ICP is known as a king-level project. It reaches its peak when it goes online. In the middle of the 2022 bull market, it was overtaken by major exchanges and has been making great progress. However, it did not show the king's style of always being strong. In the later period, it failed to recover and fell miserably. It was once ridiculed as " "Death" project, is it really so unbearable? Let us wait and see whether it can regain its glory in this bull market!
1. What is ICP?
Internet Computer, referred to as ICP coin, has a total supply of 469.213 million ICP.
Dfinity founder Dominic Williams said on Twitter that Dfinity is integrating Bitcoin through Chian Key technology. Dfinity integration is achieved through the Chain Key encryption protocol (a set of encryption protocols that orchestrate IC nodes) and containers.
ICP coins are the governance tokens of the Internet Computer project. They can be used to participate in governance: you can lock them inside "voting neurons", which puts them in the Network Nervous System (NNS). Voting neurons receive voting rewards. In the Liquid Democracy program, ICP coins can be used to vote manually, or configured to follow other neurons to vote automatically. The Network Nervous System mediates the will of the community through algorithms. The more value invested in the governance system, the more secure the network is; the Network Nervous System can convert ICP into "cycles". This is the only way to create cycles, which provide power for calculations and can also be used in other ways. NNS will convert 1 SDR worth of ICP into exactly 1 trillion cycles.
2. ICP Token Economic Model
1. Pledge locking. Locking is used to open "neurons". The opened neurons have voting functions. Anyone can participate in this link. If you participate in voting, you can get system rewards. The voting weight is directly related to the number and time of the locked ICP.
2. Recharge ICP into a contract to generate cycles. This process is one-way. The generated cycles are destroyed during user use, which in a certain sense causes deflation of ICP. This link is mainly for entrepreneurs and developers.
3. DFINITY In order to ensure that the network has sufficient computing power, there will be professional equipment requirements for nodes. The threshold is much higher than that of Ethereum’s node operations. There will also be certain reward rules for the data center, which usually requires a certain amount of ICP to be pledged. Only by ensuring the stability of the node can you participate in mining.
3. ICP coin (Dfinity) crowdfunding information
Initial financing: US$4.2 million Cumulative financing: US$167.2 million
Seed round of US$4.2 million on February 14, 2017, the token price was approximately US$0.0362.
A $61 million strategic round on February 7, 2018, with a fundraising cost of $1.9 per token.
A $102 million venture capital round on August 28, 2018, with a fundraising cost of $4.58 per token.
3.1 ICP coin (Dfinity) distribution
Foundation Grants, Teams and Partners 248 million 52.93% Tokens held or used by the Foundation to achieve its competitive goals (used to fund R&D and operations, offices, technology acquisitions, community programs, employee incentives, partner incentives and other long-term needs)
Seed round investors 116 million 24.72% allocated to a large number of investors participating in the seed round
Early contributors 44,575,300 9.5% are allocated to the teams that participated in contribution work and investment in the early stages before the establishment of the foundation.
Strategic investors 32.1411 million 6.85% allocated to investors participating in the strategic round
Pre-sale round investors 22,287,600 4.75% allocated to pre-sale round investors
The community airdrop of 5,865,100 1.25% will be distributed preferentially to community members who support the project for a long time.
3.2 ICP coin (Dfinity) route and leading investment institutions
In 2015, Dfinity was conceived to address flaws in the Ethereum network.
In October 2016, the DFINITY Foundation was established.
On February 14, 2017, DFINITY raised US$4.2 million in its seed round.
On February 7, 2018, DFINITY completed a US$61 million strategic round of financing led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital.
On August 28, 2018, DFINITY’s venture capital round raised a total of US$102 million. Led by Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) and Polychain Capital, SVAngel, AspectVentures, VillageGlobal, MulticoinCapital, ScalarCapital, AminoCapital and KR1, as well as members of the DFINITY community, followed.
The investment institutions are shown in the figure below
In the fourth quarter of 2019, Dfinity released the COPPER version of "Internet Computer", released the programming language Motoko and the software development tool kit CanisterSDK. In the first quarter of 2020, Dfinity announced the launch of the BRONZE version of "Internet Computer" at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, and demonstrated LinkedUp, an open social network product designed to build a decentralized Linkedin version.
In the second quarter of 2020, Dfinity launched the Tungsten (tungsten) test network and the demo demonstration of CanCan, the open alternative software for TikTok (TikTok International version).
On January 6, 2021, the first phase of Alpha of DFINITY mainnet Mercury was officially released, which means that Internet computers will become part of the public Internet, using ICP as a supplementary Internet protocol to TCP/IP.
