1. ICP Background Overview
1.1 Project Introduction
1.1.1 Introduction
When it comes to ICP (Internet Computer), you may first think of the price manipulation incident when it was first launched. This incident was later considered to be a fearful reaction of some crypto forces to the threat of its technology: ICP's core technology has disruptive potential (which was well known before its launch) and may shake the status of existing blockchain projects, which allowed some interested parties to suppress it through price manipulation.
However, more than three years later, ICP has not collapsed as many people thought, but has shown a thriving ecosystem. In fact, ICP's TPS (transactions per second) is still far beyond the reach of other public chains. As can be seen from the figure below, its real-time TPS is 6 times that of Solana.
As the world's fastest blockchain, what kind of revolutionary technology does it have that has won it so many loyal fans? In today's article, we will take a deep look at the full picture of ICP.
1.1.2 Creation background and team members
ICP, short for Internet Computer, is a completely rebuilt blockchain that shares no technology with any other blockchain, and the cryptography that powers the blockchain was specially developed by a large team of some of the best cryptographers in the world.
So when we try to understand ICP, we have to reorient our thinking: this is a general infrastructure built from the ground up to provide a decentralized AWS-like service for all applications in the world (not just financial applications).
ICP was developed by the DFINITY Foundation, a non-profit organization in Zurich, Switzerland. DFINITY is a combination of Decentralized Infinity, representing the project's vision of infinite decentralization.
DFINITY was a hotly discussed project in the cryptocurrency world in 2021, raising as much as $200 million in 2018. It was also the first crypto project invested by a16z. Its glamorous investors include: serial investors a16z, Polychain Capital, Multicoin Capital, etc.
DFINITY hopes that ICP’s underlying technology will enable it to serve as a “global computer” that can fully host and run social media, large-scale games, and enterprise systems on the blockchain, thereby eliminating traditional centralized technologies such as cloud computing services from large technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Meta.
To achieve this vision, the DFINITY Foundation has assembled a large and highly qualified team of stars (mostly cryptography, academic, and leadership talents), which is said to be the largest R&D team in the blockchain field, with more than 1,600 publications by its members.
Here are some of the core members:
Dominic Williams: Founder, President and Chief Scientist of the DFINITY Foundation and ICP project. He founded DFINITY in 2015. He has a background as a technology entrepreneur, distributed system engineer and theorist. He excels in the field of distributed computing and cryptographic theory and has made outstanding contributions. He envisions that ICP will be the third major revolution in blockchain after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Josh Drake: ICP major contributor, COO of DFINITY Foundation, worked at Coinbase before joining DFINITY.
Jan Camenisch: Chief Technology Officer of the DFINITY Foundation, has published more than 120 widely cited papers in the fields of privacy and cryptography, and was previously a principal researcher at IBM for 19 years.
Samuel Burri is VP of Engineering at DFINITY, where he has led a global team that built and maintained Schindler’s elevator control software for the past 8 years.
Pierre Samaties: Chief Business Officer of DFINITY, energy and innovation expert, former partner of Roland Berger and its global head of crypto and digital assets, former CEO of RWE Middle East, with more than 20 years of experience in strategic consulting and venture capital construction in the energy, AI and crypto industries, leading the global digital assets, Web3 and Metaverse practices, and mainly responsible for the technology commercialization promotion and ecosystem construction of ICP.
1.1.3 Important time points
1.2 Token Economics
Unlike many token economic models, the entire ICP network is balanced by a unique economic model. ICP (native token) does not have a total upper limit, only the concept of supply. The supply mainly consists of circulating supply and pledged parts. The factors that can affect the real-time supply of ICP mainly include the consumption and issuance of ICP.
As of November 22, 2024, the supply of ICP is 525 million, of which 38.4% is unlocked.
Before understanding the composition of its tokens, we must first understand its neuron-based governance mechanism.
1.2.1 Neuron governance mechanism
In ICP’s on-chain governance DAO organization Network Nervous System (NNS), anyone can generate a neuron by staking ICP to initiate governance proposals or participate in governance.
If ICP is a giant distributed computer network, with each data center and node providing the hardware facilities for operation, then NNS is the administrator of this computer. Through proposals, it determines the operating mechanism of the ICP supercomputer network and the distribution of benefits in the ecosystem and other related matters.
Neuron holders receive rewards in proportion to the number of locked ICP tokens and the length of the lock-up period (up to 8 years). If the proposal is passed, the neuron will accumulate "maturity". When it reaches a threshold, it can "produce" new neurons (the number of locked ICP in the new neuron = the number of ICP in the old neuron * maturity).
The neuron reward method mainly comes from the ICP issuance. The issuance in the first year is 10% of the total. As time goes by, the issuance curve decreases quadratically until it drops to and remains at 5% after 8 years. The current issuance ratio is 6.59%.
Users can choose to merge new neurons (Merge), which is similar to reinvesting the interest on new neurons, or disburse (Disburse), which is to withdraw the interest, that is, mint new neurons into ICP.
Additionally, users may not have the time or knowledge to participate in all voting decisions, so instead of voting directly on proposals, neuron holders can choose to delegate their votes to other neurons they trust. This concept of delegating voting power to other voters is called liquid democracy.
A relatively important link is that when staking ICP to generate neurons, a "dissolution delay" needs to be set, which is similar to the term of a fixed deposit. The dissolution delay is irreversible and can only be reduced by dissolution. It cannot be withdrawn in advance before maturity. When the pledger chooses to open the unlocking, the neuron enters the dissolution state and will be dissolved within the pre-set "dissolution delay" time.
“Dissolution delay” can increase the voting weight of neurons. It takes at least half a year to participate in the voting. When it is set to 8 years, the number of votes can be increased by 1 times. It is this setting of “8 years” that gave birth to the unique community culture of “8 Years Gang” in the ICP community, which also reflects the belief of long-term holders of the ICP ecosystem.
1.2.2 Consumption of ICP
The following chart shows the total consumption of ICP. Since the launch of the mainnet, 432,471 ICP have been destroyed, including the following three consumption channels:
ICP transfer fee: Each transfer or transaction approval fee is 0.0001 ICP. As of now, the transaction has consumed 1477 ICP.
Fees for rejected proposals: It costs 1 ICP to initiate a proposal. The handling fee will be refunded after the proposal is accepted, but 10 ICP will be deducted when the proposal is rejected. According to the data provided by the ICP Dashboard, there are currently 678 rejected proposals, which means that 6780 ICPs have been destroyed due to proposal handling fees since the mainnet was launched (some may not have been destroyed yet, but will definitely be destroyed in the future).
