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Description
What is Internet Computer?
Internet Computer (IC) is the world’s first blockchain that is capable of running at web speed at unrestrictive capacities. Built by the DFINITY Foundation, IC aims to recreate the web by supporting smart contract development at scale and changing the way people can interact using web services. It aims to become a ‘world computer’ hosting Web3 dapps, DeFi, games, NFTs, social media, and metaverse used by billions of users. IC also aims to extend the public internet, so that it can be the world’s computing platform, in a decentralized manner. Internet Computer sets to revolutionalize the design of the crypto economy, with an aim to overhaul traditional software services.
The project was founded in October 2016 by Dominic WIllams and have raised a total of $121 million from investors such as Adreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, Multicoin Capital and such. On May 10, 2021, DFINITY launched the Internet Computer into the public domain, marking it a major milestone for ICP as it means the internet now functions as a decentralised global computer. This is marked by the release of all of the Internet Computer’s source code into the public domain, as well as ICP utility token that allows tens of thousands of community members to govern the Internet Computer network.
On December 23, 2021, the Internet Computer community adopted a major set of 25 motion proposals outlining the crypto innovation they want DFINITY and the technical community to pursue across the following milestones:
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Titanium: ETA Mid Q1 2022
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Chromium (Satoshi Milestone): ETA End Q1 2022
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Carbon: ETA Q2 2022
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Vanadium (Vitalik Milestone): ETA Q3 2022
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Iridium: ETA Q4 2022
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Futurium: ETA 2023
According to the Electric Capital Developer Report, the Internet Computer is one of the fastest growing developer ecosystems in 2021 — growing 368%. As of January 17, 2022, evidenced by over 28,000 canister smart contracts deployed on the network, over a thousand developers are hard at work building on the Internet Computer, encompassing DeFi, play-to-earn and GameFi, NFTs and marketplaces, instant message and social media dapps, enterprise software, as well as infrastructure and metaverse projects. Most importantly, once the developer community agrees on a token standard, Internet Computer-based projects will soon tokenize and list on exchanges.
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DeFi: Next-generation decentralized exchanges such as Sonic, InfinitySwap, and ICPSwap, running entirely on-chain, are leveraging the Internet Computer’s reverse-gas model and 1 second transaction finality to give users zero gas fees and lightning fast speed for swaps, transactions, and more.
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NFT: The lead artist behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, debuted a new collection of NFTs on the Internet Computer at Art Basel, “The new series is hosted on the Internet Computer… allowing for bigger file sizes. It’s an example of how artists are starting to experiment with NFT platforms beyond Ethereum.” ORIGYN, a NFT marketplace building on the Internet Computer, saw its valuation soar to $300 million following a round of investment from Paris Hilton and Wall Street veteran Bill Ackman.
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Games: Cube Run is a futuristic racing game built on the Unity 3D game engine, WebGL and hosted on the Internet Computer. MetaSports Basketball is an open basketball metaverse, where users utilize their favorite Ethereum and Internet Computer-based NFTs to compete to become basketball superstars on teams they own and manage.
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Social media: OpenChat boasts 100,000 users, with close to 1 million messages sent over its decentralized messaging service. Distrikt, a decentralized Facebook, surpassed 70,000 user accounts and 100,000 posts — with less than $100 spent on gas. Dmail is the Web3 replacement for e-mail, and enables users to send and receive blockchain-backed, encrypted messages. DSocial is a decentralized version of YouTube, enabling content creators to be fairly rewarded via tokens for their work, and engagement.
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Metaverse: PokedStudios launched the Bots NFT collection in an early foray into the metaverse on the Internet Computer, with the rarest Bot netting a sale of 3,000 ICP (~$172,140). IC Gallery is an interoperable 3D metaverse blending GameFi and DeFi, where users can play, mint, and trade all their existing NFTs through various immersive 3D experiences.
ICP is Internet Computer’s native token. It plays three prominent roles:
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Network Governance: Users that participate in the governance will be rewarded with ICPI -
Production of Cycles for Compute: ICP can be converted into cycles where it is used as the transaction fee to access the network. Cycles are burned after used. -
Rewarding Users: ICP is used as the rewards to incentivize users to participate in the network such as securing the network.
