When Kadena Group, the corporate behind the Kadena blockchain, introduced it was shutting down operations on Oct. 21, the message was formal, quiet, and devastatingly easy.
The corporate thanked its group, cited “market situations,” and confirmed that it could stop all enterprise exercise and upkeep of the blockchain instantly.
In a remaining word on X, the crew reminded customers that the blockchain would reside on as miners would nonetheless safe it, and the code would stay open-source.
But beneath that technical continuity lies a tougher reality that Kadena’s financial and social lifeblood was gone.
The venture’s demise shouldn’t be an remoted failure. As a substitute, it’s a part of a deeper structural correction in crypto, the place the market will witness a sluggish extinction of infrastructure layers that by no means discovered product–market match, by no means specialised, and by no means constructed compelling functions to maintain them.
The freeway to nowhere
Kadena started with pedigree and ambition.
Based by former JPMorgan engineers, Stuart Popejoy and William Martino, the community promised to ship options that Ethereum couldn’t in 2018. together with high-throughput, proof-of-work sensible contracts by means of a system referred to as “braided chains.”
Its proprietary language, Pact, emphasised human-readable code and formal verification, positioning Kadena as each safe and scalable.
Nonetheless, innovation with out adoption is an unfinished story.
Kadena launched its mainnet in 2019, constructed a modest developer ecosystem, and watched its token’s valuation at practically $4 billion in 2021, in line with CoinMarketCap knowledge, earlier than collapsing greater than 99% from its highs.
Throughout this era, just a few mainstream decentralized functions like Babena, whose whole worth locked peaked at simply $8 million, emerged on Kadena.
As a substitute, liquidity drifted towards ecosystems with denser consumer gravity, like Ethereum and Solana, and later, the Layer-2 rollups like Base that had been constructed instantly atop them.
Crypto researcher Noveleader identified that Kadena has struggled to match Ethereum’s Digital Machine (EVM) dominance over time and has at all times struggled with the worth motion of its token, KDA, and the ecosystem initiatives.
This reveals that Kadena’s shutdown exposes a basic mismatch in at this time’s crypto economic system. Since 2021, enterprise capital has poured billions into “modular” Layer-1s, Layer-2s, and rollups that promise to repair scaling, decentralization, or transaction prices. But the marketplace for precise customers has barely grown.
In keeping with L2Beat and DeFiLlama, over 100 rollups and greater than 200 sovereign chains are working throughout numerous ecosystems, from Ethereum clones to Cosmos-based appchains. Nonetheless, most of them appeal to fewer than 2,000 each day lively customers.
The reason being easy: they’re all chasing the identical pool of individuals, together with merchants, yield farmers, and liquidity suppliers, with out providing new worth.
Greg Tomaselli, a startup builder, completely summarized the scenario by declaring that blockchain networks with no “worth proposition and widespread use” would ultimately fail.
The phantasm of differentiation
Kadena’s collapse exposes a reality the trade prefers to disregard: technical novelty doesn’t equal product-market match.
Each new blockchain claims to resolve scalability, latency, or gasoline effectivity issues. But few can clarify who truly wants one other chain when most customers are already embedded inside the Ethereum, Solana, or Binance ecosystems.
Like many Layer-1 hopefuls, Kadena tried to face aside by means of efficiency metrics. Its braided chain structure provided excessive throughput whereas sustaining proof-of-work safety.
Nonetheless, efficiency is a commodity in crypto. As soon as networks can course of hundreds of transactions per second, differentiation shifts from how briskly you run to what you run for.
Ethereum thrived not as a result of it was the quickest, however as a result of it turned the default surroundings for tokens, DAOs, and DeFi protocols. Solana’s success stems from cultivating high-frequency buying and selling actions and social functions.
Like EOS, Kadena by no means outlined its function past being “a greater blockchain” to those ones.
Nonetheless, such strikes are the center of the infrastructure bubble of chains chasing imaginary demand. Every new rollout repeats the logic of constructing first and hoping the market follows, whereas customers consolidate round ecosystems with liquidity and tradition.
This leads to a sluggish extinction occasion of a number of hundred technically sound however economically irrelevant networks working on inertia.
The period of specialization
Furthermore, the rise of layer-2 networks constructed on Ethereum and the blockchain’s increasing dominance have fully rewritten the playbook for infrastructure design.
AminCad, a serious participant inside the Ethereum ecosystem, identified that almost all main different Layer-1 networks with substantial market capitalizations had been launched earlier than Ethereum’s Dencun improve, which improved the community’s scalability and lowered transaction charges for Layer-2 options.
In keeping with him, the improve has made their “so-called Layer-1 premium” out of date and “largely a relic of the pre-Ethereum-Layer-2 scalability period.”
He mentioned:
“Right this moment, there is no such thing as a scalability-based argument for opting to launch a sequence as an alt-L1 as a substitute of a dual-layer chain that makes use of Ethereum as its settlement ledger (i.e. an L2), so there’s no proof newly launched chains will derive a premium from launching as a single layer chain.”
AminCad additionally famous {that a} layer-2 blockchain leveraging Ethereum as its long-term settlement ledger operates with roughly 99% decrease prices than an impartial alt-L1.
On the identical time, the market is rewarding specialization over generalization. Profitable blockchains are not positioning themselves as common platforms however as centered digital economies serving clear verticals.
For example, layer-1 networks equivalent to Plasma and TRON are optimized for world stablecoin funds, providing immediate transfers, minimal charges, and full EVM compatibility.
These chains compete not on generic throughput however on the aim of proudly owning a distinct segment. Their differentiation lies in utility and story, not simply structure. Kadena, against this, had neither.
This shift marks a broader maturation of the trade and a transfer away from engineering self-importance towards financial gravity.
Consequently, the chains that endure the approaching consolidation will likely be people who appeal to real, recurring demand of actual customers, constant transactions, and worth loops that justify their block house.
The approaching consolidation
The failure of Kadena is a preview of what’s subsequent for crypto’s overbuilt infrastructure stack. The market can’t maintain tons of of chains competing for a similar liquidity swimming pools and developer consideration.
In earlier cycles, exuberant capital masked inefficiency. Enterprise funds seeded dozens of Layer-1 experiments, assuming that every would discover its area of interest. However liquidity shouldn’t be infinite, and customers gravitate towards comfort.
Over the subsequent few years, consolidation will substitute proliferation. Some networks will merge or interoperate by means of shared sequencers or modular frameworks; others will merely fade into GitHub archives.
Nonetheless, solely these with robust vertical identities, gaming, social, real-world belongings (RWA), or institutional finance, will survive as standalone ecosystems.
The logic mirrors the early web, the place dozens of protocols as soon as competed for dominance, however just a few, like HTTP and DNS, turned common. The remainder had been quietly deprecated. Crypto is now getting into its personal deprecation section.
For builders, this can imply fewer self-importance blockchains and extra composable infrastructure constructed atop confirmed ecosystems.
For buyers, it’s a reminder that Layer-1 publicity is not a broad wager on innovation however a selective wager on community gravity — the flexibility to draw and retain capital, not simply compute it.
