is Kadena a better Bitcoin?

Kadena is a Proof-of-Work or PoW protocol. Just like Bitcoin. That in itself is nothing special. However, this protocol can scale and is fast. Now, for a PoW protocol, that is rather surprising. Furthermore, Kadena uses dual-layer technology. In other words, it uses two different chains. Did we pique your interest?

So, let’s have a closer look at what Kadena is and how it works.

What Is Kadena?

We already mentioned that Kadena is a PoW protocol. This means that their KDA token needs mining. But what sets it aside from other PoW protocols is its dual-layer technology. This is unlike Bitcoin or Litecoin, which only have one chain. So, Kadena has a public blockchain, Chainweb. On the other hand, the other chain is private and goes by the name of Kuro. An explanation of how these two chains work follows shortly.

There are various reasons why you would want to use this protocol. Real-life companies already make use of Kadena’s features. This indicates that the protocol has real use cases. For example, 

  • Pharmaceutical—Track and trace controlled substances. Manage data in the healthcare sector.
  • Fintech—scalability with added management of public and confidential data.
  • Government infrastructure—as a voting platform on municipal or government levels.
  • Gas management—as a business, you can cut gas costs for your customers.   

Kaddex, a DEX, has a 77% dominance. So, lots of work still to do in this field. On the other hand, in their ecosystem they list 52 projects.

Kadena also tries to solve the blockchain trilemma. The balance between scalability, security, and decentralization. The general idea is that a blockchain can handle two parts, but needs to sacrifice a third. The picture below gives a good idea of this.

Kadena blockchain trilemma

Source: Twitter

How Does Kadena Work?

So, Chainweb is where you can make transactions. This is the layer 1 chain. It’s also where the mining takes place. This is the PoW algorithm. On the other hand, Kuro is where you can build applications. This is a layer 2 chain. Kuro uses a Byzantine Fault Tolerance algorithm. This allows for scalability and fast processing of transactions. These different chains with different uses are like Avalanche having its platform chain (P-Chain) and contract EVM chain (C-Chain).

Together, these two chains can process up to 480,000 TPS (transactions per second). That’s how we measure blockchain speed and its scalability. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has TPS of 7. Litecoin has around 60 TPS. So, as you can see, there is a massive difference.

Sharding

Chainweb handles scalability. It does this with sharding. Here’s a sample to explain sharding. Imagine a supermarket. At checkout, there’s a queue because only one cashier is at work. Now, once you add more cashiers, the queue will disappear.

To reach the high TPS, Kadena uses a braided chain approach. So, Bitcoin and other PoW chains, only have one chain. However, Kadena has more chains to which it broadcasts all new transactions. To its own chain and to the parallel chain. This, in turn, improves throughput and security. As a result, the more chains you add, the higher the throughput and security become. So, Kadena works with 20 chains. However, in this setup, one chain only needs to communicate with three other chains. Not with all the other nineteen chains.

In any case, all these 20 chains are individually mined. However, at the same time, they form a single network. As far as a programming language, it uses Pact on Kuro. The team developed this language. Both developers and non-developers can read and use this code. The following video gives a good explanation of Kadena.

Who Is on the Team?

The team behind Kadena sees two co-founders. These are Will Martino and Stuart Popejoy. One of their advisors is Stuart Haber. He is one of the co-inventors of blockchain technology. Thus, in the Bitcoin whitepaper, he is the most referenced author.
Will Martino is currently the CEO. He also worked for over 2 years for the SEC.

Martino and Popejoy started the project back in 2016. The protocol is an answer to Ethereum, with its scalability and high-cost problems. Both used to work at JPMorgan, a major US bank. They developed JPMorgan’s first blockchain. This has JPMorgan’s internal token. Each month, this token moves trillions of dollars around.

What Is the KDA Token?

The KDA token’s ICO (initial coin offering) took place in 2019. It’s the protocol’s native token. There were two private sales, followed by a public sale. The latter had accredited ($0.5 per KDA) and non-accredited investors ($1 per KDA).

Of the 1 billion max and total supply, 220.7 million circulate. Mining will last for 100+ years for 700 million tokens. There’s a platform share of 200 million tokens. These will emit over 9 years. 90 million tokens went to investors, strategic reserve, and contributors. They burned the remaining 10 million at launch.

KDA is an inflationary token. For instance,

  • The Genesis Block provides a 23 KDA reward per block.
  • This decreases by 0.3% approximately every 30 days or 87,600 blocks. This requires a 30-second block time.
  • The block reward freezes at 1 KDA per block between block 95,308,800 to 125,538,055. At block 125,538,057 it will go to zero.

We also have good news for our US-based readers. Binance.US offers the KDA token. Most other major exchanges also offer this token. 

KDA Token Wallets

Currently, you only have three options to store the KDA token. These are all three hot wallets. Presently, there’s no cold storage option available. However, there are talks with Ledger to add a KDA app to Ledger Live.

The three hot wallets are,

  1. Chainweaver, this is the official Kadena wallet. Available as a desktop or web version.
  2. X-Wallet, comes as a Chrome and Brave extension. Furthermore, it’s also available for iOS and Android. 
  3. Zelcore, a multi-asset wallet. You can access and view all blockchains from one place. It supports over 450 coins and 60+ blockchains.
Conclusion

We took a deep dive into the Kadena protocol. Here we showed what the protocol is and how it works. It has an interesting dual-layer technology. This allows for scalability and fast transactions. Quite remarkable for a PoW chain. Furthermore, we looked at the team and the KDA token. KDA is available on a few exchanges including Binance.US for our American readers. Also, did you know that on Binance US you can get whitelisted for the Cristiano Ronaldo first official NFT collection, receive his free souvenir NFT and earn $500? Just click this link.

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