The old blockchain reboots its incentive plan, betting heavily on whether RWA can regain market attention?

Recently, a public chain project established in 2016 announced the launch of an incentive program totaling $50 million, attempting to regain market attention through the currently popular RWA track. This new move from the public chain, after a period of silence, has attracted widespread attention in the industry. This article will delve into the recent strategic initiatives of the public chain, its past development history, and its unique technological architecture, exploring whether this large-scale incentive program can bring new development opportunities and its potential in the RWA field.

The "Programmable POW" Dark Horse Created by Financial Elites

This public chain was co-founded by two former financial institution executives in 2016. One of the founders led the blockchain excellence center of a large bank, responsible for the development of the bank's core distributed ledger infrastructure and created its open-source blockchain project. The other founder served as the chief engineer of the project and was the technical director of the cryptocurrency advisory committee at a regulatory agency. They also participated in the development of the infrastructure for the first version of a bank's digital stablecoin.

This blockchain practice experience, originating from the internal workings of traditional financial giants, gives this public chain an "enterprise-level" or "institutional-level" design philosophy from the very beginning.

The core technological innovation of this public chain lies in its unique Chainweb architecture, which is a scalable, multi-chain parallel proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Chainweb is not a single blockchain, but a network composed of multiple independent, concurrently running peer chains interconnected in a "weaving" manner. Each chain mines independently and is capable of processing transactions in parallel. This design approach also significantly differs from other types of PoW chains on the market, positioning this public chain as the only programmable L1.

Under this design architecture, there is theoretically a very high throughput. In 2020, under the expansion of 20 chains, this public chain claimed that the theoretical TPS reached 480,000. This value far exceeds that of other public chains during the same period, including a certain high-performance public chain known for its speed.

With the halo of its financial background and technological advantages, this public chain once became a star among public chains since its establishment. In 2021, its token reached a peak price of $27, which was more than 100 times higher than the $0.2 at the beginning of 2020, and its market capitalization once approached $4 billion. Additionally, the network quickly expanded to 20 chains in its early stages, becoming the fastest POW public chain at that time.

High-Stakes RWA: Can 50 Million Incentives Break the Deadlock?

However, the glory of this public chain faded away with the end of the bull market in 2021. Since 2021, its price has plummeted, and its market value has dropped to around 150 million USD. Its official Medium blog has not been updated since 2023, and there are very few news updates about this public chain on social media.

On May 20, 2025, the public chain announced the launch of a $50 million incentive program aimed at promoting the development of Chainweb EVM, RWA tokenization, and AI-driven blockchain solutions. This news has also drawn the market's attention back to this established public chain. Will it begin to reshape its brand like a certain public chain did in the past?

According to official information, 25 million dollars of the total 50 million dollar fund will be specifically used to support compliant RWA tokenization projects. The remaining 25 million dollars will be used to support projects built on the multi-chain EVM compatible network of this public chain, as well as AI integration projects. This funding is non-equity support, meaning that the funded projects do not need to give up equity.

The first RWA field beneficiary of the new incentive program for this public chain is CurveBlock, a UK company that received $400,000 in funding in June 2025. Founded in 2018, CurveBlock is a UK proptech startup focused on sustainable real estate investment. From the background, CurveBlock is the first real estate company to be accepted into the UK Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS)). This also means that the reason CurveBlock could become the first funded entity of this public chain is closely related to compliance.

In addition, the public chain proposes to provide not only financial support but also technical assistance, project development advice, marketing, and promotion.

However, the official public chain has not specified how much each funded enterprise will receive, nor has it disclosed the specific criteria for funding. As of now, the only publicly disclosed funded enterprise is CurveBlock.

RWA is a popular track in the market in recent years, and many established public chains are actively seeking transformation through this narrative. For example, a certain public chain has also been expanding in this direction recently. In addition to launching incentive programs, this public chain has also developed an RWA token standard based on its native smart contract language Pact, which references Ethereum's EIP-3643. This standard aims to enforce on-chain permissions and regulatory controls, supporting the compliant issuance, trading, and redemption of assets.

After a $100 million incentive failed, funding plans become a difficult issue

However, the $50 million incentive plan launched by the official public chain is not the first of its kind. In 2022, during a phase of overall market decline and reduced attention, the public chain also launched an incentive plan totaling as much as $100 million, which funded the development and adoption of projects such as games, the metaverse, NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and DAOs within its ecosystem.

According to the official annual review of the public chain at the end of 2022, the $100 million incentive program received "overwhelming attention and hundreds of applications," with "a total of 9 projects funded in the first batch," some of which have already "achieved extraordinary results." Looking through the subsequent quarterly summaries, it can be seen that the program has gradually announced some projects, but ultimately, no overall description of the incentive program was found, and no specific funding amounts were mentioned during each announcement of the funded projects.

From the performance of the data, this $100 million incentive plan has not been able to enhance the market follow and community activity of this public chain. On one hand, its price continues to decline, while on the other hand, the only visible TVL-related data on the network has dropped to several hundred thousand dollars, the lowest in 2023. As of June 13, its TVL was only $940,000, and the market cap of stablecoins was approximately $180,000.

Returning to the current $50 million incentive program, the market cycle launched is extremely similar to that of 2022. Both occurred after the first peak of a bull market. However, we cannot predict whether the subsequent market cycle will replicate the overall bear market of 2021-2022 or open a new and larger market cycle. Nonetheless, to some extent, if this public chain's incentive measures encounter a market trend similar to that of 2022, it may face another "bamboo basket fetching water" situation.

In addition, unlike other public chains that directly incentivize users, this public chain's incentives are more aimed at project parties. In the absence of a significant user base, project parties may face greater investment risks by choosing this public chain solely for uncertain incentives. Looking closely at some of the promotional programs aimed at users launched by this public chain, the content of the incentives is to promote for at least 4 weeks, followed by a lottery in which 50 lucky winners can receive 40 tokens. Based on the current price of $0.48, users may not even earn $20 in rewards after a month of promotion, making the cost-effectiveness of such incentives somewhat questionable.

Therefore, although the narrative of RWA is popular and the $50 million incentive is substantial, it seems that what this public chain needs to consider right now is how to gain recognition from the market and the community in a more sincere manner. Otherwise, this $50 million incentive may end up being another case of much ado about nothing.