What is ICP? Everything you need to know about ICP Token

What is ICP?

ICP is a blockchain that has launched a public network and provides a limitless environment for smart contracts that run at web speed, serve web, scale, and reduce compute costs.

On ICP, everything can be built from DeFi, to mass market tokenized social media services that run on-chain, or extend Ethereum dapps.

The Internet Computer is self-governing and can grow its capacity as required. It combines special node machines run en masse by independent data centers all around the world. Like all blockchains, it is unstoppable, and the code it hosts is tamperproof.

The Internet Computer was officially launched and open-sourced on May 10th 2021 by the DFINITY Foundation.

How does ICP work?

ICP's structure consists of four layers, as shown below. Users and developers can use smart contracts known as canisters to deploy code and store data on the top layer—the Internet Computer Protocol.

After interacting with the protocol layer, the data will be routed through the two lower layers, which include ICP Protocol, IP/Internet, and the User Data Center.

The Internet Computer blockchain, and the special node machines that host its network, run under the control of the Network Nervous System (NNS).

NNS is the autonomous tokenized governance system that makes this possible, controlling the Internet Computer in an open, permissionless, and decentralized manner. It oversees participation in the network, and is responsible for inducting and rewarding data centers.

Anyone in the world can submit proposals to the NNS, and when they are adopted, they are immediately executed, automatically, allowing the network to adapt and evolve in real time. Because the NNS runs within the Internet Computer’s protocols, it is able to make changes without interrupting the network’s operation or breaking security.

What is Dfinity Foundation

Dfinity Foundation is a non-profit organisation founded in 2016, with three research centres around the world. The organisation currently has over 200 members.

The organization was founded with the sole purpose of developing the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), which aims to improve the shortcomings of the current Internet system by replacing the existence of a cloud server with a decentralized one that is runned by validators.

Detailed Information about ICP token

ICP Key metrics

• Token Name: Internet Computer Protocol Token
• Ticker: ICP
• Blockchain: Dfinity
• Token Standard: Updating…
• Contract: Updating…
• Token Type: Utility and Governance
• Total Supply: 469,213,710 ICP
• Circulating Supply:  190.384.393 ICP

ICP Token Allocation

• Foundation Grants, Team & Partners: 52.93% which is equivalent to 248,354,816 ICP
• Seed Round Investors: 24.72% which is equivalent to 116,130,393 ICP
• Early Contributors: 9.5% which is equivalent to 44,575,302 ICP
• Strategic Investors: 6.85% which is equivalent to 32, 141,139 ICP
• Pre-sale Fundraising Donors: 4.75% which is equivalent to 22,287,651 ICP
• Community Airdrop: 1.25% which is equivalent to 5,865,171 ICP

ICP Release Schedule

I'll keep you updated as the information becomes available.

ICP Token Use Case

ICP is a native token Dfinity and has these main roles:

• Lock ICP  inside the NNS to create “neurons,” which can vote on proposals and earn voting rewards.
• Convert ICP into cycles, which are used to power computation by canister smart contracts running on the Internet Computer.

How to buy ICP Token

You can buy ICP Token through these exchanges: Binance, Coinbase Exchange...

You can store ICP token on Coin98 Wallet when the token is supported.

Team, Investors, and Partners

Team

Dominic Williams - Founder & Chief Scientist: Previously Dominic ran a venture-backed MMO game using his own distributed systems that hosted millions of users.

Gian Bochsler - Foundation Council Member & Swiss Operations: Gian is an experienced entrepreneur, fund manager and board member. He currently serves on the DFINITY Foundation Council in Switzerland and helps oversee Swiss operations.

Investors

January 2018

• Dfinity has raised $61 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Polychain Capital.
• $21 million of the $61 million funding will go to support research and development of the network, with the remaining going to DFINITY's Ecosystem Venture.

August 2018

• DFINITY has announced another round of funding totalling $102 million, also led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Polychain Capital.
• Both had previously participated in a $61 million round.
• SV Angel, Aspect Ventures, Village Global, Multicoin Capital, Scalar Capital, and Amino Capital, as well as DFINITY, are among the other investors in this latest round.

As a result, DFINITY has now raised over $195 million to date since being founded in 2015

Partners

ICP has received contributions from many world-leading firms, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.

Roadmap and Updates

Updates

The development of Internet Computer Protocol (ICP)

ICP has been developed through many stages since it was started by Dfinity in late 2016:

• Copper: Released the first software development kit (SDK). They also released a new programming language named Motoko. Motoko is a language that is optimized for creating tamper-proof software and open internet services for the Internet Computer using WebAssembly (Wasm).
• Bronze: First introduced a desktop-based social network for professional profiles called LinkedUp (an open version of LinkedIn) that runs on the Internet Computer.
• Tungsten: This development phase allows third-party developers to participate in building dApps on the ICP blockchain. The foundation also celebrated the 48-hour Tungsten Hackathon activities.
• Sodium: The Network Nervous System (NNS), an open algorithmic governance system that controls the Internet Computer, has been revealed. The Sodium launch event will go over how the NNS manages the token economics of the Internet Computer and how ICP tokens will be used for "cycles" and governance.
• Mercury: The ICP Mainnet goes live. The launch time was first announced by Dfinity in 2018, but it has been delayed to the end of 2020. Finally, the project announced that it will launch the public mainnet on May 7, 2021.

Roadmap

At the moment, the ICP Foundation has only provided a broad roadmap with no specifics. They have a 5-to-20-year strategy in the works, which is quite "far".

If the detailed roadmap is released in the future, I will speedily update it.

Is ICP a good investment?

Dfinity has evidently demonstrated their commitment to the ICP blockchain's future by planning a roadmap extending from 5 to 20 years. However, since the launch of the mainnet, ICP has yet to attract market money flow.

The evidence is that, in comparison to Solana, who was born later, Solana has demonstrated its intrinsic value by maturing very quickly in the market.

As you can see, some Defi Legos on Dfinity are still lacking, such as derivatives, lending, options, prediction, and so on. To bootstrap the entire ecosystem, we must first wait for ICP infrastructure to reach maturity, as well as a strategy to attract developers to build their projects on ICP.

There are numerous investment opportunities in this land because Dfinity is also very aboriginal. It could be as simple as joining the IDO of a project on Dfinity or directly on an IDO platform besides Dfistarter, but you should always proceed with caution before making any financial investment.