Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program Focused on RWA Development

Founded in 2016, the public blockchain Kadena recently announced a $50 million incentive program, seemingly aimed at regaining market attention through the currently popular RWA sector. 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 initiatives, past development history, and its unique technological architecture, and explore whether this large-scale incentive program can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

Innovation of "Programmable POW" Against the Background of Financial Giants

Kadena was founded with deep roots in traditional financial giants. Founded in 2016 by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, both founders previously worked at a large financial institution. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy led the institution's blockchain excellence center, responsible for the development of core distributed ledger infrastructure. Will Martino served as the chief engineer for related projects and was the technical director on the cryptocurrency advisory committee for regulatory bodies.

This blockchain practice experience, rooted in traditional financial giants, imbues 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 running peer chains that are interconnected in a "woven" manner. 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, which is why 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 during the same period, including a certain high-performance public chain known for its speed.

With the backing of financial giants 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 was more than 100 times the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, with a market capitalization nearing $4 billion at one point. Additionally, the Kadena network rapidly 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 significantly, and its market capitalization 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 blockchain.

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 funded projects do not have to give up equity.

The first RWA 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's Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS)). This also means that CurveBlock's ability to become Kadena's first beneficiary is closely related to compliance.

In addition, Kadena proposes 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 has it disclosed the specific criteria for funding. So far, the only publicly known funded enterprise is CurveBlock.

RWA has become a popular sector in the market in recent years, with many established public chains 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 related proposals from a certain public chain. This standard aims to enforce on-chain permissions and regulatory controls, supporting compliant asset issuance, trading, and redemption.

After a $100 million incentive failed, funding plans have become a challenge.

It is worth noting that 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 which Kadena provided funding for the development and adoption of projects such as games, 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 extraordinary results." Looking through the subsequent quarterly summaries, it can be seen that the program has gradually announced some projects; however, a comprehensive overview of the incentive program has not been found, and the specific funding amounts were not mentioned during each announcement of the funded projects.

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 visible TVL-related data on the network has fallen to several hundred thousand dollars at its lowest point in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only $940,000, with the market capitalization of stablecoins around $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive plan, the market cycle being launched is also very 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. Nevertheless, 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 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 content of the incentives 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 receive $20 in rewards for a month's promotion, which makes the cost-effectiveness of this incentive somewhat inadequate.

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