The ICP protocol consists of the following major components working in conjunction:
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Internet Computer Consensus (ICC): The Internet Computer has 4-layers: (i) P2P layer, (ii) consensus layer, (iii) message routing layer, and (iv) execution environment. The novel Internet Computer Consensus (ICC) mechanism is divided into four layers: a notary layer, blockchain layer, random beacon layer and identity layer. Ultimately, allowing for industry-leading reliability and security of the blockchain.
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Neurons: Neurons allow users to stake their ICP utility tokens to vote on governance proposals that upgrade the network. Users earn rewards ranging from 11% to 22% annualized returns for voting on proposals. Developers can also unstake their ICP and convert them into cycles to pay for computation and storage.
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Canister Smart Contracts: A canister smart contract is an evolution of traditional, limited first-generation smart contracts. Canisters consist of WebAssembly code and memory. Unlike legacy blockchains, cycles are paid by developers, ensuring users don’t pay for gas fees, and removing a major adoption barrier for Web3 users. Most importantly, canister smart contracts will soon be upgraded to 300 GB — enabling memory-intensive 3D and generative NFTs, as well as sophisticated DeFi and mass-market social media, games, and metaverse projects.
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Mokoto: While Internet Computer developers can build Web3 dapps using any language that compiles to WebAssembly such as Rust, Go, C/C++. TypeScript, Java, Python, Ruby, Swift, etc, Motoko is a new programming language designed for building Web3 dapps on the Internet Computer. Easy to learn for Solidity and JavaScript developers. Created by the Motoko team at DFINITY, and led by WebAssembly co-creator Andreas Rossberg.
How does ICP work?
The decentralised network of ICP is hosted by a series of data centres of multiple nodes. Different nodes from within different data centres are pooled together and referred to as a ‘subnet’. Each subnet can host its own Proof-of-Stake blockchain by using a unique consensus model known as ‘Threshold Relay’. There are two important pillars that charge the operations of ICP forwards:
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Chain Key Technology: Chain Key Technology is a 48-byte public chain key that enables Internet Computer to operate at web speed, allowing transactions to be finalised in 1-2 seconds. Though this is impressive, this is nevertheless insufficient, because a faster speed is needed to provide competitive user experiences, requiring responses to be provided to users in milliseconds. Chain Key Technology solves this further by splitting smart contract function execution into two types, known as ‘update calls’ and ‘query calls’ – where update calls take 1-2 seconds to finalize and query calls can be executed in milliseconds. -
Network Nervous System (NNS): The NNS is responsible for managing everything from ICP’s economics and upgrades to network structure. The NNS is hosted within the network itself, and it acts as an autonomous ‘master’ blockchain with a public key to validate transactions in the ICP network. The NNS will also instigate proposals to a vote, such as the onboarding of new node machines, which are then voted upon by users who have their ICP tokens locked up. NNS is essentially the governance system whereas neurons represent the voting power.
How does ICP differ from other coins?
One of ICP’s objectives was to solve the scaling problems experienced by Ethereum, without compromising on security or decentralisation. For example, EOS has previously been criticized for such a compromise.
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Network Nervous System (NNS) DAO: The world’s largest permissionless DAO by TVL ($10.3bn), as of January 5, 2022, and participants (536,962 wallets). The NNS DAO is an open, permissionless and decentralized algorithmic system governing the Internet Computer, which automatically upgrades the protocol based on proposals adopted by the community, and continuously adds new nodes allowing the blockchain network to infinitely scale.
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Low On-Chain Data Storage Costs: Decentralized data storage on the Internet Computer costs $0.46 per 1 GB / month or $5 per 1 GB / year. In comparison, it costs $310m (Ethereum) and $800k (Solana), as of January 17, 2022, to store 1 GB per year on legacy blockchains. As a result, legacy blockchains rely on centralized cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, etc for off-chain data storage. For the first time, the low cost of decentralized data storage via the Internet Computer allows entrepreneurs and developers to run Web3 dapps entirely on-chain.
