Bit Shaman (TGH): Welcome to the Kadena Live AMA with The Gem Hunters (TGH), we would like to thank the team and community for coming today, and can’t wait to find out more about Kadena!

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Welcome Stuart 😄 excited for the AMA today 🥳.

Comrade Pandah Sama (TGH): Welcome Stuart pleasure to have you. People on Telegram and Twitter were euphoric about you, so I’m curious to find out more.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Hi great to be here!

Bit Shaman (TGH): Most of us have probably heard of Kadena, as you guys have been around for a while now and are well respected within the crypto sphere, it’s a pleasure to have you guys here at TGH, so to kick off this AMA we would love an overview on what you guys have been doing over at Kadena!

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Thanks! 2021 has been a busy year 🙂 . Most recently we listed on Kucoin which was very exciting. As a multi-chain, sharded blockchain, there’s a little more to integrating with us than just another ERC-20. Otherwise, we’re working toward a rebrand of our DEX, Kadenaswap, which completed a “live beta” with the essential help of our community

Bit Shaman (TGH): Oh yeah we saw that, massive congrats!

Comrade Pandah Sama (TGH): Multi-Chain sharded blockchain already sounds super impressive.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Right? I read that originally and had to re-read to make sure haha.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, that’s the thing right? Blockchain needs to scale to take all this amazing innovation into the future. We’re huge fans of what Ethereum has achieved, and we want to turbocharge that: smart contracts, digital value, decentralization, security. But we’re also huge fans of Bitcoin’s original innovation too, which is why we scaled Proof-of-Work.

Bit Shaman (TGH): You’ve kind of took the best of both and tried to make it better.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Really well said, taking the major parts of the two biggest players to make a better version.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): It’s true even with smart contracts. Pact, the smart contract language on Kadena, brings some elements of Bitcoin script back to meld with the power of a full language such as Solidity. Namely, being Turing-incomplete … but also offering powerful native functions. Remember, with Bitcoin script you can verify a signature with a single bytecode. Pact gives really powerful native functions so that you use less gas, and write fewer bugs.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): That’s a cool bonus, so Pact is also a best of both worlds type of deal, taking code from both Bitcoin and Solidity (ETH)

Bit Shaman (TGH): Now we have a basic understanding of the project itself, we would love to get to know the team behind the scenes. By the way, we are simply blown away by how extensive and legitimate your team is, the experience and qualifications are unbelievable, it’s not something we’re used to seeing often in this space! Please do share some information with us about some of the key team members, advisors, and how you guys operate along with some of your experience! Team page.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, it all starts with Will Martino and myself. We built the JP Morgan blockchain group in late 2014, which was really important to get to know all of the players at the time. We had everybody coming in because everybody wanted to talk to JPM: Vitalik, R3, IBM …

Bit Shaman (TGH): Unbelievable.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Interestingly, after founding, one of the first people we worked with was Stuart Haber, who helped us formalize our security proofs for chainweb. Chainweb is the name of the protocol that runs our sharded public blockchain. He also was involved in us picking Blake2S for our hashing algorithm. He’s a beast.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): I’m stunned haha.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Those are major players in the space (both crypto and tech in general).

Bit Shaman (TGH): Definitely one of the most legit teams we’ve had here at TGH. A pleasure to have you guys here.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Most importantly, he gets our vision, which is to make incremental engineering leaps to achieve a big goal: scalable POW.

Bit Shaman (TGH): Has anyone achieved POW scalability yet?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): We’re it. Other solutions use layer 2. But again, we were working with ideas that had shown up in the Bitcoin community: Betacoin, Blockrope. People had already wondered “what if Bitcoin had 2 chains instead of one?”

Bit Shaman (TGH): By the way, I heard that he is cited in the bitcoin whitepaper, is that correct?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Yes, Stuart Haber is the most-cited author in the Satoshi white paper. He’s been running a blockchain in the NY Times classified since 1996!! So when Satoshi says “like the NY Times classified” in the paper, that’s not just a random metaphor 😂

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Wait seriously?

Comrade Keegan (TGH): So he’s been running blockchain since before “blockchain” was the name haha

Comrade Keegan (TGH): TIL (today I learned), holy crap haha.

