At Kadena, we’re proud of our token economic model, as it provides robust rewards for the miners who keep our network running, and funds all the critical initiatives that drive adoption on the platform. In January 2021, working closely with our incredible community, Kadena announced a major update to our token economic model in January 2021.

To briefly recap that article, Kadena’s model offers the most decentralized distribution of any modern layer-1, with 70% of all token emissions going to miners, who also represent all governance of the actual network, thanks to Proof-of-Work. 1% was burned at launch, 9% was released over the first two years to contributors (3%) and investors and strategic collaborators (6%), while 20% constitutes the platform share, which can be used to fund all activities for maintaining and growing the network. See the original article for more details on how these are deployed.

The change announced in 2021 dramatically reduced the emission rate of the platform share. Initially planned to distribute over 5 years after launch, Kadena committed to extending this release cycle to 10 years. This was an important correction as it reduced platform emissions to not exceed mining emissions, and extended our timeline to deploy the platform share to help grow the network and drive adoption.

Since then, the community has asked for more clarity surrounding the exact emission rate. Indeed, some of the graphics in that article, which focused on comparing platform emissions to mining emissions but did not illustrate the remaining 9%, added to the confusion by showing totals that did not line up with the actual coins in circulation. Finally, even though we have long offered open-source tables of all emissions, the community wanted a clear, cumulative dataset of all KDA cumulative emissions to eliminate confusion.

The above chart shows the entire emission of KDA, from launch in 2019 to the cessation of mining rewards in 2139 (!). “Other” groups Strategic-Investor and Contributor shares, which finished emission in October 2022. Platform emission completes November 2029, as shown in the detail below. After November 2029, all KDA emissions will be for mining only.

We’re also happy to provide the cumulative data month-by-month for the entire emission of KDA. Note that the data indicates the cumulative amount at the end of the month, not the beginning. Specific emissions can as always be found in the open-source data linked above.

This article is intended to help further illustrate the Kadena token economic model, but there are many more stories to tell about the exciting happenings at Kadena, including all the great grant-funded projects coming online in Q3 and Q4 2023, as well as amazing new initiatives in layer-2, ZK technology, smart wallets and more.

Join the conversation on Kadena’s Discord to find out more!