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Kadena

Kadena (KDA)

Kadena is a permissioned smart contract platform featuring a sharded and scalable layer-1 Proof-of-Work public network. It is distinguished as the first blockchain technology company to originate from J.P. Morgan's Blockchain Center for Excellence. In 2018, Kadena raised $15 million in a funding round with participation from Multicoin Capital and the venture arm of Fidelity Investments' owners.

In April 2019, Kadena accomplished a significant milestone by surpassing 10,000 blocks on its Testnet. The company also introduced integrated trustless SPV proofs for cross-chain interactions and released comprehensive Formal Verification coverage for Pact smart contract guards and capabilities. During the Consensus event in May 2019, Kadena announced a partnership with USCF, a prominent asset manager in alternative investments. Additionally, Monica Quaintance, Kadena's Head of Research and Networks, presented at MIT Technology Review's Business of Blockchain conference.

Ticker KDA
Category Protocol
Website http://kadena.io
Twitter @kadena_io
Telegram Kadena_Announcements
Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/kadena

In June 2019, Kadena's Monica Quaintance and Tarun Chitra from Gauntlet Networks presented research validating Kadena’s braided Proof-of-Work chains' secure scalability at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers European Symposium on Security and Privacy in Stockholm. The company also released Simple Payment Verification (SPV) support and updated Pact to version 3.0 with modular governance features.

In November 2019, Kadena's mainnet became fully accessible for public mining, with real-time mining tracking available through Kadena's Block Explorer. The Kadena network uses the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism and the Pact smart contract language, maintaining growth through its Blake2s hash function and CPU mining support.

Kadena collaborated with various organizations, including Web3 Foundation and Cosmos, to expand its blockchain capabilities. The company also offers an enterprise-grade Blockchain-as-a-Service solution available on AWS Marketplace and Azure Marketplace. In December 2019, Kadena partnered with Rymedi to enhance healthcare supply chain data platforms.

In May 2020, Kadena began integrating Chainlink's decentralized oracle network into its scalable public blockchain, enhancing smart contract functionalities with market-leading data. In June 2020, Kadena collaborated with Coinbase's Rosetta, and in July 2020, the KDA token was officially listed on Bittrex.

The KDA token

The KDA token is central to Kadena's economy, primarily distributed as mining rewards. Miners earn block rewards in KDA for validating and producing blocks, as well as transaction fees or gas payments for executing smart contracts. The smallest unit of KDA is a "Hop," a trillionth, named in honor of computer programming pioneer Grace Hopper.

Kadena token offering

Kadena's token sale was launched on CoinList on November 5, 2019. In January 2020, Kadena announced the integration of its digital wallet, Chainweaver, onto the Cosmos network. Chainweaver serves as a multi-blockchain interoperable wallet and a development environment for smart contracts. This integration was completed by the end of Q1 2020.

Crypto Gas Station

In August 2020, Kadena introduced the world's first crypto gas station on its blockchain. Two types of gas stations were implemented: 'gas guard type,' which limits gas usage in transactions, and 'gas payer,' which allows only approved accounts or specific functions. The gas guard concept was applied to facilitate transactions on the ZelCore multi-currency crypto wallet.

Pact Core and KadenaDOT

Kadena's lead language engineer, Emily Pillmore, developed Pact Core to extend Pact's benefits to the Polkadot community. Kadena's permissioned blockchain technology, Kuro, can operate as a Polkadot parachain, known as KadenaDOT, bridging the Polkadot and Kadena ecosystems and offering Pact smart contract functionalities to parachain operators.

The Kadena team

Founders

  • Will Martino (Founder and CEO)
  • Stuart Popejoy (Founder and President)

Business team

  • Monica Quaintance
  • Anastasia Bez
  • Jeffrey Ou
  • Leah Bingham

Marketing team

  • Tony Pham
  • Miguel Romero

Product team

  • Taylor Rolfe

Engineering team

  • Doug Beardsley
  • Lars Khutz
  • Emily Pillmore
  • Linda Ortega
  • Hee Kyun Yun

Advisors

  • Stuart Haber, Cryptography
  • Wayne Martino, Legal
  • Alex Pinchev, Marketing

Kadena's development and strategic partnerships have positioned it as a significant player in the blockchain industry, with innovative technologies and a strong team driving its growth and adoption.