The blockchain company behind Kadena has officially announced it will shut down operations, ending one of the earliest proof-of-work projects built for business use. The team said it is “no longer able to continue business operations” due to tough market conditions, leading to an immediate closure.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the Kadena team expressed appreciation to its community, saying, “We are tremendously grateful to everybody who has participated in this journey with us,” while adding that current market realities make it impossible to continue promoting the project.
Following the announcement, Kadena’s token (KDA) plunged by nearly 58% within 24 hours, trading around $0.089451, according to CoinMarketCap. The broader crypto market, however, stayed largely stable, with a total capitalisation of $3.66 trillion, up slightly by 0.10%.
While business operations and technical support have been discontinued, Kadena confirmed that its proof-of-work blockchain will remain active until all miners and maintainers exit the network. The team noted that about 566 million KDA tokens are still set to be distributed as mining rewards through the year 2139.
Founded in 2020 by former JPMorgan executives Stuart Popejoy and William Martino, Kadena was designed to combine Bitcoin’s security with Ethereum’s flexibility. Towards this end, the company introduced a $100 million developer fund in 2022 to attract Web3 builders.
However, Kadena still struggled to gain traction. This is attributed to low network activity, and the failure of the $50 million Leap Grant Program introduced earlier this year.
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