Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program, Betting on RWA for Breakthrough

Kadena, a public blockchain established in 2016, recently announced an incentive program of up to $50 million, seemingly aimed at regaining market attention through the currently popular RWA track. After a period of silence, this series of new moves by Kadena has sparked widespread discussion in the industry. This article will delve into Kadena's recent strategic deployments, development history, and unique technological architecture, exploring whether this large-scale incentive program can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

Financial elites create the new star of "programmable POW"

Kadena's development is closely linked to financial giants. The project was co-founded by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino in 2016, both of whom previously worked at a large bank. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy led the bank's blockchain excellence center, responsible for the development of core distributed ledger infrastructure, and created the open-source blockchain project Juno. Will Martino served as the chief engineer of the Juno project and was the technical lead on the cryptocurrency advisory committee of a regulatory agency. They participated in developing the first version of the infrastructure for the digital stablecoin circulating between banks.

This practice experience of blockchain, which originates from traditional finance, gives 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 of multiple independent peer chains that run simultaneously and are interconnected through a "weaving" method. Each chain mines independently and can process transactions in parallel. This design approach differs significantly 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 its theoretical TPS reached 480,000. This 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 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 was more than 100 times the $0.2 price at the beginning of 2020, with its market capitalization approaching $4 billion at one point. Furthermore, the Kadena network quickly expanded to 20 chains shortly after its launch, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

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 USD. Its official blog has not been updated since 2023, and there is also 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 brought the market's attention back to this established public chain. Will it start to rebrand itself like a certain public chain did in the past?

According to official information, 25 million USD from the total fund pool of 50 million USD will be specifically used to support compliant RWA tokenization projects. The remaining 25 million USD 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 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's Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS)). This also means that the reason CurveBlock could become the first beneficiary of Kadena is closely related to compliance.

In addition, Kadena proposed that besides providing financial support, it will also offer technical assistance, project development advice, marketing and promotion, etc.

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

RWA has become 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 has recently 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.

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

However, the $50 million incentive program launched by Kadena is not the first of its kind. In 2022, during a period marked by an overall market decline and reduced attention, Kadena also launched an incentive program totaling up to $100 million. In that incentive, Kadena provided funding for the development and adoption of projects in its ecosystem, including gaming, 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 the "first batch of beneficiaries totaling 9 projects," some of which have already "achieved remarkable success." Looking through the subsequent quarterly summaries, it can be seen that the program has gradually announced some projects, but ultimately no overall report on the incentive program was found, nor were specific funding amounts mentioned during the announcements of each funded project.

From the performance of the data, the $100 million incentive program has not been able to enhance Kadena's market attention and community activity. On one hand, its price continues to decline, while 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, and the market value of stablecoins was approximately $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive plan, the market cycle launched is extremely 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. Nevertheless, in a certain sense, 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 geared towards project parties. In the absence of a user base, project parties may face greater investment risks by choosing Kadena solely for uncertain incentives. Moreover, when examining 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 might not even earn $20 in rewards for a month of promotion, making the cost-effectiveness of this incentive somewhat questionable.

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 community in a more sincere way. Otherwise, this $50 million incentive may end up being another case of much ado about nothing.