Kadena (KDA): The Scalable Proof of Work Blockchain

The founders of Kadena are Stuart Popejoy, a former managing director of JPMorgan Emerging Blockchain, and Will Martino, a former technical lead of the SEC Cryptocurrency Committee. Notably, they also created JPM Coin, JPMorgan's first blockchain-based solution.

Kadena's advisory board includes Stuart Haber, a cryptographer and computer science doctor who co-authored blockchain technology and is cited in the Bitcoin Whitepaper.

Kadena’s ecosystem includes:

• Bitmain, a producer of specialized equipment for Bitcoin mining (ASICs)
• Eucalyptus Labs, a provider of blockchain infrastructure software 
• KDSwap, a gas-free DEX. 
• Electron Labs, a developer of zero-knowledge technology tools for blockchains
• NCC, an auditor of distributed ledgers and smart contracts.
• Cryptocurrency exchanges Kucoin, OKX, Gate, Crypto.com, and others. 

KDA token

KDA is a cryptocurrency that serves as an incentive for miners to perform computational tasks that secure the Kadena blockchain's operation. Furthermore, KDA coins are utilized by network users to pay transaction fees and are an essential component of the blockchain's economic model.

Mining rewards will gradually decrease over time:

• 2019 — 2,018 million coins per month;
• 2021 — 1.94 million coins per month;
• 2025 — 1.69 million coins per month. 

The maximum supply of KDA is capped at 1 billion tokens, which will be released over 120 years from the launch date. As of the time of writing, the market capitalization of KDA is $221 million, with 227.1 million coins currently in circulation.

Some KDA tokens were pre-distributed to investors, while others were allocated for platform needs and other purposes. 

KDA allocation, source – Kadena's blog on the Medium platform.

Kadena blockchain peculiarities

Kadena has its own smart contract programming language, known as Pact. One of its advantages is the built-in feature that automatically detects errors and inaccuracies in the code. Another distinctive feature is that Pact can be read not only by developers, but also by non-experts. Prior to its implementation in the blockchain, Pact underwent several years of testing in production applications. 

As the distributed ledger was designed to handle high volumes of financial operations, it is periodically scaled to increase its transaction processing capabilities.

Kadena's multi-chain architecture supports high scalability, with 20 chains supporting 480,000 transactions per second. Kadena also has its own L2 blockchain called Kuro, which can process up to 8,000 transactions per second on 500 nodes. The entire system runs on the Chainweb protocol in parallel with the PoW consensus mechanism. Despite the increasing demands on the blockchain, its energy consumption remains stable.

Another feature of the Kadena blockchain is its “crypto gas stations,” which allow dApp developers to eliminate transaction fees for their clients. This removes one of the barriers to the widespread adoption of decentralized applications.