ASICs
Kadena is currently mined by ASICs, which makes the network is VERY hard to attack. If they were mined by a GPU or CPU algorithm, any large mining organization could point huge amounts of hash power at the network and might be able to pull off such an attack. But because multiple manufacturers have made ASICs for mining the network, that is basically impossible. One ASIC miner is equivalent to something like ~18,000 GPUs or ~18,000,000 CPUs. They have worked with the ASIC makers to make sure that the hash power is distributed to as many people as possible, so assembling enough hash power to attack Kadena right now basically requires that you design and manufacture your own custom mining chip. This is a very costly endeavor and also takes a significant amount of time. During that time, the existing ASIC manufacturers will have produced more devices and spread that hash power around to more people.
ASIC resistance is an unsolved research problem, that we believe will be non-solvable in practice. I know there are some "counter examples" currently BUT they aren't valuable enough mining-wise to have the right motivation. Moreover, ASICs are good long-term as they can't be repurposed for other coins. So, therein is the question: If you are going to get ASIC-ed, do you want something hard that takes a while/fight getting ASIC-ed or something that's easy to ASIC optimally?
An ASIC that comes out that you can't replicate is a real problem. Part of what the community support treasury is for navigating this problem. A major worry for an ASIC tape-out's investment is: will you hit the market on time and get the share of coins you expect to get? We can de-risk that aspect with a partnership easily in that we will happily partner with anyone who wants to fund a community/open ASIC tape-out, and back this partnership with a lot of coins. So long as anyone can buy one and there is no funny business, we see this as a milestone in Kadena's growth.
There are some other ASIC providers that have shown interest in adding KDA to their offerings, including some that build more commodity/at home multi-miners. Agreed that the centralization of the mining isn't healthy long-term, and we're working to get the ASICs spread out across more pools for reliability, and yet a POW system with dedicated ASICs are the peak of safety when it comes to public blockchains, so I'm really happy/proud that KDA got to that point. It's a big deal
KDA could be mined on CPUs, then GPUs, then FPGAs, then ASICs, exactly the same as bitcoin. there are actually good security arguments for using ASICs, eg that hashing power is then committed to the blockchain permanently instead of just flitting between whatever is most profitable at that moment (as you get with GPU/CPU mining). You dont want large numbers of miners suddenly switching to another algorithm
the kadena miners are distributed in such a way that they are sold to people all over the world and are limited in number for single purchases, the team actively ensures that kadena miners are distributed in a decentralised fashion, and once they are sold, no kadena ASIC owner is going to part with them, they are the most profitable miners out there.