ICON is a blockchain project that aims to connect the crypto world to the real world.
The project is unique in that anyone that wants to use the ICON blockchain can create their own community and then connect through ICON Nexus, which handles interoperability. And each blockchain connected to the Nexus has its own governance structure.
So it’s a decentralized network of blockchain based communities.
ICON is a project developed by theloop, a company based out of Korea. The parent company is DAYLI Financial Group, a leading fintech company in Korea involved in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and AI.
The components of the ICON network include Community, C-Node, C-Rep, ICON Republic, and Citizen Nodes.
A Community is any network of nodes that uses the same governance system. The C-Node, or community node is responsible for consensus and decision-making for that particular community. A C-Rep, or community representative, represents both the Community and ICON Republic, and can vote on governance of both. The ICON Republic connects all the communities. And Citizen Nodes are components of the ICON Republic. Anyone can participate, but you do not have voting rights for the governance.
ICON Republic uses loopchain technology developed by theloop. It’s the consensus algorithm that uses LFT (Loop Fault Tolerance) for processing tranactions and also connects the different communities in the network.
ICON Nexus is a loopchain-based blockchain. It uses BTP, or blockchain transmission protocol, to facilitate transactions among independent blockchains connected to Nexus through their respective portals.
Below is a conceptual picture of how everything connects. For more details check out the whitepaper.
ICON is already working on several verticals.
One is capital markets where it’s part of the Korea Financial Investment Blockchain Consortium. The consortium is back by 25 Korean securities firms. This past October the consortium released its first service called Chain ID, which is an authentication service. It’s build with loopchain technology.
They also have projects going on in healthcare, insurance, and education. Again, you can find more details in the whitepaper.
ICON finished its token sale on September 20 and raised 150,000 ETH in six hours. There’s a total of 400, 230,000 with 385,966,364 in circulation right now. Inflation can be introduced into the system through C-Reps, but there’s no obligation.
Here’s a look at ICX’s performance since the token launched.
ICON launched its mainnet on January 24, which opens up the door for new dApps and ICOs to launch on the platform. And per info from its annual summit, there’s at least seven projects looking to build dApps on ICON.
What do you think of ICON (ICX)?
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