4. ICP coin vs other cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrency users often wonder how digital currencies differ from one another. ICP Coin has its own unique features that make it stand out from other cryptocurrencies.
1. Seamless connection: DFINITY can be shared by the world, and internal systems can interact seamlessly while protecting privacy.
2. Unlimited performance: DFINITY redefines enterprise IT, with a high degree of fault tolerance, completely saying goodbye to backup and recovery, database, and firewall settings, simplifying the system and significantly reducing IT labor costs, and will not collapse due to failures.
3. Open programmable platform: DFINITY greatly reduces development difficulty by simplifying the technology stack and simplifying development storage. DFINITY can not only build various applications, but its development language is very concise and very inclusive.
4. ICP has good fundamentals and belongs to the public chain and Web3.0 sectors. It is an innovator in the public chain field and provides high performance, low cost and unlimited scalability. It has good storytelling capabilities, ecologically sustainable development, and many partners, including well-known institutions and platforms such as OpenAI, LinkedIn, and TikTok, and supports the development and operation of a variety of software and services. The market capitalization is approximately US$10 billion, ranking 11th.
5. The prospect of ICP is promising. With the development and innovation of the Internet and Web3.0, ICP may have more application scenarios and value manifestations. ICP may also benefit from Ethereum's congestion and high fees, attracting more developers and users to move to its platform. ICP may also conduct cross-chain cooperation with other public chains to achieve greater network effects.
6. In the traditional Internet era we are now in, we enjoy the services provided by tx and Alibaba. At the same time, we also contribute our own data free of charge. On the surface, this is fair, but these Internet giants use users While data is gaining dividends from the development of the industry, it is also growing continuously, forming a monopoly on the entire industry. In the short term, this monopoly is good for us, but there is also a potential risk that will definitely arise in the near future. It will happen.
That is the problem of centralized trust. We have actually lost the right to equal dialogue, and the Internet computer created by icp can allow programs to run directly on the network through an independent data center. Take back the final control of data from the giants and let us control it ourselves. The traditional Internet ecosystem is built on the physical layer and the basic Internet protocol layer, and includes many architectures, such as cloud services, CDN, DNS, data layer, Firewall and many other components.
5. Introduction to the ICP team
DFINITY was founded in 2016 by Dominic Williams. Dominic Williams is the founder and chief scientist of the DFINITY Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit organization that is a major contributor to the Internet Computer Blockchain (ICP) and has the world's largest R&D team with more than 250 patents in the blockchain space. The DFINITY Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Zurich, Switzerland that oversees research centers in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Zurich. The Internet Computer (IC) blockchain launched the "Creation Mainnet" on May 10, 2021. The blockchain has been in development for many years and is led by a large and highly qualified star team (mostly cryptography, academic and leadership talent) at the Swiss non-profit DFINITY Foundation.
6. Views on the project
When it comes to ICP, opinions are completely polarized. The ecological vision of the project is very strong, but unfortunately the follow-up is weak. Many people do not understand ICP, and even think that it is a big scam based on its performance when it was listed. I think I have wronged ICP. What ICP wants to do is too big and the cycle is too long. It even has the largest scientific research team in the blockchain field. In order to support such a large team and realize such a big vision, it is helpless to cut a wave of leeks when it goes public. And a smart move. ICP itself is complex.
As a "king" level project, ICP has a relatively strong consensus. Everyone thinks that ICP is a good coin, but it just doesn't rise. Why?
The real vision of ICP is to completely change the current mainstream Internet ecology and allow the idea of blockchain decentralization to truly enter the mainstream Internet. Since it is to be used by mainstream Internet users, the current blockchain usage process seems too complicated, so supporting it, various identity systems, governance systems, etc. will have a lot of workload to complete. Even if all these tasks are completed, it will take more time for the mainstream Internet to truly accept the transformation and for the mainstream public to realize the advantages of decentralized social networking. This is also the reason why ICP has a long way to go. However, if one day, when ICP realizes all this, imagine how much value the blockchain on which WeChat, Douyin, and tb will run. Even the future metaverse should be built on ICP, and how much value it will have. How many?
The problem with ICP at this stage is the unhealthy chip structure. Similar to the early ETH, it is quite normal to experience a long-term washout of more than two years (Vitalik still couldn't hold it during the early ETH washout). ICP takes a very, very long time, and there is a possibility that it will not be realized in the end. If you just go ALLIN now, it is still a big gamble. Of course, if the bet is right, you may get 1,000 ICPs in 5 years, which is the same as you get 1,000 ETHs now. You will also become a big boss and achieve financial freedom. Is this also unknown?
Perhaps the growth path of a king is always difficult and rugged. What the king ICP needs may just be some time, let us wait for the flowers to bloom together.