- Kadena is an enterprise-grade blockchain running on the Proof of Work consensus.
- Chainweb, Kuro, and Pact are the backbones of Kadena’s architecture.
- KDA is the native token of the Kadena blockchain.
With thousands of blockchains running at present and the best of the brains engaged in their development and creation, why is it that blockchain still suffers from mass adoption? Why are there still only a few crypto enthusiasts and tech-savvy people on the network? The notions of risk, scam, expense and slow are still attached to blockchains. Further, developers who want to start building an application on a blockchain network find it difficult, due to the complexity involved and are often left with just the concept. The product is never made.
What Is Kadena?
Kadena is a layer1, enterprise-grade blockchain which runs on the Proof Of Work consensus protocol and has the vision to be a developer-friendly, highly scalable, and secure blockchain. It wants to resolve the issues of interoperability, faulty contracts, and energy efficiency which were faced by the previous blockchains.
Kadena has two layers to make them scalable and increase the TPS. The first layer is called the Chainweb, which is a public blockchain and the second layer is called Kuro, which is a private blockchain. Kadena has an architecture of 20 parallel chains that run together and form a single network.
The team developed a new smart contract programming language called Pact which has revolutionary dev tools. It mainly focuses on overcoming the challenges faced by Solidity, the programming language used in Ethereum.
Working of Kadena
As we discussed above, Kadena’s architecture has three main components.
Chainweb
The public layer blockchain runs on a Proof of Work consensus. It can provide unlimited scalability by using the concepts of sharding and braiding. Sharding involves splitting the whole network into smaller networks. Braiding involves combining several peer chains to support transactions on the main chain. Kadena achieves this by utilizing 20 peer chains, resulting in a TPS of 480,000.
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Image 1 shows the 20-chain configuration used in the Kadena network.
Image2 represents how a chain web node is combined with the Kuro layer.
Kuro
The private blockchain network works synchronously with the main chain. It runs on a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) and was designed for enterprise-grade applications. It was developed using the Pact language. Some of the underlying features which make it unique are:
- Human readable code
- Easy Application Programming Interface (API)
- Dynamic smart contract terms
- Automatic bug detection
Pact
Pact is the first human-readable programming language native to Kadena. It allows the creation and verification of smart contracts by both technical and non-technical users. It was designed mainly to handle the drawbacks of other smart contract languages like Solidity. It is Turing-incomplete compared to Solidity which is Turing-complete and thus prevents recursions.
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Image 3 shows the Hello World code in Pact.
Image 4 shows the Hello World code in Solidity.
Features of Kadena
1. Gas Station
Kadena was the first network to launch a crypto gas station on a public blockchain. Before signing up for a dAPP, the user first had to create a wallet, go to an exchange and buy the cryptocurrency the app supports for its gas fees.
For a crypto keen, this is easy, but for others, this onboarding was itself a red flag.
The gas station is an account that handles all the onboarding costs on behalf of the user, increasing the user base of dAPPs to anyone with an internet connection.
Kadena has a fund that will cover the gas station setting-up costs for the developers.
2. Wallets and DEX
The Kadena network has launched its Chainweaver and Zelcore wallets to keep your private and public keys safe. Kaddex launched its Automated Market Maker (AMM), which allows users to exchange their crypto assets easily.
3. Tokenomics, KDA
KDA is the native token used for transaction fees, and miner incentives, and can be exchanged for other currencies through the Kaddex platform
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Image 6 shows the token allocation of a total of 1 Billion to the different parties.
Practical Uses of Kadena
Since its launch, Kadena has tied up with numerous companies and is providing them with real-life solutions. Let’s look at some of them:
- Kadena has collaborated with Rymedi, a healthcare company, to track the origin of some diseases.
- Kadena’s network solves the scalability issues faced by United States Commodity Funds LLC (USFC).
- Further Kadena can be used for direct transactions, creating smart contracts, and developing dApps.
Final Thoughts
Kadena is the first blockchain that has solved the issues of scalability and decentralization without compromising security by running on a PoW consensus. Experiments have shown that doubling Kadena’s peer chains did not increase energy consumption. In the future Kadena is planning to increase the number to even 100, to further improve scalability and reduce gas fees.