Bit Shaman (TGH): Need to fill my bags.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): We also have a number of heavies from the Haskell programming language on our team, hailing from Microsoft and Google. The Pact lead engineer, Emily Pillmore, is now the CTO of the Haskell Foundation alongside her duties at Kadena.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): That’s a legendary shout-out to Haber in the BTC Whitepaper haha.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): But yeah, Stuart Haber is heavy. We’re working with him on our decentralized bridge design currently.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): The rest of the team is fully of heavyweights too, CTO of Haskell is massive and Microsoft and Google kind of speak for themselves haha.

Bit Shaman (TGH): One thing you guys are known for is your steadfast passion and commitment to building a scalable and developer-friendly public blockchain that provides a level of security similar to Bitcoin. Before we move onto your groundbreaking research and development please tell us why you believe a scalable PoW is so groundbreaking, the fact nobody else has managed to create one, you are obviously onto something big, can you please enlighten us as to why a scalable POW is so groundbreaking and game-changing?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, again, credit where it’s due: Adam Back proposed “Betacoin” in 2014 as a way to have a “beta” bitcoin that would have real BTC to play with. This is what led to Lightning network — they decided at the time that forking Bitcoin to two chains would be impossible from a fork-politics perspective.

The main innovation of Kadena is figuring out how to add more than 2 or 3 chains. Betacoin would have had every block on one chain witness the previous on the other. Once you get to 4 or 5 chains this would start slowing down the network.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): I assume this is just due to the overwhelming data required to reference the past blocks on the other chains?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): So, what you’ll notice here is that while 20 chains are operating, they only have to interact with 2 other chains. Plus, it’s at most 2 hops to get to any other chain. This means that up to 3 block heights can be mined at once, chains can nudge ahead or behind each other a little, but the whole network makes steady progress.

What’s amazing is, given the right graph, this scales to 50, 100, 1000, even 100,000 chains. At that point, bandwidth gets a little crazy. But it essentially means throughput can always go up.

Bit Shaman (TGH): It’s eye-opening because this is the future of blockchain. We were talking about how cheap Kadena still is.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Trying to understand the picture a little better haha they’re all within a maximum of 4 layers of separation minimum of 2 which is super cool, and extremely scalable

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): It’s definitely just the beginning. But bringing on Kucoin is essential. We have a great partner to ensure liquidity.

Bit Shaman (TGH): And you gain more exposure.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): To be honest, we’ve had great partners all along. CoinMetro will be helping us with our bonding program, and Zelcore wallet provides a seamless wallet experience for Kadenaswap and other apps.

Bit Shaman (TGH): You’re already working with Polkadot and Web3, but what about ETH? Have you had any dealing with ETH yet?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): We’re bridging to ETH as we speak. Plus, Tokensoft Wrapped is bringing kETH and kBTC to Kadena via Anchorage bank, for Kadenaswap, which is huge. The bonding program in fact is to reward bonders for providing economic security for the Ethereum bridge. It will be a true generalized bridge too, so it will be able to do NFTs and any crypto asset, not just tokens.

Bit Shaman (TGH): Oh. I’ve got a question about partnerships. Kadena has already partnered with Web3 Foundation and Polkadot as well as other huge players. In the space and you’ve already spoken about a potential bridge to Polkadot in which KadenaDot will act as a bridge technology between the Polkadot and Kadena ecosystem, we all know how big Polkadot is right now, sounds exciting, you’ve also partnered with Celo, Terra, and Tokensoft/Wrapped. What can you tell us about some of the partnerships and progress so far?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, what’s great is these are all super-strong teams themselves.

Take Terra, they have done so much to make crypto actually usable for consumers in the Korean market. Our goal there is actually to give Terra/LUNA holders more ways to use their tokens, right out of the Terra wallet. First by being able to trade with zero fees on Kadenaswap!

With Polkadot, we’re engaged with multiple efforts. First is the Core Pact initiative, which brings our smart contract language Pact to Polkadot as a native smart contract language. But we’re also going to bridge there too, to bring DOT and KSM to Kadenaswap. Once Pact is live on Polkadot, we can even see Kadenaswap using Polkadot as “just another chain”, meaning users will be able to not just trade but settle, on multiple platforms.

Same for Cosmos, where we have completed “Kadenamint” which allows Pact to be used on a Cosmos chain.

