The company is also open-sourcing a COVID-19 test result tracking dApp and announcing the public blockchain shard count is scaling from 10 to 20 chains

BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 25, 2020 — Kadena, the first blockchain technology company to come out of JP Morgan’s Blockchain Center for Excellence, will have the first official listing of its KDA token on Bittrex Global. Bittrex Global is a Top Ten exchange as measured by real trade volume according to Bitwise Investments and Messari. The company is also open-sourcing a coronavirus test result tracking application made available for the healthcare industry effective immediately. Additionally, Kadena continues to lead the industry by announcing that its public network is scaling from 10 to 20 chains on July 31.

Bittrex Global Exchange First To List KDA Token

“After successfully rolling out Kadena’s hybrid blockchain platform in stages, culminating with our full feature launch at the start of this year, the team turned our attention towards the community,” said Kadena Founder and CEO Will Martino. “Now, Kadena is excited to have Bittrex Global be the first exchange to officially list KDA.”

KDA tokens are directly transferable between individuals. The tokens are used for both the creation of new smart contacts as well as for paying the gas cost of executing smart contracts. Kadena’s smart contracts are written in Pact, an open-source, Turning-incomplete, and human-readable language with formal verification.

“We welcome Kadena’s exciting blockchain solution to the Bittrex Global Exchange,” said Bittrex Global CEO Tom Albright. “The COVID-19 pandemic has validated the market need for the speed, reliability, and security Kadena offers the enterprise healthcare, finance and insurance industries.”

The initial KDA trading pairs on Bittrex Global will be with Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT). Bittrex Global is a reliable and secure digital asset trading platform developed for customers outside of the United States. This listing provides miners and other community members located internationally with access to liquidity for KDA.

The KDA wallet is now launched on Bittrex Global. The market launch and trading open Monday, June 29th, at 8 am PT / 11 am ET.*

*Corrected trading date on 6/29/20

Kadena Launches COVID-19 Blockchain Application

Along with the listing, the Kadena team is open-sourcing a decentralized application (dApp) that any healthcare professional is welcome to use for managing and validating COVID-19 test results. The dApp is available on testnet immediately; no previous experience with blockchain is required. Users do not need to onboard with KDA tokens or a crypto wallet to use any application functionality. Kadena’s unique gas station feature allows a seamless onboarding for those new to blockchain.

The dApp is designed to address problems with the aggregation and efficient distribution of test results as well as concerns about the quality of the testing kits. The security of the blockchain ensures that no protected health information is accessible to unauthorized parties. For healthcare professionals, the dApp has three steps:

Kadena Co-Founder and CEO Will Martino stated, “Unfortunately, the pandemic has underscored the limitations of highly centralized and bureaucratic institutions. By open-sourcing a coronavirus test management dApp, Kadena’s goal is to give healthcare professionals a simple tool that they can start using right away. Tracking COVID-19 test results on blockchain means not needing to trust a single government or any centralized authority. The data is trustless because it cannot be changed. Using Kadena’s hybrid blockchain platform, sensitive data can be stored safely and shared quickly.”

The dApp provides a secure way to distribute results among medical teams and patients. In aggregate, the privacy-protected data can help academics and government officials better understand how the virus is spreading demographically. Public health professionals that would like to get started can send an email to covid@kadena.io for more information. To see how the dApp works, watch this 30-second explainer video.

Kadena To Scale Sharded Layer-1 PoW Blockchain From 10 To 20 Braided Chains

Kadena Co-Founder and President Stuart Popejoy shared, “If blockchain is ever to see mainstream adoption, it is vital to demonstrate a system that scales as well as the existing non-decentralized platforms that currently dominate the digital world. With Kadena’s public Chainweb protocol already operating 10 braided chains, demonstrating the smooth transition to 20 chains will be both a significant technological breakthrough and a confirmation that scalable blockchain technology has arrived. It is critical that blockchain technology is driven by Proof of Work to guarantee a level playing field for all network participants, which is what will ultimately drive adoption away from centralized platforms — Proof of Stake puts too much power in the hands of token holders at the expense of users.”

“Bitcoin was created in response to central banks printing unlimited amounts of money during the Great Recession,” said Kadena Co-Founder and CEO Will Martino. ”For all of Bitcoin’s innovation, since its inception, there have been known scaling challenges. A decade later, as financial history repeats itself with seemingly endless quantitative easing, Kadena has launched to successfully scale a sharded layer-1 PoW network,” said Will Martino, Co-Founder and CEO of Kadena.

He added, “We created Kadena to fix the fundamental scaling problem with Bitcoin, which has been a barrier to mainstream adoption. Launching Kadena and expanding to 20 chains proves that we can scale a layer-1 blockchain to the point where digital assets can go mainstream. Growing from 10 to 20 chains means that the infrastructure exists to service the needs of the digital economy. Kadena has solved the previously long-standing problem of how to securely scale a public blockchain; we’re the only project that has done it.”

Using the same amount of energy as 1 or 10 chains, Kadena will demonstrate 20 chains working in parallel with its unique Chainweb protocol. Growing the shard count from 10 to 20 chains not only doubles the current throughput, it also proves the feasibility of Kadena’s blockchain to scale to 100, 1000, and an ever-increasing number of chains on the public network. To see a visualization of Kadena’s blockchain innovation, which has been verified by independent experts, view this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYvXxFbsN6I.

To learn more about Kadena’s blockchain, contact our team on Discord, visit GitHub, or subscribe to our newsletter.

About Kadena

Kadena provides a hybrid blockchain platform, featuring the only sharded and scalable layer-1 PoW public network. Kadena solves the scaling challenges of Bitcoin and the security issues of Ethereum. Kadena’s founders created JP Morgan’s first blockchain and worked at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Kadena is live with partners including Cosmos and USCF (a $3 billion fund). For more information, visit www.kadena.io or follow @kadena_io on Twitter.