The company backing the Kadena blockchain, has announced that it is shutting down its business operations because of the unfavorable market conditions. The decision, which was made public on Tuesday via an official post on X (formerly Twitter), is the final chapter of the story of the blockchain project, one out of the many, which rose to prominence during the 2019 crypto boom.
The team behind Kadena acknowledged the difficulties and thanked the community and contributors. “We are very thankful to everyone who has been with us on this journey. Unfortunately, we regret that due to the market conditions we cannot continue to promote and support the adoption of this novel decentralized solution,” the announcement said.
After the announcement, Kadena’s native token KDA had a severe market value decline. At the time of writing, the token was worth roughly $0.092 – a decrease of close to 60% in the last 24 hours, according to the data from The Chainbull’s price page. This is a huge drop from the record high of more than $27, which was achieved in late 2021.
Kadena’s blockchain will still operate for a short time after the shutdown of the organization, as its proof-of-work mechanism is still reliant on miners and network maintainers. The team communicated that they will immediately stop their business activities, active development, and support functions. There are about 566 million KDA tokens that have been reserved for mining rewards, which are anticipated to be continuously distributed until 2139.
Kadena was the brainchild of ex-regulators and bankers, the duo of Stuart Popejoy and William Martino, who were once the officials of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and JPMorgan respectively. The project was designed to merge traditional finance with decentralized systems by providing a scalable proof-of-work blockchain to be adopted by institutions. Before that, both of them had been involved in the creation of JPMorgan’s first blockchain prototype, Kinexys.
In 2024, Kadena attempted to regain its momentum through the hiring of strategic positions and launching marketing campaigns. The company’s Chief Operating Officer, Annelise Osborne, was quoted last year saying that the firm had started a “hiring spree” in an attempt to regain market share. Kadena had been raising money through a total of three funding rounds amounting to roughly $15 million before the news of its recent closure broke.
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