JPMorgan’s Kadena Launches First Hybrid Blockchain Platform

The Brooklyn-based offshoot of JPMorgan’s Kadena has fully launched its public blockchain, finalizing the “industry’s first hybrid blockchain platform”, as it is called.

Kadena’s public blockchain was launched on January 15. Company’s CEO and co-founder Will Martino said, that it combines public and private chains, allowing smart contracts and full transactions. The company states that it is the first sharded Proof-of-Work Layer 1 network on the market.

Kadena’s hybrid blockchain integrates public and private chains

According to Kadena’s co-founder and president Stuart Popejoy, the platform allows for seamless integration of public and private chains. He noted that this is an important stage in the development of blockchain technology, as it is largely limited, despite significant potential.

Popejoy stated:

“Despite blockchain having immense potential, our experience building JP Morgan’s first blockchain showed us its limitations. Launching a fully functional hybrid blockchain which seamlessly integrates a public chain with a private network is a significant step forward in reimagining what applications can do on-chain.”

The interoperability of Kadena’s hybrid blockchain is ensured with Pact, the firm’s open-source smart contract programing language. Martino said, that the scalability difficulties faced by Bitcoin (BTC) and security challenges of Ethereum are addressed with Proof-of-Work (PoW) chains, and Pact respectively.

Kadena also incorporates Kadena Kuro, previously known as ScalableBFT, which is the private blockchain operating on Amazon Web Services since January 2019.

Kadena’s hybrid blockchain can process 750 transactions per second, launches with 10 chains

As Kadena stated, its hybrid blockchain can process 750 transactions per second, while Ether can process 15 and Bitcoin only 7. According to Martino, Kadena is “intentionally starting small” with only 10 chains, which is “10 times the number of chains in a single network than any Layer 1 protocol ever seen before.” The transactions for all 10 chains can be tracked with Kadena block explorer.

The executive noted, that Kadena has managed to tackle the core scalability challenge, while remaining decentralized. He added that Kadena’s network may be expanded in Q2 2020, noting that it will possibly be upgraded to 100 chains. Martino also said that if the firm had introduced too many chains from the start, people would not be able to conceive the magnitude of Kadena’s innovation. He said:

“If we had launched with 1000 chains, people wouldn’t be able to visually grasp the magnitude of the innovation that Kadena is bringing to market. We’ll be upgrading to a larger network for more scale in Q2, likely 100 chains, but for now, 10 chains provide and illustrate our unique value.”

Kadena network launched Chainweb mainnet in November 2019

Led by JPMorgan blockchain veterans Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, the Kadena network was introduced at the beginning of November 2019 alongside with the new $20 million token sale. At the time, Kadena launched its Chainweb mainnet togehter with the Kadena token wallet Chainweaver.

Recently Kadena spokesperson explained that the company does not call the public chain Chainweb anymore, referring to it just as “Kadena public blockchain.” This change was made in order to avoid confusion with Chainweb as the underlying technology protocol of Kadena’s public blockchain.

After its launch in 2016 Kadena collected $15 million by August 2019 to create a hybrid blockchain platform which outperform Ethereum’s smart contracts and solves Bitcoin’s scalability difficulties.