Network consumption: dApp and smart contract developers on ICP need to consume Cycles (similar to gas fees on ICP) to pay for computing and storage costs, and Cycles can only be redeemed by destroying ICP (the redemption is irreversible). According to the previous data, it can be calculated that as of November 15, a total of 420,000 ICPs were destroyed by Cycles, accounting for 97% of the total consumption. This shows that conversion into Cycles is the main source of ICP consumption.
From the figure below, we can see that there has been a jumping destruction trend since September 9th. Most of the destruction was caused by the DeFi project Sonic (the first DEX on ICP and a Gas-free AMM).
Sonic directly provides a Swap method to convert the Cycles obtained from the destruction of ICP into XTC (Cycles Token). Driven by demand, all ICPs that Swap XTC on Sonic are destroyed.
1.2.3 ICP Inflation
Inflation comes from two sources:
As of November 15, rewards paid to node providers totaled 13M ICP. Unlike the reward models of many other public chain nodes, ICP node rewards were calculated in fiat currency before March 2022. Therefore, the monthly issuance rewards paid to node operators are determined by the average monthly ICP price, which means that the lower the ICP price, the more issuance, and the higher the price, the less issuance. After that, the monthly node operator rewards will be anchored to XDR (a basket of five major international currencies, including the US dollar, euro, yen and pound sterling) as the calculation unit. If the ICP/XDR exchange rate changes significantly, consider an automatic stabilization mechanism.
The rewards allocated to NNS neuron governance voting, all neurons participating in network governance will receive currency-based voting rewards, which come from the issuance of ICP.
In addition, there are two other ways to increase ICP:
The first is the dissolution and release of neurons. According to the data in the ICP Dashboard, the total number of pledged ICP is 238M (about 2.65 billion US dollars), of which 85% of ICP is in a non-dissolved state and 15% is in a dissolved state. From the perspective of the "dissolution delay" years, 59% is 8 years, with a locked value of up to 1 billion US dollars, which is enough to make the ICP network enter the top ten public chain ecosystems in TVL. This is not taken into account in DeFiLlama's calculations. The second largest period is half a year to one year, accounting for 9%.
Second, ICP is minted by maturity. When neuron holders choose to spend the accumulated maturity, maturity will be minted into ICP. As of November 5, a total of 42.8M ICPs have been minted by maturity, accounting for 8% of the current supply, of which 1.09 million were minted in October and nearly 160,000 in November so far.
1.3 ICP Data Overview
1.3.1 Project related data
ICP's current In-dApp TVL is US$53 million. It can be seen that after entering 2024, TVL has grown rapidly and has doubled compared to the beginning of the year.
From the perspective of TVL composition, there are currently 10 dApps with TVL of ICP recorded by DefiLlama, 6 of which have relatively solid TVL, 1 of which is ICP’s own SNS DAO, and the other 5 are WaterNeureon, ICPSwap, Sonic, ICDex and Helix Markets.
In terms of revenue level, ICP's revenue in October ranked among the top 8 public chains.
From the perspective of TPS, ICP has always been far ahead and has seen a sharp increase since September, rising from the previous level of around 5k to nearly 7k.
Judging from the number of daily transactions, the transaction volume on ICP has increased significantly since September, doubling from the previous level of around 15k to around 30k, and set a new historical high of 52.3k on October 1st.
Judging from Github commit data, ICP has the most active development activity, ranking first with more than 7k commits (modifications to the project source code), which proves that ICP is constantly updating and improving its projects.
1.3.2 Social media related data
As of November 5, 2024, ICP has accumulated nearly 700,000 followers on X, and has a dedicated reddit column with frequent updates and discussions. ICP hubs around the world also have their own ecosystem accounts and communities, as well as accelerator partners, which continue to contribute to the ICP ecosystem around the world.
In addition, OpenChat, a decentralized community based entirely on ICP, also has 25.71k MAU (monthly active users), and these users will enjoy completely decentralized community products.
1.4 Technical Architecture
The development of ICP began with the release of Copper in 2019, which introduced a software development kit (SDK) and Motoko - a programming language designed specifically for writing smart contracts. The biggest advantage of smart contracts on ICP is that they have the expressiveness and scalability of traditional applications while benefiting from the decentralized and trustless execution of blockchain.
As can be seen from the conceptual diagram below, from centralized servers to Ethereum - the degree of decentralization is gradually increasing, but this is at the expense of scalability. ICP is in the middle of the curve and is committed to seeking a balance between scalability and decentralization.
ICP adopts a layered architecture, which mainly includes containers (Canister), subnets (Subnet), nodes (Node), and data centers (such as CPU, network, and memory resources).
We can think of ICP as a system composed of multiple subnets. Each subnet is essentially a public chain. Smart contracts on one subnet can communicate with smart contracts on another subnet by sending messages.
In each subnet, there are multiple containers, which are the interoperable basic units in ICP. Each container contains the code and status uploaded by the user. The bottom layer is an independent data center that hosts dedicated hardware. Nodes run on top of the data center. The nodes are responsible for processing the data and status execution in the subnet container.
Node providers independently own and control node machines, which are distributed in data centers around the world, adding capacity to the Internet Computer blockchain. ICP currently has 37 subnets, 132 node providers, and 784k containers.
This layered structure design provides ICP with higher scalability and flexibility, enabling it to meet application scenarios of different scales and requirements, and also makes its look and feel closer to cloud services.
Next, we introduce the concept of "container" - ICP's smart contract system, which is the carrier of dApp and can support programs written in multiple languages.
Each Canister has its own dedicated memory. If you think of ICP as a supercomputer, then the "container" is the process in the computer. Each Canister process contains its own running memory. You can encapsulate smart contract-related data in a specific container.
This is ICP's unique way of storing data - Canister allows you to put your program's state, database, and even front-end data (such as game assets) all in this container, with the intention of making dApps further scalable.
It can be said that ICP is actually a platform that carries containers. Many containers are deployed on ICP nodes through containerization technology.
1.4.1 Powerful “Chain Fusion” Technology
What is chain fusion? Let’s first see what Samuel Burri, DFINITY’s Vice President of Engineering, said: “Chain fusion refers to the ability of smart contracts on ICP to sign transactions and interact seamlessly with other blockchain networks without relying on any single trust point.”
ICP uses Chain Fusion technology to write transactions directly to other chains (cross-chain integration and interoperability controlled by smart contracts at the protocol level) without the need for centralized intermediaries such as central bridges, thus achieving a secure multi-chain future.
Its technical highlights are as follows:
① Chain-Key Cryptography
The core technology of Chain Fusion is ICP's unique chain key cryptography. This cryptographic method allows ICP's smart contracts to interact directly with other blockchains (such as Bitcoin and Ethereum). In this way, ICP can verify and generate signed transactions on other chains. This is like creating a set of "virtual nodes" for each blockchain on ICP, thereby achieving point-to-point secure communication.
