On September 11, the ICP token price increased by 13.86% in the past 24 hours, becoming the largest gainer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization that day. Internet Computer's 24-hour trading volume was $197.367 million, an increase of 216.56% compared to Monday.
The Internet Computer (ICP), with its fully decentralized "world computer" concept, aims to build an online service ecosystem that does not rely on traditional centralized IT services (such as cloud computing, databases, and web servers), thereby improving network security and reducing censorship risks.
The price of Internet Computer Token has soared by about 20% in the past week, and the reason is the explosion of mining project bob.fun. ICP founder Dominic Williams recently mentioned on Twitter that due to the explosive popularity of BOB, the computing volume on the ICP network has increased 20 times in a few days. He joked whether this rapid growth should be regarded as "progress or stress test."
The project is easy to get started with. Just go to bob.fun, add some ICP to your wallet, and set up your own miner. Mining BOB on ICP consumes tokens of the ICP network without the need for expensive hardware. Some Twitter users said that BOB can be mined with a mobile phone.
Twitter user BigBossPassion said that if one Meme coin (BOB) on ICP can consume thousands of ICP in a few days, imagine the potential when ICP runs large social networks (Instagram, Twitter type applications), Onchain AI, chat applications such as Telegram (OpenChat has higher adoption), Chain Key versions of all top tokens, on-chain storage applications such as Dropbox, and thousands of DeFi projects.
BOB uses a system called “on-chain proof of work”, which is a new twist on the traditional mining model. Here’s how it works:
Deploy your own smart contract on bob.fun - called Canister;
Canister is responsible for solving mathematical problems, called hashes, provided by the main computer (i.e., the mother node);
The parent node manages the blockchain and provides these questions;
Miners compete to solve these problems, and once a miner solves a hash, they submit the solution to the parent node;
If the answer is correct, the parent node verifies and adds a new block to the blockchain;
Successful miners will receive 600 BOB tokens as a reward.
The BOB network is growing rapidly and now has over 9,000 miners, with more blocks being added to the blockchain every day. As of now, over 1,800 blocks have been mined and the total supply of BOB tokens is 21 million, ensuring plenty of room for future growth.
The BOB network's rewards are halved every 17,500 blocks, which means that miners who participate early will receive more benefits. At the current rate, this halving occurs every 88 days, ensuring that the reward system remains dynamic and that competition for rewards will become more intense as the number of miners increases.
BOB currently has a hash rate of 6 million hashes per second, with about 1,000 miners in action, and it takes an average of 600 seconds to mine a block. Anyone can be selected by the mother node by paying a small fee. Once launched, it's all about speed and strategy.
On the economic side, some interesting mechanics of BOB come from its integration with ICP’s Cycles system. On ICP, Cycles are similar to the fuel that powers smart contracts. BOB miners need Cycles to run their Canisters and solve hashes. Here’s how it works:
One dollar can buy 1 trillion cycles, and the miner's program consumes 1 trillion cycles per day when running at full speed;
Miners can choose how fast they want the program to run, which affects the number of problems they solve per day, with slower speeds consuming fewer cycles, while faster speeds consume them quickly;
If a miner runs out of cycles, it will stop until it is replenished, so you need to keep an eye on these resources.
User Snassy.icp raised concerns about the effectiveness of BOB’s mining pools. Since BOB’s miners do not produce new blocks, but instead compete for the opportunity to mint tokens, some believe this is more like a lottery than traditional blockchain mining. In their view, there is not much point in joining a mining pool in this setup, as the expected value of mining may not be enough to make up for the cost of participation.
However, Bon WUmbo and others believe that mining pools will be transformative for BOB and the wider crypto community, and he likens it to a collective learning session - while individual miners may struggle, miners in a pool can combine computing resources, thereby increasing efficiency.
The debate about the BOB mining model focuses on whether it is more like a lottery or a community-driven collaboration. For BOB miners, this means that they can work together to solve problems faster, thereby increasing their chances of earning tokens. WUmbo believes that while rewards may be divided, pooling resources can make mining more accessible and profitable for all participants.
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