Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program to Bet on RWA for Development

Recently, the public blockchain Kadena, established in 2016, announced the launch of an incentive program worth up to $50 million, aimed at regaining market spotlight through the currently popular RWA track. After a period of silence, this series of new developments from Kadena has drawn widespread attention in the industry. This article will delve into Kadena's recent strategic initiatives, past development history, and its unique technical architecture, exploring whether this large-scale incentive program can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

Financial elites create the "Programmable POW" dark horse

Kadena was co-founded by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino in 2016, both of whom have extensive backgrounds in fintech. Before founding Kadena, Stuart Popejoy led the blockchain excellence center of a major bank, 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 director of a cryptocurrency advisory committee at a regulatory agency. They were involved in developing the infrastructure for the first version of a digital stablecoin that circulates between banks.

This blockchain practice experience, rooted in traditional financial giants, gives Kadena from the very beginning a design philosophy that is "enterprise-level" or "institutional-level."

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 formed by multiple independent, simultaneously running peer chains interconnected through a "weaving" method. 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, thus positioning Kadena 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 well-known public chain renowned for its speed.

With the aura 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, up more than 100 times from $0.2 in early 2020, with a market value nearing $4 billion at one point. 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 brought the market's attention back to this veteran 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, which means that funded projects do not need to relinquish equity.

The first RWA-funded 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. From the background, CurveBlock is the first real estate company to be accepted into the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS). This also means that CurveBlock's ability to become Kadena's first funded entity is closely related to compliance.

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

However, Kadena has not specified how much funding each supported enterprise will receive, nor has it disclosed the specific criteria for funding. As of now, the only publicly announced 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 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 previous $100 million 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 provided funding for the development and adoption of projects such as gaming, 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, we can see 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 during the announcements of the funded projects.

From the performance of the data, this $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 dropped to several hundred thousand dollars at its lowest in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only $940,000, and the market value of stablecoins was about $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive program, the launched market cycle is extremely similar to that of 2022. Both occurred after the first peak of a bull market. However, we are currently unable to predict whether the subsequent market cycle will replicate the overall bear trend 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 "futile effort."

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 when choosing Kadena merely for uncertain incentives. Looking closely at some of the promotional plans Kadena has launched for users, the content of the incentives involves at least four 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, users might not even earn $20 in rewards for 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 at the moment is how to gain market and community recognition in a more sincere manner. Otherwise, this $50 million incentive may end up being another case of much ado about nothing.