Kadena Raises $12MM from Devonshire (Fidelity), SIG, Asimov Ventures, SV Angel for New Enterprise Grade Public Blockchain

NEW YORK, April 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Kadena, the blockchain platform provider founded by former JP Morgan technologists, announced today it raised $12 million in its Series B SAFT financing round to fund a new enterprise-grade public blockchain capable of processing over 10,000 transactions per second. Participating investors include Devonshire Investors, the private investment firm affiliated with the parent company of Fidelity Investments, seed venture fund SV Angel, crypto fund Multicoin Capital, quantitative trading firm Susquehanna International Group (SIG), and media entrepreneur Alan Meckler's Asimov Ventures.

Kadena's new public blockchain combines the company's existing smart contract language Pact with a new protocol, Chainweb, that uses "parallel-chain" architecture to deliver speeds thousand of times faster than other public networks. With Kadena's shared technology stack across both public and private deployments, businesses will have the ability to apply hybrid business models with tiered offerings aimed at small businesses on the public blockchain and enterprise licenses for private blockchain use. 

"Only Kadena offers one technology stack that meets the needs of entrepreneurs and enterprises. The same tools that secure an investment bank's $100 billion order book will now be available to a musician selling her music online," said William Martino, co-founder of Kadena. "When people think about building businesses on the blockchain, our goal is for them to choose to work in the Kadena ecosystem."

Limited throughputs on existing public smart contract platforms have slowed business adoption of blockchain. High profile initial coin offerings or unexpectedly popular applications have been known to delay transaction processing for days. 

"Kadena and Chainweb represent a fundamental breakthrough in scaling blockchains," said Kyle Samani, Multicoin Capital co-founder and managing partner.

In 2016, Kadena began offering a private blockchain protocol that is currently used by a Fortune 100 company in healthcare. With Chainweb, Kadena addresses the speed, scalability, and security issues that have plagued public chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin.

"Chainweb solves scalability problems by allowing developers to provision specific bundles of chains for applications," said Kadena co-founder Stuart Popejoy. "Initial coin offerings will run on certain chains while investment banks can trade on others without interruption and without congestion surges in transaction fees."

Prior to founding Kadena, Mr. Popejoy and Mr. Martino led JP Morgan's Emerging Technology blockchain group. Mr. Martino also worked on the SEC's Cryptocurrency Steering Committee. Kadena previously raised $2.25MM from investors such as Metastable, Kilowatt, and Coinfund in January 2018.

About Kadena
Kadena is developing the leading blockchain platforms for businesses and entrepreneurs by solving the speed, scalability, and security concerns that impede widespread blockchain adoption and offering simple solutions and tools for developing on a blockchain. Kadena's founders have proven experience creating and building software systems for the financial industry and government including for JPMorgan Chase Bank and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information, visit www.kadena.io.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Vivienne Chen, [email protected] 
Kadena, 404-491-0441

SOURCE Kadena