Kadena's zero transaction fees empower developers with the flexibility to create their own models for monetization while increasing access via mobile/light clients. A pluggable consensus protocol architecture enables smart contract developers with multiple options when selecting their preferred method of consensus mechanism so they can use one that best matches their requirements or combine them in novel ways that fit their business needs.
By providing a standardized SDK and template based architecture, Kadena aims to become the industry standard for building scalable, secure and reliable financial technology (FinTech) applications.
The security provided by Proof of Stake consensus removes the need to trust in untrusted third parties while allowing for transparent delegation. This transparency is necessary for KYC-enabled apps where identity must be validated at transaction time; otherwise transactions can't happen between known partners or counterparties.
Governance creates a fair way to pay block producers that does not depend on energy consumption but instead relies on token ownership which incentivizes honesty, through an incentive scheme based on "skin in the game".
This whitepaper will explore Kadena's protocol architecture, its unique governance model and its approach toward interoperability built into its core design principles.
The whitepaper will also dive deep into Kadena's features while highlighting how these features differentiate it from other blockchain platforms. It will discuss token economics, development tools and Kadena's go-to market strategy.
We're excited to share this paper with you in the hope that it will give you a better understanding of what we are building at Kadena!
Kadena was spun off from Tierion , a global leader in blockchain innovation. The idea of creating a blockchain platform that addresses scalability, interoperability and sustainability challenges came out of the Tierion team's experience with building business applications for enterprise customers on top of bitcoin. Our first focus was to build our product using the consensus mechanism called "Proof of Stake", where token holders stake their tokens as collateral for processing transactions on the ledger.
A protocol is simply an agreed upon set of rules that allow different software components or systems to communicate with one another without getting confused about each other's intent. Interoperability means designing protocols so they can talk to each other, instead of building everything into one monolithic application. If you want to build an application that your customers can use, you need to support multiple devices and operating systems. You have probably already heard about the Internet of Things (IoT) -- it's a network of devices with network intelligence; these devices talk to each other using protocols like MQTT . Back in 2015 we saw interoperability as essential for providing our dApps with the ability to communicate across blockchains.
As part of our dApp development, we realized there was no blockchain that met all three criteria: scalability, interoperability and sustainability; nor were there any protocols that would allow developers to easily implement different consensus algorithms into their applications. We identified some serious problems: - Proof of Work does not scale well and is very energy intensive - Proof of Stake consensus mechanisms are slow and there is lack of interoperability between the different protocols.
Kadena was started in 2015 with $3 million in funding to launch a scalable, secure and reliable blockchain platform that has the ability to support applications built on top of it using multiple consensus algorithms. The main goal is to provide developers with tools so they can build their own innovative products by leveraging Kadena's protocol architecture which combines various consensus techniques.
