US financial behemoth JPMorgan is taking a share of the DeFi pie with its very own blockchain network Kadena, according to an official announcement on Kadena’s blog. Kadena’s public blockchain was launched from JPMorgan’s Blockchain Center for Excellence in January this year, and with the tremendous growth reflected by the DeFi sector, Kadena is introducing Kadenaswap, a multi-protocol decentralized exchange (DEX).
Kadena is placing itself as a direct alternative to the Ethereum blockchain, which most DEXs are currently built on. Leading DEX platform Uniswap utilizes the Ethereum blockchain, for example, and in recent weeks, the crushing pressure from the sudden influx of transactions from DeFi is sending ETH gas prices to new highs. At one point, average gas fees to process a single transaction on the blockchain cost a whopping $99, when the same transaction could have cost less than $5 earlier this year.
Moreover, DeFi protocol security has been compromised several times this year, with major DeFi projects suffering online attacks and a loss of user funds. As Ethereum has proven to be less than reliable in supporting the DeFi ecosystem as a whole at its present capacity, Kadena aims to offer a quality alternative to Ethereum for DeFi projects.
“Kadenaswap’s support for multiple protocols and the ability to scale across the Kadena public multi-chain network will provide a much-needed, fully decentralized alternative to ‘CeFi’ on centralized exchanges and off-chain layer-2 solutions. Combined with community efforts like our developer program launch and free gas campaign, Kadenaswap shows a way forward to mass adoption of DeFi protocols,” Kadena Co-founder and President Stuart Popejoy said.
Kadena is scheduled to go live at the end of the year, along with its governance token KDA, which is being rolled out in partnership with ZelCore. Instead of using Solidity, the programming language that Ethereum uses, Kadena will be utilizing Pact to integrate its network with other DeFi protocols and crypto assets such as BTC, CELO, DAI, DOT, LINK, and ETH. In the month of October, developers will also have a chance to test out their applications on the Kadena blockchain at no gas gee charges.