For example: Smart contracts on ICP can directly control Bitcoin addresses (such as sending or receiving BTC), which is achieved through chain key technology.
② Chain-Key Tokens
ICP provides a special form of token called chain key tokens (such as ckBTC and ckETH). These tokens are different from traditional "anchor tokens". They are completely managed by decentralized smart contracts, and each chain key token is backed by an equal amount of native assets.
For example: ckBTC is a Bitcoin token on ICP. Users can exchange it for real BTC at any time. Its generation and circulation are automatically completed by the ICP smart contract and does not rely on a centralized custodian. This mechanism not only improves the transaction efficiency Efficiency and security also significantly reduce the cost of cross-chain operations.
Under the ChainFusion architecture, cross-chain communication does not require a relay network or traditional "bridge", thus reducing complexity and security risks. For example, many cross-chain bridges on Ethereum are easy targets for attack, while ChainFusion's approach eliminates these risks through fully decentralized verification, so that dApps can be developed across multiple blockchains in a unified environment and provide the following features:
Two-way communication;
Sign and submit transactions using ICP “Container” smart contracts;
Cost-effective, fast finality, and reverse gas model.
ICP's computing power and architectural design also make cross-chain interactions more efficient: it can process a large number of cross-chain requests per second, with low latency and fast transactions, and can support complex on-chain logic such as multi-chain payments and smart contract calls.
Overall, this powerful technology unlocks “ICP superpowers” for other blockchains, bringing them scalability and low-cost transactions. For example, smart contracts on ICP can provide up to 400GB of storage space to non-ICP decentralized applications, enabling them to store data on-chain.
In addition, a range of network services can be supported, from social networks to full-fledged AI models (which we will discuss later). Of course, the benefits are twofold: this also attracts more developers and assets to the ICP ecosystem. In addition, the technology has become an important tool for developers seeking to create more complex applications that utilize multiple blockchain networks.
It turns out that Chain Fusion is not just a technological innovation, it is also a powerful solution to the long-standing interoperability problem between isolated blockchains. As this technology matures and becomes more widely used, it has the potential to revolutionize decentralized finance (DeFi), data management, and many other applications, bringing us closer to the truly interconnected blockchain future we dream of.
1.4.2 Chain Fusion + Artificial Intelligence = Decentralized Artificial Intelligence
When it comes to AI, the average user may not know how the model works. How is the data used? How does the model generate responses? Everything is shrouded in opacity.
Decentralization of AI on ICP means bringing the trustworthiness, security, verifiability, and resilience of smart contracts to AI applications to ensure transparency and security that traditional platforms cannot match.
But as we all know, AI is a physical job. Running reasoning on an AI model with millions of parameters involves billions of arithmetic operations, such as multiplication and addition. Therefore, in order to support on-chain reasoning, the blockchain needs the ability to process billions of operations per second.
In order to make on-chain AI reasoning and large-scale model training a reality, ICP's "container" smart contracts need to handle more computing and memory-intensive tasks. In July of this year, Cyclotron made its debut, bringing a historic breakthrough to ICP - the computing power was directly increased by about 10 times. This milestone not only expanded the computing and memory capabilities of the "container", but also paved the way for future GPU hardware acceleration.
So, how is ICP implemented? First, let’s talk about virtual machines, which are a crucial part of blockchain for AI computing because they execute the code of smart contracts. The function and performance of virtual machines directly affect how much AI computing smart contracts can perform.
For example, EVM is Ethereum’s virtual machine, but it is customized for DeFi smart contracts and lacks features such as floating-point arithmetic required for AI calculations.
In contrast, ICP uses WebAssembly as a virtual machine, and WebAssembly supports floating point numbers and is designed from the ground up for near-native performance. The idea behind Cyclotron is to maximize the floating point performance in the ICP virtual machine.
In short, ICP has made three major optimizations:
① Deterministic floating-point operations
Most AI libraries and frameworks rely on floating-point operations. ICP requires that floating-point operations must be deterministic, that is, the same input always produces the same result. Because ICP executes the same code on multiple nodes and then runs a consensus algorithm to determine the correct result, if floating-point operations are not deterministic, nodes may disagree, thereby blocking the progress of the blockchain.
DFINITY engineers found a way to make deterministic floating point operations faster in a WebAssembly virtual machine called Wasmtime, a low-level compiler optimization that produces faster code, which not only improves the performance of ICP, but also benefits other platforms that use Wasmtime.
② Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD)
SIMD is a common technology in modern CPUs. It allows one instruction to perform multiple arithmetic operations simultaneously. For example, WebAssembly can perform four parallel floating-point addition operations with one instruction, which greatly improves computing efficiency.
③ SIMD support in AI inference engines
The last piece of the Cyclotron puzzle is to add WebAssembly SIMD support to the AI library. The DFINITY team provided a WebAssembly SIMD implementation for the open source Sonos Tract inference engine. The new code implements matrix multiplication and other numerical algorithms using SIMD instructions. This contribution not only benefits ICP, but also the broader developer community.
Together, these optimizations result in significant speed improvements, with observed improvements ranging from 5x to 19x depending on the model in end-to-end AI inference workloads, as shown in the following figure:
As we can see, the launch of Cyclotron not only makes ICP unique in the blockchain field, but also paves a bright road for the deep integration of AI and blockchain in the future. This also makes ICP the only blockchain that can fully run face recognition on the chain, while also being capable of high-level AI use cases such as image classification and GPT-2 reasoning (provided by DecideAI).
This is not only a technological leap, but also a redefinition of blockchain application scenarios, opening a door for future exploration of on-chain AI.
1.4.3 DePIN Infrastructure
ICP's network nodes are composed of hardware machines that meet specific requirements, which can support data storage and computing completely on the blockchain network. The decentralized "chain storage, chain computing" completely replaces the centralized "cloud storage, cloud computing", making ICP an ideal DePIN infrastructure network.
1.5 Competition Landscape
If we look at what ICP is doing, it is difficult to find a directly comparable competitor, because it is not just a blockchain, but an "Internet computer" that can carry a complete infrastructure from storage to computing.
This architecture breaks the limitations of traditional blockchain projects and aims to become a seamlessly integrated open Internet service platform that provides developers and users with an experience beyond Web3.
But if we look back at 2022 to 2024, we will find that this is a critical period of significant acceleration of human technology, especially revolutionary breakthroughs in the development of AI.
We live in a world dominated by centralized giants such as OpenAI, Google, Amazon, etc. These companies have abundant talent, hardware and capital, but centralized AI always aims to maximize profits, and the closed nature of large language models by large technology companies also hinders the realization of "AI democracy".
