Public PoW blockchain Kadena makes its first capital deployment from a $50 million grants program, backing UK startup CurveBlock in the Bank of England’s Digital Securities Sandbox.
The milestone marks a pivotal intersection between open blockchain infrastructure and government-led experimentation with digital securities, underscoring growing institutional appetite for compliant pathways into tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
The DSS allows blockchain-native financial instruments to operate under modified CSD and exchange rules through 2028, enabling the issuance, trading, and settlement of digital securities with relaxed regulatory constraints.
The initiative is designed to support builders working on tokenized debt, real estate, and other compliant asset rails, with applicants eligible for equity-free funding, infrastructure support, and code review.
CurveBlock’s grant reflects growing interest in aligning public blockchain tech with real-world institutional demand.
The DSS launched in late 2024 and represents one of the world’s most advanced attempts at legally enabling digital securities experimentation.
Participating firms can scale projects through a series of regulatory gates. CurveBlock recently cleared Gate 1 with support from Kadena and will continue testing live real estate tokenization flows over the coming months.
Annelise Osborne, Kadena’s Chief Business Officer and former Moody’s executive, believes that a lack of infrastructure, not institutional interest, is the real bottleneck for RWA adoption. “With this $25 million, I really hope we’ll have a lot more builders and a lot more fintechs that come from the tokenization side… I’m a huge believer that they’re going to grow,” she told American Banker.
Osborne has also noted the importance of proof-of-work infrastructure, like Kadena’s Chainweb, in delivering scalable and secure tokenization rails.
Kadena’s approach differs from many rivals in that it combines parallelized PoW chains with upcoming EVM compatibility and a token standard designed for compliance.
The grant program’s broader goal is to accelerate the adoption of this infrastructure for real-world applications, particularly where on-chain permissioning and regulatory controls are critical.
Kadena’s grant to CurveBlock is a notable signal that public-chain infrastructure may yet play a central role in that evolution.
If successful, the experiment could shape not just the future of tokenized real estate in the UK, but also influence US and EU approaches to sandbox-based digital finance.
At a Glance – Kadena’s RWA Grant Program
Key Milestones
