1. Project introduction

Kadena is a scalable layer-1 Proof of Work (PoW) platform offering a complete decentralized infrastructure for builders. It consists of a (layer 1) public chain protocol called Chainweb and a layer 2 protocol called Kuro. The public and layer 2 networks are interoperable through the smart contract language Pact.

Chainweb is Kadena’s (layer 1) public blockchain protocol. It is a braided, parallelized proof-of-work consensus mechanism that improves throughput and scalability while maintaining the security and integrity found in Bitcoin. In 2020, Kadena's public blockchain performed a live network expansion from 10 chains to 20 chains. This doubled throughput, proving the networks's ability to scale in production to meet ever-higher demand. With 20 chains, the Kadena blockchain platform achieves an industry-leading 480,000 transactions per second.

Kuro is Kadena’s layer 2 blockchain. Kuro has been proven to support up to 8,000 transactions per second across 500 nodes, and is available for evaluation on AWS and Azure.

Pact is a human readable and Turing Incomplete smart contract language purpose-built for blockchains with powerful security features including full Formal Verification of user code, error messages, contract upgradability, support for interoperability, and strong permission and access control.

KDA is a digital currency that is used to pay for compute on the Kadena public chain. Similar to ETH on Ethereum, KDA on Kadena is the manner by which miners are compensated for mining blocks on the network and is the transaction fee that users pay in order to have their transactions included in a block. The total supply is fixed at 1 billion tokens to be mined over 120 years.

2. Team introduction

Stuart Popejoy, who led JPMorgan’s Emerging Blockchain group.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-popejoy-5844ab2b/

Will Martino, who was recruited from his role as the Tech Lead for the SEC’s Cryptocurrency Steering Committee.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williammartino/

3. Investment institution

Metastable, Kilowatt Capital, Coinfund, and Multicoin Capital

4. Distribution

Platform: 20%

Investors and others: 7%

Contributors: 3%

Miners: 70%