Against this backdrop, calls for “open source AI” and “Crypto AI” are starting to get louder and louder, which is why the early convergence of two major technology trends (AI + Crypto) is so eye-catching. This is where the magic happens.
ICP is not specifically Crypto AI, but it is able to provide a tamper-proof environment for AI models and other applications, promoting security and trust through open and honest business practices. The container is a high-performance smart contract that can manage large amounts of computing resources, enabling complex AI models to be deployed very quickly and efficiently.
DFINITY’s vision is also to create a decentralized future for AI. In this understanding, we mainly compare it with other platforms that are closely integrated with AI.
1.5.1 NEAR Protocol
In the past decade, blockchain has gone through three stages of evolution: Bitcoin, Ethereum and smart contract platform, and the third-generation blockchain dedicated to solving Ethereum’s scalability issues. NEAR Protocol is an example of the third-generation blockchain.
NEAR was founded in 2018, launched its mainnet in October 2020, and received $500 million in financing in 2022 alone. Investors include well-known institutions such as A16Z Crypto and Tiger Global.
As a PoS-based L1, NEAR decided to build a completely new blockchain with a different architecture to solve the scalability problem: it got rid of the idea that every node participating in the network must run all the code and used sharding technology (Nightshade, one of the ways to scale blockchain horizontally).
If the blockchain is compared to a highway, sharding technology can widen the highway and divide it into multiple lanes for diversion. Nightshade distributes the work of processing transactions to many verification nodes. A verification node only needs to process a small part of the network transactions. In this way, the node can process and verify transactions in parallel across multiple shards, thereby increasing the number of transactions per second and improving the scalability of the network as a whole.
NEAR currently ranks 6th among all public chains with a TPS of 68.48 tx/s (ICP ranks first with nearly 5k tx/s).
According to DeFiLlama, NEAR’s current In-dApp TVL is $300 million, of which Burrow accounts for 73% with $220 million. Burrow is a decentralized, non-custodial, asset pool-based lending platform, similar in nature to Aave, Compound, and other pool-based protocols.
The nearly vertical TVL explosion in early April 2022 shown in the figure below was due to the launch of Burrow on the NEAR mainnet.
One of the great features of NEAR is that it does a very good job of chain abstraction (making it user-friendly and understandable). For example, using readable account names, users on NEAR may send funds to alICPe.near instead of sending funds to 0x123abc…
In addition, new users can use smart contracts without a wallet, which is extremely attractive to both developers and users.
NEAR's two star projects are undoubtedly Rainbow Bridge (launched in May 2021 and upgraded in June 2023) and Aurora. Rainbow Bridge allows users to easily transfer any Ethereum token back and forth between Ethereum and NEAR/Aurora.
Aurora is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for NEAR, and because it is built using Ethereum coding technology, developers can easily get started on the NEAR chain without having to rewrite dApps or learn new development tools.
Aurora is backed by the NEAR network and can offer extremely low fees (about $0.02 according to the official website), and can confirm transactions within 2 seconds. Aurora's current TVL is more than 15 million US dollars, and the ecosystem has more than 211 projects.
According to its latest post on X, across 80,000 simulations, Aurora remains the fastest and most cost-effective solution for launching a blockchain.
1.5.2 Sentient
Similar to ICP’s vision, Sentient also hopes to build the underlying infrastructure of AI and blockchain. Its ideas are worth exploring. Sentient’s goal is to develop an open source AI platform that enables AI developers to have ownership: 1) monetize their models, data, and other innovations; 2) collaborate with each other to build powerful AI; 3) become an important stakeholder in the new open AI economy. Sentient announced that it will be built on Polygon.
When talking about Sentient, we have to mention its luxurious team of core contributors. One of its founders is Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal, and the advisor is EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan.
With the support of this top team, Sentient completed a $85 million seed round of financing in July this year, led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. This may be the largest crypto AI project financing announced this year.
Sentient is currently in a very early stage of initial development after fundraising. The official website has not yet been officially launched, and the platform is also recruiting a large number of engineers.
OpenAI went from open to closed due to funding and capital needs to achieve greater success and revenue, however, Sandeep wondered if it was possible to obtain funding and develop technology while remaining open.
To solve this problem, Sentient proposed a new framework: the OML model, namely: Open (open source: anyone can make and use the model), Monetizable (monetizable: the model owner can authorize others to use the model) and Loyal (loyalty: controlled by the collective/DAO).
This model allows the model to be used in a distributed environment, while tracking usage and rewarding contributors through a decentralized protocol, thereby ensuring both openness and profitability. The OML white paper has been released.
The official roadmap shows that Sentient will carry out early platform construction, Open AGI hackathon and other activities in the short term, and will then release the Sentient protocol, early basic model experiments, and early models built with community contributions. The long-term goal is to achieve incentives and monetization for the AI-built economy, and the final model and Open AGI built on the community.
Although its future development remains to be seen, perhaps we can try to look at Sentient more tolerantly. After all, AI is a very difficult and competitive track, and any company in this track may determine the future of mankind.
With top founders and lavish investments, Sentient, a new decentralized AI platform, has at least a better chance of surviving and competing with the giants of Web2. Perhaps Sandeep’s bold crossover will really create a more OML AI development landscape for us.
1.5.3 TO
AO is an official project of Arweave. Its white paper was just released in June. It was launched by Sam Williams, the founder of Arweave (a decentralized data storage platform that can permanently store data on the network). Its model has been highly praised by top VC leaders such as A16Z and SevenX Ventures.
The native token AO is used to incentivize participants and ensure the stability and efficiency of the network. The maximum supply of AO tokens is 21 million, 100% of which is allocated to the community, of which 36% is allocated to AR holders and 64% is allocated to cross-chain users (currently stETH, DAI). The AO token follows a halving cycle similar to Bitcoin, and the distribution rate gradually decreases every five minutes.
AO is a scalable blockchain network built on the Arweave data storage platform. To put it simply, in traditional finance, funds are deposited in banks and managed uniformly by banks. This method is inefficient and the process is cumbersome. In DeFi, assets can be automatically pledged and circulated, which improves the efficiency of fund utilization.
On AO, all funds are held by the users themselves and managed by their own robots or AI. Each fund can have its own strategy, which will greatly improve the intelligence level of financial assets.
Because AO has better performance and architecture, users can inject contract code into their wallets and have the agent automatically execute the strategy. The ultimate vision of AO is to achieve seamless integration of AI and blockchain, enabling AI models to be hosted on the chain and run directly on the chain, and make autonomous decisions.
