Blockchain

What is the Internet Computer (ICP)?

By Adam N. Lamberg

Posted on February 9, 2022

The Internet Computer is the fastest and only infinitely scalable general-purpose blockchain — incubated and launched by the DFINITY Foundation in May 2021 — and aims to become a ‘world computer’ hosting Web3 dapps, DeFi, games, NFTs, social media, and metaverse used by billions of users. It also represents the third major blockchain innovation, alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum — a blockchain that supports industry-leading 250,000 queries per second, executed with 1 second transaction finality, storage costs no more than $0.46 per GB per month, and decentralized, censorship-resistant sovereign physical infrastructure capable of scaling to millions of nodes using ground-breaking technology called Chain Key cryptography. The concept of a “world computer” that cannot be shut down originated from the Ethereum ecosystem, where early Ethereum technologist Dominic Williams, now Founder and Chief Scientist at DFINITY, assembled over 200 world renowned cryptographers, distributed systems engineers, and programming language experts from Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Uber, Samsung, and Apple to tackle the massive technological challenge of building an “internet computer” powerful enough to support infinitely scalable Web3 dapps. The project was founded in October 2016 by Dominic Williams, and attracted notable interest and financial contibutions from early members of the Ethereum community. Later, DFINITY raised a total of $121 million from contributors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, SV Angel, Aspect Ventures, Electric Capital, ZeroEx, Scalar Capital, and Multicoin Capital. In 2018, over 50,000 registerter participants received ICP utility tokens in an airdrop. On December 18, 2020, DFINITY launched the alpha mainnet of the Internet Computer. In a final step towards decentralization, on May 10, 2021, DFINITY launched the Internet Computer into the public domain. This major milestone means that the internet now functions as a decentralized “world computer” — marked by the release of all of the Internet Computer’s source code into the public domain, as well as ICP utility token allowing hundreds of thousands of community members to govern the Internet Computer network.

Who Is The Founder of the Internet Computer?

Dominic Williams is the Founder and Chief Scientist of DFINITY. He is a crypto theoretician, responsible for inventing Threshold Relay, Probabilistic Slot Consensus, and other novel crypto techniques, serial entrepreneur, and early member of the Bitcoin and Ethereum technical communities. Previously, he was President and CTO of String Labs, an incubator for venture-backed crypto projects, early pioneer of DeFi at Mirror Labs, and Founder and CEO of Fight My Monster, a MMO game for children that scaled to millions of users. He also founded several startups such as System7, Airdocs and Smartdrivez. Graduated King’s College London 1st in Class in Computer Science.

What is the DFINITY Foundation?

The Internet Computer was incubated and launched by the DFINITY Foundation, a not-for profit scientific research organization based in Zurich, Switzerland, comprised of the world’s top cryptographers and distributed systems and programming language experts, with nearly 100,000 academic citations and 200 patents collectively. Notable technologists at DFINITY include:

Jan Camenisch, PhD (CTO) — world-renowned cryptographer & privacy researcher, led IBM’s Cryptography / Research department for 19 years

Andreas Rossberg, PhD (Principal Engineer and Researcher) — the co-creator of WebAssembly and former team lead for the Google Chrome V8 engine

Ben Lynn, PhD (Sr Staff Engineer and Researcher) — world-renowned cryptographer and Google Engineer, the “L” in BLS cryptography, the key signature system being used in Ethereum 2.0

Jens Groth, PhD (Director of Research) — world-renowned cryptographer, known for pioneering non-interactive zero knowledge proofs

Timo Hanke, PhD (Principal Researcher) — creator of AsicBoost, one of the few proven algorithmic optimizations for Bitcoin mining

Paul Liu, PhD (Staff Engineer) — architected Intel’s Haskell compiler and received his PhD under Paul Hudak, a key designer of Haskell

Johan Georg Granström, PhD (Director of Engineering) — former Sr Staff Software Engineer at Google responsible for scaling YouTube system infrastructure

After public launch on May 10, 2021, the DFINITY Foundation will now be one of many organizations committed to improving and maintaining the Internet Computer network.

What Makes the Internet Computer Unique?

The main innovation behind the Internet Computer is Chain Key Cryptography, which encompasses numerous scientific break-throughs and countless advancements in crypto engineering such as:

Network Nervous System (NNS) DAO

Low On-Chain Data Storage Costs:

User-Friendly Web3 Experience:

Reverse Gas Model

Anonymity

100% Sovereign Infrastructure

Lightning Fast Speed.

How Fast is the Internet Computer Network?

The scientific breakthrough called Chain Key Cryptography allows the Internet Computer to run at web speed — making it the world’s fastest public blockchain at 250,000 queries per second (read), 11,500 transactions per second withe 1 second transaction finality (write).

What Does the ICP Token Do?

ICP is the native utility token of the Internet Computer, and is used in the following functions:

Governance: ICP token holders may stake ICP in the Network Nervous System (NNS) DAO to create “Neurons” to vote on governance proposals and earn voting rewards.

Gas: ICP tokens can be burned and converted into cycles (aka, gas), which are used by developers to pay for computation and storage costs for their decentralized applications running on the network via canister smart contracts.

What Do Cycles Do?

Cycles power computation in the role of fuel. They also have a constant value over the long-term, which contrasts with ICP, whose value will naturally vary over time. Moreover, Cycles will be pegged to the SDR, which is a logical currency unit defined by the International Monetary Fund, and 1 SDR worth of ICP can be converted into exactly one trillion Cycles to power computation.

What Do Neurons Do?

A neuron locks a balance of ICP utility tokens and enables its owner to participate in network governance, through which they can earn voting rewards.

Who Are the Natural Buyers for ICP Tokens?

Token Holders who want to participate in network governance and earn voting rewards

Developers who need to convert ICP tokens into Cycles to pay for computation

ICP Token Supply and Tokenomics?

There will be 469,213,710 ICP tokens at Genesis. Circulating supply depends on the dynamics of the market. However, it is approximated to be 26% at Genesis. Genesis Initial State Token Allocations.

Early contributors: 9.50%

Seed donations: 24.72%

Strategic: 7.00%

Presale: 4.96%

Strategic partnerships: 3.79%

Community airdrop: 0.80%

Initial community and developer grants: 0.48%

Node operators: 0.22%

Internet Computer Association: 4.26%

Team members: 18.00%

Advisors and other third-party token holders: 2.40%

DFINITY Foundation: 23.86%

Where to Buy Internet Computer(ICP)?

Internet Computer Internet Comp(ICT) is a freely-tradable token, with the majority of volume on the world’s leading Cryptocurrency Exchange, BitYard.com

Customer Support: Support@bityard.exchange

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