EKMH Innovators Interview Series
An interview series spotlighting global tech influencers, disruptors, visionaries, and of course, innovators.
Kadena now provides the only public blockchain that is production-ready for smart contracts, solving Bitcoin scaling challenges and the security issues of Ethereum. Kadena’s founders created JP Morgan’s first blockchain and worked at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. After moving from JPMorgan, co-founders Will Martino and Stuart Popejoy launched Kadena and following the start of genesis mining in October 2019, Kadena has surpassed having two million blocks mined at hash rates as high as 40 TH/S. Last week’s public blockchain launch includes the ability to conduct full transactions and to write smart contracts. The latest functionalities of the network complete Kadena’s hybrid blockchain platform. According to the platform, Kadena is already delivering interoperability, scalability, and security across industries including finance, healthcare and insurance.
“Despite blockchain having immense potential, our experience building JP Morgan’s first blockchain showed us its limitations,” said Founder and President Popejoy regarding the launch. “Launching a fully functional hybrid blockchain which seamlessly integrates a public chain with a private network is a significant step forward in reimagining what applications can do on-chain.”
To date, Kadena has partnered with several businesses including USCF (and its $3 billion fund) and Rymedi (tracking the quality of medicinal products).
My interview with Kadena Founder and CEO Will Martino covers a variety of interesting topics including career decisions, public blockchain, blockchain innovation, Pact, the future of decentralization and leading successful teams. Our interview follows.
EKMH: As of 15 January, the latest functionalities of the network complete Kadena’s hybrid blockchain platform. Kadena is already delivering interoperability, scalability, and security across industries including finance, healthcare, and insurance. How did/does Kadena learn and develop from current sector limitations?
Will Martino: Kadena's Co-Founder and President Stuart Popejoy and I experienced the limitations of the sector firsthand during our time at J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain Center of Excellence. There, we led the creation of JPM’s first blockchain, Juno. Before building anything, we conducted an in-depth analysis of early versions of Hyperledger, Axoni, Symbiont, Ripple, and Ethereum. This research made it clear to us that existing blockchain options on the market were technologically inadequate for the needs of enterprises.
We worked on — and learned from — the challenges of adapting existing public blockchains for enterprise use, including what it takes to successfully lead financial institutions toward decentralized technology. We also discovered that the inside of a bank was not the right place to drive blockchain forward, as we couldn’t make the decisions we needed to truly drive innovation. Using our experience at J.P. Morgan as a framework, we left the J.P. Morgan team in 2016 to found Kadena, a hybrid blockchain platform company.
EKMH: How will Pact utilize and adapt to accommodate blockchain innovation?
Will Martino: Kadena’s hybrid platform supports interoperability using Pact, Kadena’s open-source, Turing-incomplete smart contract language with Formal Verification. We designed Pact to be the smart contract language people can easily learn and use to support sophisticated projects. The simple smart contract language is powerful enough to code complex contracts and execute multi-party transactions.
Enterprises and developers alike will find that applications once considered too difficult to build are now achievable with Kadena. By removing the complexity and vulnerability of other smart contract languages, Pact advances secure and legible transactions. With this combination of ease in usability and security, Pact encourages blockchain innovation.
Kadena’s recent partnerships demonstrate how Pact is playing a key role in blockchain innovation. For example, next-generation blockchain networks such as Cosmos and Polkadot have announced their interest in implementing Kadena's smart contract language.
EKMH: Why did you opt for a hybrid blockchain?
Will Martino: A hybrid blockchain takes the best of public and permissioned blockchain, allowing participants to seamlessly leverage decentralization while also gaining management of sensitive personal data. With hybrid blockchain, the benefits include the liquidity and market access of public blockchain alongside the privacy and security benefits of permissioned blockchain. For example, some of the blockchain use cases already being explored include Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Client (KYC), and cross-border payments, where a lot of time and effort is spent on verifying information. Performing these functions on a hybrid blockchain provides privacy and transparency that offers value to both auditors and regulators.
