- Kadena Chainweb has become the fastest blockchain in the world, clocking in at 480,000 transactions per second
- The hybrid blockchain is the first sharded Proof of Work blockchain in the world and runs on multiple parallel chains
- Kadena is working on another upgrade to take it up to one million transactions per second
Kadena is a name you probably haven’t heard of, but it has just produced the fastest blockchain in the world. Chainweb, the public blockchain from Kadena, is the first ever sharded Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism and has been clocked at a staggering 480,000 transactions per second (tps) following a major upgrade. The project uses parallel chains and is the first to come out of JPMorgan’s Blockchain Center for Excellence, which launched in 2018.
The #Kadena hybrid platform achieves an industry-leading 480,000 TPS! Kadena has concluded its upgrade from 10 chains to 20 chains on the first sharded and scalable #PoW layer-1 #blockchain.
Learn more @ https://t.co/raLoI591YK pic.twitter.com/WvZaY7Qd5e
— Kadena (@kadena_io) August 20, 2020
Chainweb Solves PoW Scaling Problem
Chainweb was developed in house by JPMorgan until early 2018 when Kadena took the project private, raising $15 million for development over the year. Chainweb set out to overcome the inability of PoW blockchains to scale effectively, something that was particularly evident in late 2017 when the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks became over congested. The recent DeFi craze has illustrated that the issue still persists, with Ethereum gas prices going through the roof and not always going through.
Kadena tackled the problem by using a sharded PoW layer-1 blockchain which allows for the operation of multiple chains running in parallel, thus greatly reducing the strain on the network as a whole. The protocol functions through a braided, parallelized consensus mechanism, a unique architecture that massively increases speeds while preserving the security of the PoW consensus.
Kadena Looking to the Future
Initial testing of the Kadena Chainweb protocol in 2019 revealed that it could operate with 10 simultaneous chains, offering some 750 tps, and the blockchain was soon adopted by companies in the finance, healthcare, and insurance sectors. However, major upgrades across several areas have allowed the number of parallel chains to double and the tps rate to skyrocket to 480,000 tps.
Kadena don’t want to stop there however. Developers are already working on the next major upgrade for Chainweb, which will see 50 braided chains working in parallel and a proposed rate of one million transactions per second.
