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This network is based on the real economy and the way certain elements are connected. With ICON, businesses, nonprofits, and public institutions can create value while remaining independent. The native token of this network is called ICX and it helps to run the ICON ecosystem.
It was created with the idea of developing a new model of digital economy where applications can run on the ICON infrastructure and be part of the decentralized economy created by the ICON digital currency and its automated protocol.
These programs represent economic participants and can create their own digital currencies, while nodes controlled by computing power can choose which programs to support. All these programs are independent but interrelated and can communicate with each other. Icon Foundation is the company that supports the ICON project. The goal of this foundation is “over-connecting the world”, which sounds like an ambitious project. ICON continues to update its roadmap and upgrade its ecosystem.
The ultimate goal of this project is to build the largest decentralized network that connects various smart contracts, decentralized applications, and the economy while enhancing interoperability.
Unlike Bitcoin and many other altcoins that came after Bitcoin, ICON does not rely on a mining process to reach consensus and create new blocks on the network. Instead, the ICON digital currency network relies on a delegated proof-of-participation consensus algorithm to select which nodes should add new blocks to the blockchain. DPoC is a variant of Delegated Proof of Stake that is considered more efficient and democratic than the original Proof of Stake protocol.
DPoS polls network participants, i.e. nodes, to choose which node should be the next agent to verify a block. Nodes are elected as representatives by depositing tokens into a voting pool.
Loopchain makes it possible to send messages between different programs using an algorithm called Loop Fault Tolerance.
ICON Project was founded in 2017 by Min Kim, who previously founded e-commerce company IVELA Global and served as an advisor to Asian fintech DAYLI Financial Group. Promotion and development of this project was supported by ICON Foundation.
In 2017, ICON Digital Currency held an initial coin offering (ICO) and raised 15,000 Ethereum (ETH) coins, which at the time was equivalent to about $43 million. The token sale comprised half of ICX’s total supply. The ICON Foundation, which is responsible for all operations and developments related to the ICON network, its economy and the ICX token, launched the official ICON network in January 2018, and ICO investors received their ICX tokens in June of the same year.
As the ICON Foundation updates its roadmap to match new programs, ICON continues to evolve. The most important goal of this foundation is to turn Icon into one of the largest decentralized economies on a global scale.
ICON is an almost unique opportunity to create applications and connect with other dApps and economies on a public blockchain and a decentralized architecture that uses an efficient protocol. This protocol is called Delegated Proof of Stake.
ICON technology has various uses in the decentralized economy model. So network users can store, for example, medical records, insurance records and other important data at a high level of security. ICON users can also create and launch their own tokens and cryptocurrencies as national currencies for individual economies on the ICON network. DPoS is more efficient compared to traditional proof-of-stake mechanism. Because using Loopchain, it uses fewer steps for validation and security.
The ICON network structure consists of five different components including ICON Republic, ICON Communities, Community Representative, Community Nodes and Citizen Nodes.
ICON communities can operate within the ecosystems and rules that define the community’s economy and are defined as a network of nodes with the same governance system.
ICON Communities or representatives cReps, also known as C-Reps, are rewarded with ICX tokens for participating in the network’s governance system. Representatives are selected nodes from each community. These nodes can communicate with ICON Republic. The nodes of each community form its infrastructure, which is responsible for the administration and maintenance of the blockchain. Finally, Citizen Nodes support transactions between communities and ICON Republic.
Loopchain works by grouping transactions by assigning nodes to blocks and distributing more of those blocks to other nodes. Validation nodes then check the validity of the blocks and approve the generation of new blocks.
Loopchain uses a mechanism called Spinning, which reduces the number of steps required to generate new blocks and validate block data and transactions within blocks.