Within three and a half weeks after its release, AO attracted more than 3,000 developers to join the Arweave ecosystem and participate in its construction. A large number of AO applications emerged in a short period of time and have maintained a growth momentum.
In the past, Arweave, as a storage protocol, could only be seen as a hard drive. A hard drive alone could not carry larger narratives and usage scenarios. Therefore, Arweave created a CPU - AO that is perfectly compatible with its own hard drive, and integrated it into the narrative of on-chain AI.
It can be said that AO saved Arweave, and the market has shown great interest and expectations in AO. A network that can simultaneously realize storage and computing is exactly what ICP has accomplished.
Before February 2024, the price of AR had been hovering below $10, significantly underperforming BTC, and did not rise with the mainnet upgrade and the start of the bull market. After the release of AO, the price of AR rose rapidly, increasing by 4 times in one month. Although it has fallen back a lot recently, it has remained at around $15.
1.6 Preliminary Value Assessment
The valuation of ICP is a difficult problem, because it is not just a blockchain, but it wants to reconstruct the entire web2 world on web3. Judging from its future plans and visions, the value of this platform is infinite, but we also need to consider the gap and implementation status of ICP and its 20-year roadmap plan at key time points.
The following shows a comparison between ICP and NEAR. Since the price manipulation by a third party in 2021, the price of ICP has been running at a low level, so it is not impressive from the perspective of market value, but it still ranks among the top 30 on CoinMarketCap.
In addition, the ICP ecosystem is continuously being built and improved. We will have a separate analysis of this later. In particular, its founder has expressed a strong interest and inclination towards the blockchainization of AI. The value that this will unlock in the future is enormous.
2. ICP Ecosystem
There are more than 300 dApps in the ICP ecosystem, including 57 Social dApps, 52 DeFi dApps, 49 Chain Fusion dApps, 47 NFT dApps, 29 Game dApps, and more than 60 AI dApps.
Below we will also analyze the representative head projects in the ecosystem from these main categories. Since the ICP ecosystem has gradually grown into a huge ecosystem, due to space limitations, we cannot list them one by one.
2.1 DeFi Track
2.1.1 ICPSwap（X：@ICPSwap）
From the name, we can see that ICPSwap is the native DEX of ICP. It is also the earliest DEX in the ICP ecosystem. Its products are very complete, including DEX, Staking, Farming, NFT marketplace, Wallet, DAO governance and other aspects of DeFi products are all integrated in one.
In terms of DEX, in addition to traditional Swap, there are also professional version products with K-line charts, analysis modules, etc. TVL ranks second in ICP with 9.95M.
2.1.2 Sonic（X：@sonic_ooo）
Sonic is currently the largest DEX on the ICP chain, with a TVL of nearly 10 million US dollars. Its features include fast transaction speed (confirmation within 2 seconds) and low transaction fees (handling fees within 0.02U).
At the same time, product modules include Swap, LBP (Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool) type asset issuance platform, data analysis tools, etc. The product has a relatively high degree of integration and a smooth user experience.
In addition, in the V3 version of Sonic, it is also integrated into the ICP-based EVM-compatible Bitcoin second-layer network Bitfinity.
2.1.3 Helix Markets（X：@HelixMarkets）
In addition to supporting assets on the ICP chain, the order-sheet DEX on the ICP chain also supports Runes protocol assets such as Rich. This also requires mentioning the powerful chain fusion feature of ICP, which enables the trading of Bitcoin mainnet assets such as BTC, Ordinals, BRC20, and Runes protocol directly on the ICP chain.
Compared to the previous two projects, Helix Markets started later and has a TVL of about US$2 million.
2.1.4 KongSwap（X：@kongswap）
KongSwap is an AMM-based decentralized exchange (DEX) that provides seamless, bridge-free cross-chain transactions across multiple blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. It leverages ICP's Chain Fusion technology and stable memory in the ICP protocol to solve common decentralization problems such as high fees, fragmented liquidity, and complex user experience.
KongSwap has also built an active community on GitHub and developer forums to ensure transparency and accessibility for developers. KongSwap officially joined SNS in September.
2.1.5 WaterNeuron（X：@WaterNeuron）
Founded in 2021, the liquidity staking protocol designed specifically for ICP, similar to Ethereum's Lido, aims to provide liquidity to ICP users, enabling users to maintain liquidity of their assets while staking ICP tokens.
As of now, WaterNeuron's TVL has exceeded 15 million US dollars, demonstrating its influence and market recognition in the ICP ecosystem. It is a star DeFi project in the ICP ecosystem.
As the ICP ecosystem continues to expand, WaterNeuron is also constantly innovating and optimizing its liquidity staking products, attracting more and more DeFi users to join. WaterNeuron is gradually developing into a project that cannot be ignored, playing an important role in improving the decentralization and capital efficiency of the ICP network.
2.1.6 SparkFi（X：@sparkfiicp）
A DeFi protocol for liquid staking of ICP that uses nICP as the underlying asset to unlock composable liquidity for ICP stakers.
2.1.7 Bob.fun（X：@bobdotfun）
A memcoin launch platform on ICP, formerly an innovative mining protocol based on ICP. Bob.fun has brought a lot of cycles to ICP, and also gave birth to some good memecoin projects.
2.1.8 Oisy Wallet（X：@oisy）
The Oisy wallet is maintained by the DFINITY Foundation and is ICP's most representative practice of "users interacting with DApps without wallets". It is a browser-based multi-chain encryption wallet that runs on the Internet Computer but processes Ethereum ERC-20 tokens, allowing users to send and store cryptocurrencies and connect to DApps directly from the browser.
Oisy Wallet users do not need to download any plug-ins or applications and can easily access it across different devices. For users who are keen on decentralization, Oisy Wallet is completely on-chain, and the Oisy Wallet full-stack application is securely deployed on the chain.
Additionally, wallet keys are generated and protected on the ICP network using chain key technology, where keys are generated using advanced cryptography and distributed among dedicated ICP nodes.
Oisy Wallet is transmitted to the browser through a smart contract, rather than the traditional way of downloading a wallet app from a mobile app store. This once again shows that the advantage of ICP is not just user experience, but true decentralization.
2.2 Social Track
2.2.1 OpenChat（X：@OpenChat）
A well-known decentralized social application, founded by Matt Grogan, a former smart contract engineer at DFINITY, it is the world's first community-controlled chat system and is also fully deployed on the ICP chain.
Launched as a DAO in March 2023, raising 1 million ICP in exchange for 25 million CHAT (25% of the initial supply), it has a similar feature set and performance to Discord and Slack, while also offering many crypto-native features, such as users being able to send each other messages containing tokens such as ICP and BTC, OpenChat currently has 25.71k MAU (monthly active users).