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User-Friendly Web3 Experience: The Internet Computer is the only public blockchain that runs smart contracts that directly serves HTTP calls to users, which means Web3 dapps on the Internet Computer have the same high quality user-friendly experience of today’s mass-market Web2 apps and games such as TikTok and Fortnite. Most importantly, Web3 dapps on the Internet Computer run on censorship-resistant, sovereign infrastructure. Currently, today’s biggest DeFi and DEXs such as Uniswap, SushiSwap, Aave, Curve, Compound, etc depend on centralized cloud services such as AWS, Cloudflare, and Netlify for their user-facing front ends – the part of a website or service that users see and interact with. For the first time, entrepreneurs and developers are able to build censorship-resistant DeFi and Web3 dapps that’s decentralized from end to end using the Internet Computer — without centralized cloud technology, which can easily be turned off as seen by the deplatforming of social media site Parler in 2021.
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Reverse Gas Model: Cycles are the computational resource (aka, gas) required to execute transactions on the Internet Computer. Unlike legacy blockchains, the Internet Computer has a reverse-gas model where developers pay to run Web3 dapps, DeFi, games, NFTs, social media, and metaverse projects. Similar to the success of Web2, the Internet Computer lowers the barrier for mass market adoption by allowing users to interact with Web3 dapps without needing tokens or token wallets — no longer paying gas fees to mint NFTs, process DeFi transactions, play games, engage on social media dapps, etc.
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Anonymity: Users of Internet Computer-based Web3 dapps, DeFi, games, NFTs, social media, and metaverse use Internet Identity, the only anonymizing blockchain authentication system leveraging cryptographically enabled devices such as the fingerprint sensor (TouchID) on a laptop, FaceID system on mobile, or portable HSM devices such as YubiKey or Ledger wallet, to anonymously authenticate to Web3 dapps without being tracked across dapps and services, and preserving a users anonymity. At Genesis launch, DFINITY made node specifications public, which allows node providers to independently procure or build node machines. As a next step, DFINITY and the technical community are developing (see Roadmap) ways for amatuer node providers, using low cost devices, to participate and further decentralize the Internet Computer network.
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100% Sovereign Infrastructure: Similar to the Bitcoin network, the Internet Computer is the only other 100% sovereign infrastructure in blockchain — with zero centralized cloud nodes. Currently, 70% of Ethereum nodes and over 50% of Solana nodes are hosted by centralized cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, etc, allowing tech giants to shut down or degrade performance of legacy blockchain networks. Currently, as of January 17, 2022, there are 413 sovereign, censorship-resistant Internet Computer nodes operated by independent node providers around the globe, leaving the Internet Computer immune to shut down by centralized parties.
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Infinite Scalability: The Internet Computer’s partitioning into subnet blockchains allows the network to infinitely scale. Each subnet (aka, mini blockchain), composed of 13 to 37 nodes to ensure Byzantine fault tolerance, exists within the larger Internet Computer blockchain. Continuously increasing the number of subnets also increases network throughput, or overall block rate. As of January 14, 2021, the Internet Computer supports an industry-leading 32 blocks per second.
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Lightning Fast Speed: The Internet Computer blockchain is designed to consistently process an immense volume of updates and transactions without compromising on speed, security, sovereignty, or decentralization. Recently, Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal stated, “The Internet Computer is bloody fast”. ICP is capable of processing up to 250,000 queries (read) per second, executed with an average 1 second finality (write) for Web3 dapps — “making it 11 times faster than Solana” according to Origyn co-founder Mike Schwartz.
How do I get ICP?
ICP can be purchased on exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.
You can browse through the various centralized and decentralized exchanges by heading over to our exchanges page.
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Max Price chart
Internet Computer price today is $9.16 with a 24-hour trading volume of $206,594,033. ICP price is up 20.8% in the last 24 hours. It has a circulating supply of 230 Million ICP coins and a total supply of 482 Million. If you are looking to buy or sell Internet Computer, MEXC Global is currently the most active exchange.
Internet Computer hit an all time high of $700.65 on May 10, 2021 (about 1 year).
Internet Computer had an all time low of $6.11 on May 12, 2022 (22 days).
The 24 hour trading volume of Internet Computer is $206,594,033.
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