablecoins was about $180,000.

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

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 Kadena's user-oriented promotional plans, the incentive involves at least 4 weeks of promotion followed by a lottery, where 50 lucky winners can receive 40 KDA each. Based on the current price of KDA at $0.48, a user’s month-long promotion may not even yield $20 in rewards, making the cost-effectiveness of such incentives appear somewhat inadequate.

Therefore, although the narrative of 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 manner. Otherwise, this $50 million incentive may once again face significant challenges.