2.2.2 Dmail（X：@Dmailofficial）
It is a platform that provides encrypted email services, unified notifications and targeted marketing. It integrates with multiple chains and dApps to meet the needs of users, developers and marketers.
Dmail supports user self-hosted decentralized mailbox solutions deployed across various chains and a proprietary messaging protocol based on the Web3 identity system. It ensures secure communication through email and notifications, establishing itself as a key communication link in the Web3 infrastructure. At the end of January this year, the DMAIL token was listed on exchanges such as OKX.
2.2.3 Catalyze（X：@catalyze_one）
Catalyze was founded in 2021 with the goal of providing user-friendly community creation and management, event scheduling, and instant value transfer tools for the Web3 community. In September 2023, the CTZ token was launched on ICP to reward the community on the platform.
Looking ahead, Catalyze is committed to onboarding KOLs of the new internet and becoming the go-to platform for Web3 learning, community building, events, and seamless token transfers.
2.2.4 ShareX（X：@ShareX_Network）
ShareX's mission is to revolutionize the Web3 sharing economy. This innovative platform aims to enhance the way digital assets are shared and managed, and promote a more interconnected and collaborative Web3 environment. ShareX's vision is to bridge the gap in the sharing economy and introduce a more efficient and decentralized sharing mechanism. Currently, ShareX has joined the acceleration camp jointly organized by ICP and ABCDE.
2.2.5 ICP Racer（X：@ICPRacer）
ICP Racer is a social mini-program application based on Telegram, which integrates the ICP ecosystem with the Telegram ecosystem with 900 million users to promote the mass adoption of ICP. ICP Racer has also joined the Web3Labs acceleration camp.
2.3 DeAI Track
The AI track is the focus of ICP, and currently has more than 60 AI projects, as shown in the following figure:
Some of the projects are selected for introduction below.
2.3.1 DecideAI（X：@DecideAI_）
A Web3 company focused on creating AI-based large-scale language models (LLMs) announced at the end of August that it had fully deployed its GPT-2 LLM through the ICP blockchain. This development leverages ICP’s ability to support complex, computationally intensive applications, enabling Web3 developers to build, train, and improve specialized LLMs.
In the future, DecideAI will also leverage ICP’s Chain Fusion technology (which allows protocol-level blockchain integration) to expand its AI models to Ethereum and Solana. After announcing the full on-chain integration of AI at the end of August, DecideAI’s native token DCD saw a significant increase of several dozen times in the first week of early September. The current market value is approximately US$50 million, with 20k+ users, which has nearly quadrupled in 2 months.
2.3.2 ELNA AI（X：@ELNA_DeAi）
Launched in August 2023, it is a community-driven decentralized AI agent creation platform. Unlike other AI chatbots where operators select training data, ELNA users can upload their own data to the network and train AI models focused on topics and applications of interest to them.
Once completed, ELNA will deploy the AI assistant or AI agent onto the ICP blockchain, where users can continuously expand its AI knowledge by adding new data.
2.3.3 Chosen（X：@ProjectChosen）
Project Chosen is an AI-driven prediction market that was previously the first multi-modal prediction market based on zkSync Era and is currently being deployed on the ICP network and audited by PeckShield and DeHacker.
Chosen allows anyone to earn rewards and continuous income through predictions, social sharing, voting, etc. At the same time, AI has a lot of room for innovation in creating prediction events and becoming a prediction opponent.
2.3.4 MurphAI（X：@murphai_io）
Murph AI is an AI Hub based on ICP. Users holding ICP and ICP ecological tokens can use various types of AI products. At the same time, MurphAI provides a series of infrastructure including computing power and data for AI products in the ICP ecosystem to build an AI technology stack.
2.3.5 NGPU（X：@ngpu_ai）
NGPU is a decentralized AI computing network dedicated to providing cost-effective and stable GPU resources for various AI applications. Through innovative features such as task-based billing, intelligent resource allocation, and efficient data transmission, NGPU can achieve permissionless access, low latency, and high reliability in AI-driven services. NGPU is also ICP's AI ecosystem partner.
2.3.6 MemeFun.ai（X：@memefunicp）
Memefun.ai is a recently launched emerging platform, positioned as “Pumpfun” on ICP, whose goal is to make it easy for everyone to create and publish their own memecoin.
MemeFun not only provides a platform for creators to publish their creativity and express humor, but also provides a more intuitive and interactive way for users to participate in Web3 and cryptocurrency culture.
Currently, MemeFun is actively expanding its communities in Japan, South Korea and other Asia-Pacific regions. What is more innovative is the use of AI as the infrastructure of memecoin, such as using AI to create memecoin and community emoticon packages, further lowering the threshold for issuing memecoin.
As the Memecoin craze continues, Memecoin on ICP has the opportunity to become a universal financial and cultural phenomenon.
2.3.7 SpotLabs
SpotLabs is a DeAI platform that provides enterprises with a simple interface to manage security infrastructure, offering a suite of tools and an expanding ecosystem of plugins (called “Spots”) that store and AI-powered encrypted company data and are accessible to all members of an organization, regardless of technical skills.
Won first place in the first AI hackathon held in March this year and received a $10,000 grant from ICP.
2.3.8 Yuku (X: @yukuapp)
Founded in January 2024, the platform covers labels in multiple fields such as NFT, Metaverse, Gateaway, 3D Avatar, AI, Deflation, ICP and MultICPhain.
The platform is mainly composed of three core modules: NFT, Metaverse and AI Agent. Yuku's Metaverse space design is unique. Users can enter the experience directly as a visitor without logging in or registering with a wallet. This feature greatly reduces the participation threshold and enhances the convenience of user experience.
2.3.9 Onicai（X：@onicaiHQ）
Onicai is an AI as a service platform that provides better AI solutions for ICP ecological projects. The AI products it supports include the on-chain AI chat tool DeVinci, the on-chain language model ICGPT, etc.
2.4 Chain Fusion
Chain Fusion currently supports 49 protocols. Since the Tritium upgrade in May, it has integrated the Ethereum chain and the EVM chain. Specific applications of chain fusion include:
2.4.1 ckBTC
ICP integrates with the Bitcoin mainnet: ICP becomes the Bitcoin L2 without the need for a cross-chain bridge mechanism. The ICP network runs Bitcoin light nodes, and the threshold Schnorr signature integration it developed enables ICP smart contracts to sign Bitcoin network transactions at the protocol level, such as engraving inscriptions, etching runes, trading Ordinals NFTs, etc.
Chain-Key Bitcoin (ckBTC) is a unique DeFi innovation on the ICP chain. It is a native token on the ICP chain and can be regarded as the "twin" of Bitcoin. It was issued in April 2023. ckBTC can realize fast, low-cost, cryptographically secure, and fully on-chain Bitcoin transactions on ICP, bringing true decentralization to the DeFi and blockchain space.
