Internet Computer(ICP)

The Internet Computer was founded in 2016 by early Ethereum technologist Dominic Williams with one aim in mind — to make the internet more decentralized. Currently, corporate giants like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud dominate the cloud computing market. Even a percentage of nodes for popular decentralized blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are hosted on such centralized servers.

The Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) aims to change this by enabling decentralized storage of data, as well as fast and cheap transactions. It allows decentralized data centers to provide an alternative to centralized cloud services. These data centers can then host any kind of application that can be accessed on the internet. 

The DFINITY Foundation, the non-profit behind the blockchain, launched the Internet Computer into the public domain in May 2021. The network’s native asset, the ICP coin, acts as both a governance and a utility token. 

ICP price 

ICP cryptocurrency had its Genesis event on May 7, 2021, and got listed on reputed exchanges like Coinbase and Binance soon afterward. Initially, ICP coin traded in the vicinity of $460 before dropping to the range between $350 and $250. However, the price of ICP could not gather upward momentum and saw significant decline shortly after listing.

By June 2021, ICP coin had lost most of its value, dropping below $30, according to our live price chart. Even after nearly a year, ICP price did not reach its all-time high set in the initial days after launch. In fact, ICP price reached its lowest point in mid-2022, when it dropped below $15, while its market cap tumbled to around $3.5 billion.

How ICP works

Holders of ICP can lock their assets to vote on community proposals for improvements and upgrades. ICP tokens can also be burned to convert into ‘cycles’ or gas, which is used by developers to pay for the cloud computing and storage costs of running decentralized applications (DApps) on the Internet Computer network. 

Storage costs on the Internet Computer network are around $0.46 per GB of data or around $5 annually per GB, much lower than the costs of storing data on blockchains like Ethereum. Internet Computer claims to be among the fastest blockchain networks, utilizing Chain Key Cryptography, which enables the blockchain to handle around 250,000 queries per second and finalize 11,500 transactions every second. 

The idea behind Internet Computer is to create a sort of ‘world computer’ that can host all types of decentralized applications.

ICP news, updates, and highlights

After raising funds through the ICP token sale in 2017, The DFINITY Foundation raised $61 million in February 2018 from Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) and Polychain Capital. With five years of rigorous development, DFINITY finally launched the Internet Computer in early May 2021. Within two weeks, Sygnum, a Swiss crypto bank became the first custodian for ICP coins.

In late May 2021, DFINITY launched the Internet Computer Developer Ecosystem Program with a $223 million fund.  The aim was to attract developers to build DApps and tools on the Internet Computer.  

Terabithia, a cross-chain bridge, launched in December 2021, connecting Internet Computer with Ethereum. This effectively turned DFINITY’s network into a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, like Polygon, since the bridge allowed ERC-20 tokens to exist on the Internet Computer blockchain. 

In February 2022, the DFINITY Foundation highlighted ICP's Bitcoin integration plans via a developer preview. The goal here is to integrate with Bitcoin and bring smart contracts to the world's largest decentralized blockchain network.

Frequently asked questions about ICP

• Can you mine or stake ICP?

No. You cannot mine ICP coins since the network does not use a proof-of-work consensus system. However, you can ‘lock’ your ICP coins to vote on governance proposals, and get rewarded in ICP. 

• What is DFINITY and how is it connected to ICP?

The DFINITY Foundation is a non-profit organization for scientific research consisting of world-renowned cryptographers and computer language experts. The organization is responsible for the development of the Internet Computer blockchain and its native token ICP.

• What can you do with ICP?

The Internet Computer network calculates the fee for storage of data, based on the amount of data. The developers need to pay this fee in cycles, which can be accumulated by burning ICP tokens. You can also trade ICP tokens on exchanges, as well as use them to participate in the future of the network.

• How to buy ICP?

Buying ICP is easy - you can use fiat currencies through a range of payment methods on exchanges like OKX, Coinbase, Binance, KuCoin, NEXO among others. You can also buy them using cryptocurrencies like BTC and USDT on several centralized and decentralized exchanges.