The future of Kadenaswap is a single market on Kadena, Cosmos, and Polkadot. It will be like stocks in the US, where you can trade on NYSE or NASDAQ or like 9 other exchanges, but functioning as a single market.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): That’s dope, multi-chain swaps would be huge. That sounds incredible. Right now you have to bounce between like 5 platforms to make trades sometimes. Those 3 chains combine would be huge.

Bit Shaman (TGH): Agreed.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): We are also truly fascinated about your plans to create a multi-platform DEX plus the chain relay program, what chains will you incorporate and how far off is this from being competed? Can you give us any sneak peeks or insider information on the progress of the DEX?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, what’s really exciting is that the DEX will be spinning off to become its own entity soon, with its own token. This will allow it to have its own governance and be able to pursue a UNI-like incentive program aggressively.

Chains we plan to bridge to are:** Ethereum, Terra, Celo, Polkadot/Kusama**. Ethereum is first, and will also mean a wrapped KDA will be available in Uniswap and other ETH DEX platforms. But we’re also excited to bring over tokens to Kadenaswap, like DAI. The Ethereum bridge is already in testnet, with support for Ethereum proofs already in production.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Alright I’m excited for all of those haha those are major ecosystems all being brought together. How close to releasing the dex are you? I’d be interested in trying it out 👀.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, you can already try it out in testnet :). We just finished our public beta in prod, but will probably do another one to try out new features before launch. The goal is the end of Q2 to launch, but we want to be sure there is sufficient liquidity at launch, so it will depend on that. In other words, we will launch with real volumes so that trades will be efficient.

We also might “pre-launch” though with KDA and other native tokens sooner though. We’ll be saying a lot more about our go-to-market for Kadenaswap very soon 😉.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): I’ll be trying out the testnet today, nice.

Bit Shaman (TGH): Keegan bullish.

Comrade Pandah Sama (TGH): Can’t blame him, just bought a decent bag myself.

Bit Shaman (TGH): Nice.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Rosetta is Coinbase’s effort to standardize exchange integrations, and we were an early partner with that. It’s a noble cause, as I was saying before if you’re anything but an ERC-20 these days it’s a big effort for exchanges to take on a new protocol. Rosetta addresses that. However, only Coinbase supports it, and even there it’s a slow start.

Coinbase is famously impossible to predict, so I would love to say that with our completed Rosetta implementation, we’re listing tomorrow!!! But in fact, we are in the dark, like every other project, even though we stay in touch on Rosetta issues.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): That’s incredible though, because you’re right, with 95% of dApps built on ERC-20’s, it’s hard for other chains to get integrated. Great stuff working with Rosetta 💪

Bit Shaman (TGH): You guys have made some huge partnerships

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena):

(KadDEX is the super-secret new name for Kadenaswap, don’t tell anyone 😎)

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Sick name not gonna lie. Before the last question, just wanted to give a huge thanks for attending today. Haven’t been this bullish in a long time haha

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Totally! Thank you for having me. We want everybody to know about Kadena — or more like, we want everybody to know about Kadena before everybody knows about Kadena 😉

Comrade Keegan (TGH): To finish off, can you give us all an insight into what we can look forward to short term and long term? What can we expect to see in near future from Kadena, your roadmap is fascinating and we have no doubt you’re knocking off catalysts, you just listed on Kucoin which is impressive, is this the start of mass adoption, and is Kadena finally getting the exposure it deserves? Here’s the Q2 roadmap for anyone who’s interested too.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, the main thing is that Kadena is going to be everywhere this year. We’re launching every use-case in crypto, whether it’s tokens, DEXs, NFT, lending platforms, and enterprise use-cases so that developers will be able to learn from successful models to bring the next wave of innovation. KDA is now on Kucoin with more exchanges to come, and wKDA will be on Uniswap and other DEXes. While we’re sure Kadena has the most powerful platform, we’re not going to wait around for folks to stumble on it but instead launch the best dApps, so that users can be empowered with the security of PoW but no gas fees!

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Build it and they will come 😎

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, Kadenaswap alone is resonating in a huge way. For instance, Tokensoft talks about settling all of their wrapped coins on Kadenaswap someday. The idea of a scalable PoW settlement platform is too powerful. Today, we can settle the entire US stock market without breaking a sweat on 20 chains. Kadenaswap and other markets will be able to grow without limit but also without gas prices creeping up.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): You can settle the entire US stock market using 20 chains? What, that’s insane scalability lol

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well and it matters. Look at gas prices on Pancake — it’s not just Ethereum.

