As we delve into the exciting developments and achievements of the past three months in our Kadena Q2 Newsletter, we are thrilled to share the latest updates and developments in our ecosystem. Over the past quarter, Kadena has continued to push boundaries, foster innovation, and empower our community of builders and developers with cutting-edge technology. From groundbreaking partnerships to the launch of new projects and the expansion of our global community, there is much to celebrate!
Join us as we highlight key milestones, share insightful partnerships and real-world use cases, and provide a glimpse into the future of Kadena, enabling individuals to embrace a decentralized future.
Taking Pact to Web2
In a must-see Community Campfire, our founders Will and Stuart shared a glimpse of where Kadena is heading next: Taking Pact to Web2.
Imagine a world where the best elements of Web2 and Web3 come together to revolutionize our digital interactions. Combined with the robust security of Web3, this powerful fusion promises an unparalleled user experience. Kadena is integrating all the strengths of the Web3 industry (passwordless logins, ZK privacy) with Pact’s simplicity and security, so developers can harness the potential of Layer-2 solutions and ZK-rollups while ensuring the utmost protection for users’ assets and data.
Slow and Steady: On-chain Activity
We have observed a consistent trend of growth across the board, encompassing new wallets, transaction counts, and developer activity on the blockchain. Additionally, the number of Pact modules has increased dramatically over the past six months, giving us an insight into the various projects that are being developed on Kadena’s blockchain.
Building Bridges: Kadena Partnerships and Community
To further expand Kadena’s reach and develop real world impact, the Kadena Business Development team has forged ahead, building strategic partnerships with leading projects.
The team saw an addition of 2 new key hires, namely Ryan Levy (Head of Partnerships) and Nik Kassis (Head of DeFi), both of whom bring on a wealth of blockchain experience and extensive networks, and will spearhead the growth and development of Kadena’s ecosystem. Amongst making appearances at both Consensys and 2xp LA, the team has been laser-focused on bringing a top-tier stable to the ecosystem and developing rapport with existing wallet builders and leading L2/ZK projects, both inside and outside of the Kadena ecosystem, to further explore and develop our smart wallet array.
On the grantee front, we want to highlight that Database of Native Assets (DNA) assisted the UK & Singapore governments to create the world’s 1st quantum-secure cross-border transaction. The shipment was tracked in real-time via IoT devices, while using sensors to mint provenance directly onto the Kadena blockchain. This was a massive, game-changing moment for digital trade, and we are proud to be part of this historical moment.
Four innovative, 2 new grantees were announced this quarter:
- Kadena Mining Club. KMC offers hashrate-backed NFTs for community mining of KDA tokens, where you can effortlessly mine KDA without the need to invest in miners or set up complicated mining systems.
- SwarmFinance. Swarm Finance provides a simple tool for creating DAOs on the Kadena Blockchain in minutes, facilitating asset management and collective decision-making.
We have more grantees in the pipeline. Here’s a sneak peek of the 2 that will be announced in the next quarter:
- Linx by Thin Edge Labs. Linx, by Thin Edge Labs, is a revolutionary “Chainless” mobile wallet app that allows you to easily hold, trade, swap all the assets you hold on the Kadena Blockchain. Experience automated cross-chain transfers, interact with dApps, and transact within the ecosystem effortlessly, without the hassle of transferring between chains.
- Hack-A-Chain. Hackachain is pioneering Pact-compatible ZK proof verifiers suitable for a wide range of algorithms offered by snarkjs. Hackachain aims to revolutionize wallets by deploying a private transactions protocol for wallets, offering developers incredible possibilities to create ZK projects on Kadena written in Pact.
Additionally, Kadena partnered with Cipholio Ventures, a web3 incubator and venture fund, as the first official incubation partner in the ecosystem. Together, we aim to support and nurture teams building on Kadena, leveraging Cipholio’s go-to-market expertise in parallel with Kadena’s secure, scalable blockchain.
To find even more community-funded projects, visit kadenaecosystem.com
If you are interested in our grants program and want to be part of our official ecosystem, check out https://kadena.io/grants/.