The beauty of ckBTC is that it is cryptographically secured 1:1 with real Bitcoin and is issued and redeemed via container smart contracts, which anyone can verify at any time. Every step of converting BTC to ckBTC and back is decentralized, meaning there are no centralized custodians, no chain bridges, and no traditional cloud providers that can serve as attack vectors.
Users can mint ckBTC by sending real BTC to the smart contract. Conversely, if ckBTC is sent to the smart contract, the smart contract will pay BTC to the user's Bitcoin wallet.
2.4.2 ckETH
ICP integrates Ethereum mainnet: Bitcoin integration is not the only beneficiary of chain fusion, Ethereum also welcomed these features through the released EVM RPC Canister and the introduction of Chain Key Ethereum (ckETH), a twin of the ETH token on ICP.
2.4.3 ckSol
ICP integrates Solana network: As above, Solana integration is expected to be supported by the end of 2024.
2.4.4 BifiPal（X：@BifiPal）
BifiPal is committed to changing the financial landscape of Bitcoin. By leveraging ICP technology, it enables bridgeless cross-chain transfer of BTC to ICP. At the same time, it provides a comprehensive financial protocol designed to solve the liquidity challenges and low returns associated with Bitcoin. Its goal is to create a strong financial system for Bitcoin and gradually introduce traditional financial services into the Bitcoin network.
2.4.5 TAP Protocol（X：@tap_protocol）
TAP is the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol that supports OrdFi, designed to find and track Ordinals. The protocol introduces the TAP token standard, emphasizing simplicity and accessibility. Its key mechanism, "tapping", simplifies transaction verification within the protocol.
TAP includes Token-Send for efficient large-scale transfers, Token-Trade for simplifying text-based inscription transactions, and Token-Auth for third-party issuance of signature redemption inscriptions. The Tap protocol can be "embedded" into other chains so that they can communicate securely with Bitcoin L1, and can achieve interoperability of chains such as Ethereum, ICP, XRP, and Aptos.
It is because of the TAP Protocol and ICP’s ability to programmatically sign transactions in a decentralized and secure manner that TAP is able to provide true L1 programmability for Bitcoin.
2.4.6 bitSmiley（X：@bitsmiley_labs）
bitSmiley is a Bitcoin-native DeFi project. As the first stablecoin project in the BTC DeFi ecosystem, bitSmiley has made innovations in both application design and protocol layers.
Its groundbreaking Fintegra framework consists of three main components: a decentralized over-collateralized stablecoin protocol, a native trustless lending protocol, and an on-chain derivatives protocol. bitSmiley will first introduce the native over-collateralized stablecoin bitUSD on the Bitcoin blockchain to solve the problem of the lack of stable price-pegged tools.
Users can generate bitUSD by over-collateralizing BTC, allowing them to participate in all BTC blockchain DeFi protocols. Each bitUSD is backed by over-collateralized BTC, and a powerful liquidation and repayment system is used to ensure stability and user asset security. On November 6, the SMILE token was officially launched.
bitSmiley completed two rounds of financing this year, including a $10 million round at the end of October.
2.4.7 Bioniq（X：@bioniqMarket）
Bioniq is a Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace that leverages the Internet Computer and saves time and costs by packaging assets. Bioniq went live on the mainnet in November 2023, and its investors include Polychain.
2.4.8 Other innovative projects
Other projects that use Chain Fusion’s seamless functionality include Helix Markets, Omnity, etc. This super technology has attracted more developers and assets to the ICP ecosystem.
2.5 ICP Ecosystem Construction Initiatives
The ICP ecosystem has nearly 300 dApps. In addition, ICP continues to invest in ecological activities, demonstrating its determination and action to steadily expand its influence. The following are some important initiatives:
① Join hands with the United Nations to deepen development in Southeast Asia
ICP has established a long-term and stable cooperation foundation with the United Nations. For example, in July this year, the two sides jointly launched the "Universal Trusted Credentials" (UTC) program to use blockchain technology to help small and medium-sized enterprises solve financing problems. The first stop of the project was selected in Cambodia, and the future goal is to expand to 10 countries.
This wave of cooperation not only brings technical endorsement to ICP, but also adds a lot of points to its influence in the Southeast Asian market. Through such landing projects, ICP has further consolidated its role in promoting blockchain to empower social economy.
② Establish an AI development center
As we mentioned earlier, with the rapid development of the digital landscape, countries around the world are exploring the potential of blockchain, AI and cybersecurity. AI is the next key "battlefield" for ICP. ICP not only has a vision, but also practical actions.
In October 2024, DFINITY founder Dominic Williams personally traveled to Argentina to participate in the Technology Forum Week, presenting his vision for leveraging the transformative power of ICP and promoting collaboration with the emerging technology industry in Argentina and Latin America.
In addition, we also cooperate with local universities to organize training camps and hackathons to directly teach students and developers how to use new technologies. This not only improves the skills of Latin American developers, but also demonstrates ICP's potential as a technology innovation center.
③ Global hub
ICP Hub is a center established to raise global ICP awareness. These centers develop ecosystems in areas such as ICP-related development, collaboration, training, and Web3 program support. Currently, ICP centers have spread across India, Latin America, Italy, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, North America, East Africa and other places.
④ Accelerator Program: A hotbed for entrepreneurs’ growth
In March this year, ICP and Web3Labs jointly launched the "ICP X Web3Labs Accelerator", which directly provided a set of "startup gift packages" to selected projects: a special grant of US$50,000, technical training, market expansion and resource docking, all included. Such all-round support can not only help projects in the ecosystem take off quickly, but also further attract more developers to join the ICP team.
At the same time, ICP also cooperates with other well-known Asian partners such as ABCDE and Outlier Ventures to conduct acceleration camps, which also shows that ICP attaches great importance to the Asian market.
⑤ Strategic cooperation with enterprise wallets
Not long ago, at the end of October, ICP HUB Korea and IoTrust signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The company's Wepin wallet focuses on "simple and fast". Even if the company has no foundation in blockchain, it can use simple SDK and API to quickly connect the wallet to its own application.
Through this cooperation, Wepin will be further promoted within the ICP ecosystem, while bringing more innovative Web3 service experiences to users. This operation not only optimizes the technical tools within the ecosystem, but also enhances the practical value of ICP in the field of enterprise services.
⑥ SNS Launchpad
The full name of SNS is Service Nervous System. It is a Launchpad infrastructure provided by the DFINITY Foundation for ICP chain ecological projects in December 2022. It allows projects to issue tokens and deploy DAOs with one click. Any ICP holder can purchase it.