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Every chain you add after 20, I assume increases scalability exponentially.

Comrade Pandah Sama (TGH): 100% agree, BSC is also non stop congested these days.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): It’s really interesting how the scaling works, I recommend Doug’s article for the deep dive (Doug is our Director of Engineering).

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Thanks mate, will definitely give a read

Comrade Keegan (TGH): A big thank again from TGH for attending today 🙏 honor to have you here; you ready to answer community questions?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Absolutely!

Lah: Yield farming is a popular topic since the origin of DeFi, yet it has never withstood a bear market. What will happen to the yield for KadenaSwap? Will it remain stable? Since KadenaSwap is dependent on other yield-farming mechanisms, would that mean its yield decreases as well?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): I think “yield farming” per se will yield (sorry) to less frothy income streams. For instance, bonding with KDA for the relay is based on providing an essential service, in true crypto style: you make money but you’re also putting your KDA to work with real value. That’s not to say folks shouldn’t maximize gains and rebalance, but there should be more to it than just yield.

Single: Ethereum gas costs are really high but for example, Binance smart chain gas prices are so small and it is faster. In the future can you implement BSC?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): See above 🙂 BSC isn’t free anymore. Even fast-finality chains will have gas problems if they can’t scale past their initial throughput. The only way you keep gas costs down is to be able to scale to any load. Kadena is the only blockchain, PoS or PoW, that can do this.

N: How does KDA fit the bill regarding the recent accusations about BTC being inefficient in energy consumption? What makes KDA better and more sustainable in comparison to other alternatives?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Well, BTC is inefficient, there’s no question about that. BTC hashpower is crazily high, well past any sane security requirement. Kadena is different: we can run 10, 20, 100, 1000 chains without increasing the hash rate. While it sounds crazy, Kadena gets more secure the more chains run on it, with hashpower remaining constant. If BTC’s increasing hashrate actually benefitted humanity, we could discuss how to manage its impact. But as it is, it’s just wasting energy, which is a problem.

Kenny Kimora:* *I wanted to follow your project for the long term. Where can I get all the latest news about your project? Do you have Twitter/Telegram/Discord community? If yes, can you share the link here because there is a lot of fake Telegram/Twitter groups?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Please be sure to follow us on Twitter, Telegram, and Discord for project updates!

Me Armor 20: Are you a community-based project? How can I work for the success of your project? Do you have a Global Ambassador Program or a Referral Rewards System?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Yes, we launched our Ambassador Program which has been a huge success, thanks to the hard work of team member Jeff!

𝗦𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗱𝗮 | 𝗖𝗣𝗖: Hello sir. As we know, that when the NFT was booming and a lot of people supported this. But, many artists/creators still don’t clearly understand NFT especially since there is still a lack of editing platforms, people still don’t know much how to make their own NFT and the cost of gas especially in Ethereum-based tokens is very high. How do you solve this problem?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): NFT is too expensive for the independent artist or musician, but also, it’s too hard to customize the NFT experience to create innovative cash flows/royalty models. We are launching multiple NFT projects on Kadena in the upcoming months where you’ll start to see what a more equitable NFT model looks like. But most importantly, NO GAS. Content creators shouldn’t have to pay an inexplicable huge tax to mint NFTs.

Aurellia: Who is your targeted customer? Besides Blockchain user do you have plan for non-crypto users too? If yes how can you attract them or what is your plan to attract them?

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): I think blockchain has to get to non-crypto users to really reach its true potential. The main way you attract non-cryptos is to solve three problems: usability, security, and volatility. Crypto today is hard to use, you can lose money if you’re not super-careful/DYOR, and prices scare away non-speculators. There are solutions to all of these problems, for instance, if you look at more mature markets like stocks you can see how they manage crazy volatility. But gas is another issue: if users have to pay some random fee, they’re going to turn away from it.

Stuart Popejoy (Kadena): Thanks everybody! Great to connect with the Gem Hunters community!

Comrade Keegan (TGH): Was a pleasure to have you here mates!

That concludes the AMA. If you are interested in reading the AMA, feel free to join our Telegram and view the discussion starting here. To get announcements about Kadena’s progress in creating the best multi-platform DEX and DAO, follow us on Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and Telegram.