The Kadena Foundation, the team behind the blockchain once pitched as a scalable proof-of-work alternative to Ethereum, announced it will stop all business operations and dissolve its organization, citing market conditions and an inability to sustain active development.
The Kadena team is “no longer able to continue business operations and will be ceasing all activity and active maintenance of the Kadena blockchain immediately,” they stated in an X post.
The announcement caused KDA, Kadena’s native token, to plummet more than 55% in 24 hours to below 9 cents, erasing nearly all of its five-year price trajectory.
A small team will manage the transition and release a new node binary to ensure network continuity without the foundation’s operational involvement.
The Kadena blockchain will continue to function, as it is maintained by independent miners and community developers. More than 566 million KDA remain allocated for mining rewards until 2139, with 83.7 million tokens still set to unlock by 2029.
However, the loss of the core development team essentially leaves the chain’s future in the hands of its community and independent ecosystem projects, creating a precarious situation for a network once supported by prominent early investors and promoted as a hybrid public-private chain.
Kadena, established by former JPMorgan blockchain engineers Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, launched in 2019 with the promise of scaling proof-of-work networks through a unique multichain “braided” architecture. It combined traditional mining with smart-contract functionality and its own programming language, Pact.
At its 2021 peak, KDA traded above $25, and the project attained a $25 billion valuation, fueled by speculative enthusiasm for alternatives to Ethereum’s high fees. Activity and developer participation have waned in recent years as newer proof-of-stake and modular blockchains captured funding and user interest.
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