We can all look back at 2021 as the year that put Kadena on the map as a compelling alternative for truly decentralized, scalable and secure layer-1 blockchain technology. As 2022 unfolds we want to give you, our bustling community, a preview of what’s next. Following the development and release of more groundbreaking innovations than any other competing platform in the market, Kadena is poised to make major investments to grow and empower our ecosystem of builders leveraging these paradigm-shifting technologies.

As the entire blockchain space matures, many open questions linger about how this technology can cross the chasm to reach mainstream users. At Kadena, we’ve relentlessly iterated our blockchain technology since launch to address feedback from our valued community of enthusiasts, developers and technologists. As a result, our advancements empower builders to innovate with their long-term vision in mind.

Kadena’s unique infinitely-scalable architecture and revolutionary smart contract language, Pact, deliver the critical features that allow builders to deliver Web3 innovation and fundamentals with Web2 usability. Kadena is the only technology that has solved the blockchain trilemma of security, decentralization, and scalability.

Builders don’t need to worry about the inevitable rise of gas fees that can cripple even the most revolutionary ideas by making them economically infeasible as soon as they find market fit. Instead of focusing on where and how to build, Kadena empowers crypto founders to focus on what matters most: delivering cutting-edge innovation to make the world a better place.

Many pioneers from the Kadena community already recognize the advantage of building on Kadena. This organic uptick of developers and interest coming out of 2021 signal a key inflection point for the adoption of Kadena technology.

DeFi on Kadena is being spearheaded by Kaddex, which has announced plans to launch a suite of truly decentralized financial products in Q1 2022. Their rapidly-growing team is working on everything including gas-free token swaps, lending, staking, bridges, oracles and key infrastructures such as a user-friendly wallet and fairer DAO governance.

NFT projects leveraging Marmalade realize that they do not have to make compromises in order to deliver decentralization, innovation, and usability to their end-users. One of the first adopters of Marmalade is Immutable Record, founded by Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta, inventors of the blockchain and the most-cited authors in Satoshi’s 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper. As builders, they are manifesting the promise of Marmalade’s customizable marketplace logic to enforce essential features such as avoiding counterfeiting and fraud, price floors, royalties, and escrow sales.

Another pioneer and early adopter is DNA (Database of Native Assets), which is pushing the boundaries of NFTs by bridging the gap from the purely digital realm to practical physical-world use-cases. Read more about why Kadena is the only platform that supports their innovative vision here.

Today, we are proud to launch Kadena Eco, an innovation network for Kadena’s hypergrowth. This is a long-term initiative designed to bring together the biggest thinkers in the industry, top-tier tech talent, and unparalleled strategic capital to fuel and sustain Kadena’s ecosystem growth. Kadena Eco supports builders who are shaping the future of Web3 on Kadena’s blockchain with dedicated resources to support their work every step of the way.

The ultimate goal of Kadena Eco, as the name suggests, is to grow a healthy Kadena ecosystem and turbocharge its unlimited use cases to mainstream adoption. The ambition to create a thriving digital economy powered by everything from DeFi, NFTs, gaming, metaverse, and DAOs will be delivered by an equally ambitious team and roadmap.

Kadena Eco supports founders and entrepreneurs with five strategic components:

Kadena Eco’s first initiative will be a core ecosystem fund which will deploy capital to builders on Kadena and provide them the technological and strategic help necessary to become the industry titans of tomorrow. The fund will partner with the Kadena core team and Web3 leaders to provide builders at any stage of their journey with unparalleled access to deep expertise.

Kadena Eco’s leadership brings together world-class industry experts with vast expertise across strategic domains such as funding & investments, technology, operations, regulatory and finance. This team will oversee the development of a long-term vision for ecosystem growth for our community of developers, entrepreneurs, investors and partners to support our mission of mainstream adoption of blockchain, Web3 and NFTs.

I’m honoured and humbled to be part of this incredible team. I began my journey at Kadena as an engineer in early 2019, determined to use my background as an entrepreneur and technologist to turn advanced concepts into killer dApps that deliver value. As the mainstream appetite for blockchain — and Kadena — grew, I leaned into my business know-how to lead the strategy and business development team that oversaw Kadena’s meteoric rise in 2021, while advising many other project collaborations that have achieved significant market momentum in the process. As a builder myself, engaging the builder community is a natural fit. As CEO of Kadena Eco, my mission is to apply insights learned from builders to take Kadena to the next level.

Paul Hsu joins Kadena as Chief Investment and Innovation Officer for Kadena Eco, where he leads investment initiatives in our ecosystem that accelerate our innovation capabilities. Kadena and blockchain at large has a strong community of developers and entrepreneurs. Paul’s unique talent is refining those core strengths into massive success in innovation markets. As founder and CEO of Decasonic, a crypto venture fund investing and building blockchain innovations for the mainstream, Paul has been involved with blockchain and cryptocurrencies since 2013 and is a recognized industry thought leader. As a product and growth executive at social gaming leader Zynga, Paul spearheaded critical user retention and monetization initiatives, including in-game virtual currencies, free-to-play virtual goods, platform currencies, and other digital assets. Prior to Zynga, Paul was a founding member of NeoCarta, a $300M technology venture fund where he invested and advised early-stage companies.

Tyler Benster serves as Technology Adoption Lead for Kadena Eco. In this role, Tyler identifies and supports the next generation of founders building on Kadena. He is a co-founder and General Partner of Asimov Ventures, where he led the first institutional investment in Kadena back in 2017. As a Stanford PhD candidate in Neurosciences, Tyler develops tools for modelling and controlling neural activity to single-neuron resolution.

Will Martino serves as technology and regulatory advisor. As Kadena founder and President, and the inventor of the Chainweb algorithm, Will brings extensive technical expertise to Kadena Eco. As a prior fintech executive at JP Morgan Chase and advisor to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Will brings a deep understanding of the regulatory space.

Stuart Popejoy serves as technology and financial markets advisor. As Kadena founder & CEO and the author of the Pact smart contract language, Stuart brings 15 years of experience building trading systems and exchange backbones for the financial industry and 30 years in technology. Previously, he led JP Morgan’s blockchain research group and before that delivered cutting-edge algorithmic trading solutions.

Doug Beardsley serves as technology and developer growth advisor. As Kadena Director of Engineering, Doug has been writing software professionally since the early 2000s and writing Haskell full-time since 2010. He is co-organizer of New York Haskell Users Group and is one of the original authors of the Snap web framework.

Kadena Eco is an innovation network fuelling the mainstream adoption of Web3, DeFi and NFT. We’re uniting technical founders and entrepreneurs with the world’s top blockchain leaders, venture capitalists and acceleration partners to support startups at every phase of their development journey. By leveraging Kadena’s builder-centric blockchain that delivers Web3 innovation with Web2 usability, Kadena Eco aims to speed the development and adoption of meaningful applications that benefit everyday people, worldwide.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to work with our top-notch leaders and strategic partners to support blockchain builders today and in the future.

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