Kadena Blames Market Conditions for Sudden Shutdown

This announcement caused its KDA token to crash by more than 60% within just 90 minutes. Despite the shutdown, Kadena still said its proof-of-work blockchain would stay operational through independent miners and validators. Meanwhile, Fetch.ai CEO Humayun Sheikh escalated his feud with the Ocean Protocol Foundation by offering a $250,000 bounty for information on an alleged $80 million token misappropriation. The dispute is mainly rooted in the 2024 Artificial Superintelligence Alliance merger, and it has shaken investor confidence enough that both the FET and OCEAN tokens are facing volatility.

Kadena Folds Under Pressure

Kadena, the layer 1 blockchain that once hailed as a “blockchain for business,” announced that it is winding down operations and stopping all active network maintenance due to what it called “market conditions.” The news was shared on X on Tuesday, and sent its native token KDA plunging by 60+% within just 90 minutes. 

In the announcement, the Kadena team said it could no longer sustain business activities or promote adoption of its network, but still expressed gratitude to supporters and participants in its journey.

Kadena was founded in 2016 by Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, and its goal was to combine scalability with strong security through its unique proof-of-work architecture and smart contract capabilities. Popejoy previously led JPMorgan’s Blockchain Center of Excellence, while Martino served as a tech lead for the US.Securities and Exchange Commission’s cryptocurrency steering committee. 

Their backgrounds brought early credibility to the project, and at its peak in November of 2021, the KDA token reached a valuation close to $4 billion. Today, that figure has fallen dramatically to around $30.9 million, according to CoinMarketCap data.

KDA’s price action over the past 24 hours (Source: CoinMarketCap)

Despite the company’s shutdown, Kadena explained that the blockchain itself will continue operating. The network is decentralized and maintained by independent miners and validators who can still process transactions and mine blocks. To ensure ongoing stability, the team said it will release a new binary designed to keep the blockchain running without its direct involvement and urged node operators to upgrade as soon as possible.

Kadena also kept a small team to manage the wind-down process and will work with the community on decisions regarding the distribution of its remaining tokens. Around 83.7 million KDA tokens are set to be unlocked in November 2029, while an additional 566 million will continue to be released gradually as mining rewards through 2139. 

The closure of Kadena sheds some light on the challenges that smaller blockchains face when it comes to  maintaining relevance and profitability in a competitive environment dominated by larger players like Ethereum and Solana.

Ocean Protocol Under Fire

Other crypto company founders are also finding themselves in a tight spot. The feud between Fetch.ai CEO Humayun Sheikh and the Ocean Protocol Foundation intensified after Sheikh offered a $250,000 bounty for information on the signatories of OceanDAO’s multisignature wallet and their connection to the foundation. The move was made after Sheikh’s recent allegations that a wallet linked to Ocean Protocol misappropriated approximately 286 million Fetch.ai (FET) tokens—which was worth around $80 million at the time.

The dispute traces back to the 2024 merger that formed the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance, which combined Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and SingularityNet into a unified token framework. Sheikh claims that Ocean Protocol minted and transferred millions of OCEAN tokens before the merger, and later converted them into FET tokens and moved them to centralized exchanges without disclosing the transactions. 

The Fetch.ai CEO has since vowed to fund class-action lawsuits across multiple jurisdictions and urged major exchanges, including Binance, GSR, and ExaGroup, to investigate the matter.

In the wake of the controversy, Binance announced that it will cease support for OCEAN token deposits, though it did not specifically point to the dispute as the reason. The growing tensions also impacted market performance, with the FET token dropping almost 8% in the past 24 hours to trade at around $0.25, according to CoinMarketCap data.

FET’s price action over the past 24 hours (Source: CoinMarketCap)

Blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps provided even more insight after reporting that an Ocean Protocol-linked wallet converted about 661 million OCEAN tokens into 286 million FET tokens and transferred roughly 270 million FET—valued at $120 million—to Binance and GSR Markets. 

Ocean Protocol withdrew from the ASI Alliance on Oct. 9, and has denied any wrongdoing. It stated that the tokens were retained for “community incentives” and “data farming” purposes. Additionally, the foundation said it would issue a formal response to what it described as “unfounded claims.”