For a project, two key steps need to be completed before it can be launched on SNS: 1) The project's white paper and the token economics therein must obtain the majority votes of ICP stakers on NNS, that is, neurons, before the token sale can be started; 2) After the token sale is over, the final amount of ICP raised must reach the minimum standard set by the project itself, and it can be transformed into a DAO after the SNS is successfully launched.
For example, the aforementioned OpenChat, after successfully completing decentralized sales to become a DAO, has had a lot of proposals submitted and voted on, covering website upgrades, container smart contract upgrades, creation of marketing campaigns, treasury fund transfers, and the construction and management of ICP ecological project groups.
The official website shows that 30 projects have successfully become DAOs through SNS, as shown in the figure below.
This should be distinguished from the NNS mentioned above. NNS and SNS are both the core governance infrastructure of the ICP network. The former is responsible for the governance DAO of the entire ICP network, while the latter is a "one-click" Launchpad specifically provided for ecological dApps to promote the development of dApps in open governance, tokenization, transparency and other aspects. SNS is the continued innovation of ICP based on the success of NNS.
3. Summary of highlights
Looking at the entire Web3 ecosystem, it is rare to see a public chain like DFINITY that has the determination to go deep into the underlying layer and connect the entire chain.
In (Announcement of ICP “Mainnet” and 20-Year Roadmap), DFINITY revealed its long 20-year development roadmap. This road is not to “Kill ETH” or to become No.1 in the Crypto and blockchain industry, but to:
5 years later (2026): More and more Web2 traditional entrepreneurs and development teams develop products on the ICP network, and it is easier to raise funds to become DAO governance;
10 years later (2031): Become the “open internet” of the tech industry, the true Web3;
20 years later (2041): Become an “open internet” larger than Web2, expanding into everyone’s life.
Today, more than three years after the mainnet launch, DFINITY continues to deepen its efforts in multiple key technology areas and strive to advance its grand blueprint. We have the following views on ICP:
① With strong underlying technical support, ICP’s technical performance may not be directly reflected in the price of the currency, but its TPS is 6 times that of the second-place Solana, truly a blockchain that “runs at Internet speed” with almost unlimited scalability. Perhaps this is related to the low-key and pragmatic style of the DFINITY team. ICP lacks the exaggeration of many Web3 projects and focuses on polishing core technologies, steadily moving towards the ideal of “Internet Computer”. The price of ICP was indeed manipulated by the market when it was first launched, but this is not something DFINITY can control, nor is it something they want to control. Their mission from beginning to end is to deliver the promised technology.
② Super cost-effective storage cost. It costs about 240 million US dollars a year to store 1GB of data on Ethereum. Solana, known as the "Ethereum killer", also costs 840,000 US dollars. On ICP, it only costs 5 US dollars. Cycles, which is denominated in stablecoins, avoids the cost trouble of currency price fluctuations, making it the king of cost-effectiveness in the field of blockchain storage.
③ Innovative NNS governance mechanism. ICP's "neuron" governance mechanism links voting rights and rewards to the amount and duration of pledge. Many users chose an 8-year dissolution period (about 60%), showing long-term confidence in ICP, which has formed a stable and loyal ecological support user group for ICP. However, more importantly, ICP's NNS system has promoted the prospect of the third-generation DAO and the greater vision of "open Internet services". Founder Dominic Williams believes that in the future, newly established companies will exist more in the form of DAO rather than traditional companies, because this will bring advantages such as automated management, improved transparency, and direct execution of rules, which is more in line with the technological future.
④ Leading a new era of decentralized AI, Cyclotron, which was just released in July this year, has increased the computing power of ICP by an order of magnitude (about 10 times), close to the level of native CPU performance, making it the only blockchain with a smart contract working instance that fully executes face recognition on the chain. For example, DecideAI announced at the end of August that it had fully deployed its GPT-2 LLM through the ICP blockchain. This is the first step to run large AI models completely on the chain. The next goal is to break through the CPU performance limitations.
⑤ 100% on-chain storage and computing. In addition to 100% on-chain storage of static data similar to Filecoin and Arweave, ICP is the only one that can fully implement dynamic data processing on the chain, including processing large-scale computing, especially large language model training in the field of AI. This is unique in the blockchain field and provides developers with a new dimension of innovation possibilities.
⑥ The superpower of "Chain Fusion" technology. Just as the development of the Internet is to connect different networks, blockchain technology also needs a savior to connect them, and Chain Fusion was born for this purpose. For example, smart contracts on ICP can now execute transactions based on events occurring in the Ethereum or Bitcoin networks, paving the way for decentralized financial businesses that were previously unattainable. In addition, AI runs as a smart contract on the ICP blockchain, and Chain Fusion releases these functions to other blockchains through integration. Looking to the future, Chain Fusion will continue to develop and bring better seamless integration to different blockchain environments, which means improved transaction speed, security, and user interface.
⑦ User-friendly account abstraction and privacy protection. ICP has the user account model closest to Web2. Users only need to register an account once without a wallet. This account can easily log in to any ICP ecological application and interact through fingerprint and face recognition. In addition, the same ICP account displays different IDs to the outside world when interacting with different applications, ensuring user privacy.
⑧ Network security. The ICP network currently has thousands of nodes worldwide, more than half of which are fully active 24/7. These nodes constitute the NNS of ICP and maintain the security of the entire network. The security of each ecological dApp is maintained by the subnet that structures its smart contract. The subnet can be a fixed or randomly assigned node group. In the blockchain impossible triangle, ICP provides the greatest flexibility for project parties and applications, achieving the best balance between scalability and decentralization.
⑨ Developer-friendly support system. DFINITY provides an ideal growth platform for Web3 developers. It not only has incentive programs such as ICP Hub and accelerators, but also community resources and technical support to encourage developers to innovate boldly and build diverse applications.
The narrative of financial investment has shown signs of fatigue. The market will eventually return to its essence and begin to focus on the underlying infrastructure services of the Internet. The ultimate vision of ICP is to host software all over the world, and the ultimate trend of the development of these software is towards AI.
This means that ICP must keep up with these changes if it wants to realize its vision, and a better way to achieve this goal is to decentralize AI. By choosing the important path of combining AI narratives and having achieved on-chain reasoning for AI models with millions of parameters, ICP has taken the first step towards this grand goal of 5.
We believe that this is a path that can be continued and is worth continuing. Once we get out of this muddy path, it will become wider and smoother. Will DFINITY, or the ICP network, get closer to its 20-year roadmap?
We are full of expectations for what the future holds.
#KleinLabs #Web3Labs #ICP生态 #DFINITY
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