Kadena Launches $50 Million Incentive Program Focused on RWA Track

The public chain project Kadena, established in 2016, recently announced an incentive plan of up to $50 million, seemingly hoping to regain market attention through the currently popular RWA track. After a period of dormancy, Kadena's series of new actions has sparked widespread discussion in the industry. This article will delve into Kadena's recent strategic moves, development history, and technical architecture, exploring whether this large-scale incentive plan can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

Background and Technological Innovations of Kadena

Kadena was co-founded by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino in 2016. Both founders have worked in large financial institutions and have extensive experience in blockchain development. This experience in blockchain practices originating from traditional financial institutions has given Kadena 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 formed by multiple independent, concurrently operating peer chains interconnected in a "woven" manner. Each chain mines independently and can process transactions in parallel. This design approach is significantly different from other types of PoW chains on the market, thus Kadena positions itself as the only programmable L1.

Under this design architecture, Kadena theoretically has a very high throughput. In 2020, with the expansion of 20 chains, Kadena claimed that its theoretical TPS reached 480,000, far exceeding other public chains at the same time.

With its technological advantages, Kadena once became a star among public chains in its early days. In 2021, its token reached a peak price of $27, which was more than 100 times the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, and its market capitalization once approached $4 billion. Additionally, the Kadena network quickly expanded to 20 chains shortly after its launch, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

$50 million incentive program: Bet on RWA

However, Kadena's brilliance gradually faded with the end of the bull market in 2021. Since 2021, its price has plummeted significantly, and its market cap has fallen to around $150 million. Its official blog has not been updated since 2023, and there are very few news updates 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 public chain project.

According to official information, $25 million of the total $50 million funding 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) 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 funding recipient of Kadena's new incentive program is the UK-based company CurveBlock, which 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 to be accepted into the UK Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS)). This also means that CurveBlock's ability to become Kadena's first funding recipient is closely tied to compliance.

In addition to providing financial support, Kadena also stated that it would offer technical assistance, project development advice, marketing, and promotional support.

RWA is a hot track in the market in recent years, and many established public chains are actively seeking transformation by leveraging this narrative. In addition to launching incentive programs, Kadena has 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.

Lessons from the Past: The Results of the $100 Million Incentive Program

It is worth noting that this is not Kadena's first launch of a large-scale incentive program. In 2022, faced with an overall market decline and reduced attention, Kadena launched an incentive program with a total amount of up to $100 million to fund the development and adoption of projects such as gaming, metaverse, NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and DAOs within the Kadena ecosystem.

However, from the data performance perspective, this $100 million incentive plan has not significantly increased Kadena's market attention and community activity. On one hand, its price is still in a downward trend, and on the other hand, the TVL-related data visible online dropped to several hundred thousand dollars, the lowest in 2023. As of June 13, 2025, its TVL was only $940,000, with a stablecoin market value of approximately $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive program, the launched market cycle is remarkably 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 market of 2021-2022 or open up a new, larger market cycle.

In addition, unlike other public chains that directly incentivize users, Kadena's incentives are more focused on project parties. In the absence of a user base, project parties may face greater investment risks when choosing Kadena solely for uncertain incentives. Furthermore, looking closely at some user-oriented promotional programs launched by Kadena, the content of the incentives requires at least 4 weeks of promotion followed by a lottery, in which 50 lucky winners can receive 40 KDA. Based on the current price of KDA at 0.48 USD, users may not even earn a reward of 20 USD for a month of promotion, making the cost-effectiveness of this incentive seem somewhat lacking.

Therefore, although the narrative of RWA is popular and the $50 million incentive is substantial, what Kadena needs to consider now is how to gain market and community recognition in a more appealing way. Otherwise, this time the $50 million incentive may again fail to achieve the expected results.