For our hiring board, please check out: https://boards.greenhouse.io/kadenallc.
Tech Developments and Updates
Kadena’s Q2 was a whirlwind of advancements and technological updates. From our dedicated core engineering team to the exceptional Dev Experience and DevOps teams, each member at Kadena has wholeheartedly committed to continuous building and innovation, all with the shared goal of bringing Kadena’s vision to fruition. Here is a fraction of the exciting updates and developments this quarter:
- KDA Tool — an all-in-one developer automation tool that provides a seamless development journey and allows for key generation, signing via Kadena wallet API, and much, much more!
- Pact 4.7.1 — the latest version of Pact released which brings exciting enhancements and fixes, including formal verification fixes, typer checker fixes, additional native functions, and more. On another note… Pact is officially popular enough to get syntax highlighting support from GitHub!
- Update to Coin Contracts (KIP-0019) — the next iteration of Coin and Fungible contracts was unveiled with the goal to bring vital enhancements to reliability and robustness, and to pave the way for a safer token exchange experience.
- @kadena/client v1.0.0 milestone — the latest iteration of the Javascript interface to the blockchain will be released in Q3. We’re working towards a more functional and composable API that’ll allow more flexibility in consuming those. This will also include WalletConnect as a signing method (based on KIP-0017) next to the currently existing “signWithChainweaver” method
- We will be releasing a new DApp for all our new tooling replacing transfer.chainweb.com. We’re in the final stages of this project. Amongst others, features include: module explorer, cross-chain transfer tracker and finalizer, faucet, and in the future integration of @kadena/client as a playground in the transfer app (akin codesandbox.io etc)
- Chainweb SSE — We are on the verge of releasing a streaming server with a companion client library to support DApp developers building on a reliable event stream server to receive relevant events from the blockchain
As we move forward into Q3, we have a few intriguing projects currently underway, namely KIP-18 and a L2 solution. These initiatives are progressing steadily and are on the verge of taking on a more concrete form.
The Evolution of Marmalade
Perhaps one of the most exciting happenings in Q2 is the unveiling of Marmalade V2 (KIP-0020) standard, which will be launched soon.
Marmalade V2 represents a huge step forward compared to V1. Its most exciting feature is the policy manager, which provides token creators with the convenience of selecting their preferred features from our comprehensive concrete policies, enabling effortless token creation. It also introduces an off-chain URI with a standardized metadata format, opening the door for marketplaces to easily fetch necessary data.
Join us in our journey as we leverage the capabilities of Marmalade V2 to foster a dynamic, inclusivity-focused, and perpetually evolving landscape for digital assets.
To read more about Marmalade V2, please click here.
Curating the Kadena (Dev)Experience
There were exciting new developments on the Developer Experience team over the last quarter. First, a big congratulation once again to Randy Daal on his promotion to CXO — we are so excited to see Randy curate the “Kadena experience” and how he will develop and execute strategies to improve upon and provide exceptional user and developer experience with Kadena’s products and services. Hiring has also been abundant in recent months, resulting in the expansion of our team to 29 developers.
We are also excited to introduce our new Developer Relations (DevRel) team, with Glenn Reyes as our Head of Developer Relations and Vasilika Klimova as our Developer Relations Engineer. With them, we’ve formed the perfect team for enhancing our JavaScript, React & Web3 technologies at Kadena.
The Kadena Learning Platform is making steady progress and is nearing its release along with a to-be-determined upcoming workshop date, which will be open to anyone interested in getting started with our tools. Our new doc site is also progressing smoothly, with an alpha version already in the making.
Finally, keep your eyes peeled in Q3 for our Kadena web3 workshop in collaboration with Vue School.
Going Forward
We have some extraordinary developments heading into the last half of the year. It’s never been a better time to learn Pact and join the Kadena ecosystem!
Make sure to follow us on our social channels:
Website: https://www.kadena.io/
Telegram: https://t.me/kadena_io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kadena_io
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/kadena/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kadena-llc
Discord: https://discord.gg/kadena
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/kadena_io_