Kadena

Kadena's Chainweb network joins hundreds or thousands of separately mined peer chains into one network, with throughput of more than 10,000 transactions per second. Because each peer chain records the Merkle roots of the others, together they form a single super chain whose effective hash power equals the combined hash rate of every individual chain.

Kadena is a blockchain that reaches consensus through Proof-of-Work (PoW). Its Chainweb architecture uses SPV proofs to carry transfers from one chain to another.

Nodes and miners

The network runs on the chainweb-node software. Its nodes exchange data with one another over a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Miners also take part in protocol governance: every 14400 blocks, roughly five days, they vote on hard forks, and a proposal needs a two-thirds majority to pass.

Limits on cross-chain proofs

The roots of SPV proofs expire after 20,000 blocks. The SPV validation window was cut to six months so that nodes and miners need to store a smaller block database.

Pact in the node software

Pact 5 had been added to chainweb-node no later than 20 October 2026. Version 5.3 of Pact is also documented. The node was later upgraded to Pact 5.4.1.

Kadena was co-founded by Stuart Popejoy, who is recorded as founder in 2016, and William Martino.

Martino, who also appears under the name Will Martino, is likewise dated to 2016 as a founder of Kadena. On 5 May 2017 he was recorded as the company's Manager. No later than 20 October 2026 he was listed as Executive Officer. Popejoy was listed as a key person no later than 27 June 2024.

No later than 20 October 2026, the team listing named Will Martino, Stuart Popejoy and Monica Quaintance, each with a kadena.io email address.

No later than 8 September 2024, the business also appeared under the names Kadena LLC and Kadena Public LLC. No later than 20 October 2026, it was recorded as a limited liability company organized in Connecticut. According to the site, its corporate headquarters was in Newark, New Jersey no later than 5 December 2025.

Kadena was founded in 2016.

• 2017: First sale of securities offering.
• 2017: Date of first sale.
• 2024: Prior node versions stop working.
• 2024: 2.26 feature upgrade at block height 5302559.
• 2025: Prior chainweb-node versions stop working.
• 2025: Pact 5 switchover at block height 5555698.
• 2025: chainweb-node 2.28 released.
• 2025: chainweb-node 2.29 released.
• 2025: chainweb-node 2.29.1 released.
• 2025: chainweb-node 2.30 released.
• 2025: Community Edition forks from Kadena mainnet.
• 2025: Mainnet stops producing blocks.
• 2025: chainweb-node repository archived.

Fundraising

The company's first sale in a securities offering took place on 28 April 2017. A later filing gives 15 December 2017 as its date of first sale.

Upgrades to the mainnet

Older versions stopped working on 13 November 2024. This was ahead of the 2.26 feature upgrade at block height 5302559, which was estimated for 14 November 2024. Prior chainweb-node versions were again cut off on 5 February 2025. That cutoff came before the switchover to Pact 5, the next version of the smart-contract language, scheduled at block height 5555698 and estimated for 10 February 2025.

Version 2.28 came out on 3 March 2025. Version 2.29 followed on 18 April. A point release, 2.29.1, came out on 17 June. Version 2.30 was released on 9 July 2025. A 2.31 feature upgrade was then set for block height 6269344, with an estimated date of 16 October 2025.

Shutdown

A Community Edition release of chainweb-node was announced to fork from the Kadena mainnet at 4 AM UTC on 8 November 2025. The mainnet itself stopped producing blocks at 23:26:15 UTC on 15 November 2025. The chainweb-node repository was archived on 24 November 2025. A final cut height of 127147019 was recorded no later than 20 October 2026.