EKMH: What is your vision for blockchain? How will Kadena lead the charge?
Will Martino: Blockchain is on track to experience widespread adoption. Kadena sees itself contributing to blockchain adoption through the features offered on our hybrid platform that enable the connection of a public chain with a private network. The advancement in blockchain technology will assist in onboarding a wide range of participants to blockchain.
An example of this is demonstrated in Rymedi's CBD oil tracking. In this use case, customers scan a simple barcode with their cell phones to receive data about a product’s origin and journey. The validation of purchasing and authenticity is especially useful in geographies where fraud and quality concerns remain potentially life-threatening issues.
EKMH: What is the future of decentralization? How can performance be increasingly improved and scaling supported?
Will Martino: Moving into 2020, the decentralization of networks like our own or Bitcoin will continue to undergo improvements in scalability. This advancement has already begun with Kadena's recently launched public blockchain. Kadena has built upon the foundation of a Bitcoin mining chain and parallelized this work across multiple chains—each referencing their peers’ headers—in specific configurations that allow for efficiency and better throughput. The increase in attack-resistance offered by the public chain’s multiple chain architecture significantly lowers the required per-chain hash rate. The use of hash rate to support additional chains serves to increase throughput, utilization, and security.
EKMH: At Yale, you created a new fractal geometry-based approach for analysis of time series data; later you were a Haskell Engineer within the Emerging Technology group under JP Morgan Chase & Co Corporate and Investment Bank. Could you please share with readers, especially those pursuing a career in Blockchain, why you have chosen your current career path?
Will Martino: The world needs a set of hybrid blockchain tools they can rely on for truly decentralized applications. There’s been a lot of promise, but little in the way of safe-to-use tools. We’re very much in the everything must be a nail because all we have is a hammer era of decentralized applications (dApps). Stuart and I had a vision of building something different and it’s been amazing as we make that a reality — collaborating with the team we’ve assembled, working on hard tech problems, trying to figure out the implications (at a business, technical and societal level) of some of the solutions we’ve found, and meeting amazing people within the broader community.
My experience founding Kadena has been a bit different than I envisioned. The thing that I find most rewarding, software engineering, isn’t my job anymore. I’ve been an engineer for almost a decade, which is what I did for the first year after we founded. For the last year, however, I’ve barely coded and have moved into more of a business and operations role. I’ve met and worked with some amazing people who believe in crypto because they want to take on moneyed, centralized monopolies by offering a safer, cheaper, and more equitable alternative. Building the tools for them and other businesses, both large and small, is what I find most rewarding.
Kadena CEO Will Martino: “We understand that the only way to work is together. Individually, each member of the Kadena team is their own kind of incredible. When we each join forces, we can learn, innovate, and grow more than we could alone. By holding to these values, success is one result.”
EKMH: The Kadena team brings together engineers with decades of banking, commerce, and regulatory experience to a public blockchain. What advice do you have about mentoring, establishing workplace diversity and building successful teams?
Will Martino: Part of Kadena's success can be attributed to how Stuart and I have defined Kadena and the environment our team needs to prosper.
At Kadena, we believe that agreements are foundational, and that integrity is about integration. Our team integrates feedback, diverse ideas, and different viewpoints. Each of us does this with compassion and honesty, which helps fuel growth, excellence, and innovation at Kadena.
We hold high standards for our work. We each rise to meet them and do so without allowing personalities to interfere with the respect we have for one another.
Lastly, we understand that the only way to work is together. Individually, each member of the Kadena team is their own kind of incredible. When we each join forces, we can learn, innovate, and grow more than we could alone. By holding to these values, success is one result.
EKMH: And finally, which books are you currently reading and which books would you recommend to readers?
Will Martino: I listen to a lot of Audible books, mostly science fiction and some non-fiction. I just finished listening to The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and The Nexus Trilogy series by Ramez Naam, both of which I highly recommend.