Stephanie Douse 
Kadena, a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain, has announced a $100 million incentive program to stimulate Web3 development on its platform, and also expand the layer-one protocol’s use cases.
The award program is part of Kadena Eco, a project aimed at expanding the Kadena ecosystem by fostering gaming, metaverse, nonfungible token (NFT), decentralized finance (DeFi), and Web3 initiatives.
Kadena’s creator and CEO, Stuart Popejoy, claimed his company will use “treasury resources” to ensure the protocol’s long-term viability.
Venture capitalists have been paying close attention to Web3, which has become a sort of catch-all word for the next generation of the blockchain-powered internet.
Cointelegraph recently reported on the creation of two Web3 developer funds, valued at $100 million and $135 million, respectively, from crypto exchanges KuCoin and CoinDCX.
Meanwhile, decentralized node providers are stepping forward to provide the infrastructure required to improve Web3 capabilities. Legacy Web2 providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Infura, have emerged as early infrastructure participants in the Web3 economy, but the competition is fierce.
Kadena’s platform supports Web3 development with scalable architecture and smart contracts backed by Chainweb, a PoW consensus method. Chainweb is touted to offer high transaction throughput without the need for layer-two scaling solutions in theory.
KDA, Kadena’s native cryptocurrency, is now rated in the top 100 on CoinMarketCap, with a market valuation of $925 million. Following the launch of a new interoperability standard and a Binance listing, KDA rose substantially earlier this month.