What is the Internet Computer (ICP)?

ICP is the native token of the Internet Computer network. It allows token holders to interact with the services on the Internet Computer network and participate in the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

The Internet Computer is a large-scale Web3 project. It aims to begin the new age of internet technology using smart contracts and innovative technologies. The platform covers a broad range of blockchain-based technological solutions. All information about the ICP price can be seen above.

Who created the Internet Computer?

The founder of DFINITY and, by extension, the ICP token is Dominic Williams. He formerly worked on the technological side of Ethereum, before forming a team of scientific experts to begin the development of the Internet Computer.

The research for the Internet Computer project began in 2014, and over the years, gathered a team of hundreds of cryptographers, developers, and machine learning experts. The overall project consists of nearly 100,000 citations, over 1,500 publications, and close to 200 patents.

The project was incubated by the DFINITY Foundation, a non-profit tech development organization, in Switzerland, and launched in May 2021 as a scalable general-purpose blockchain network. At launch, the Internet Computer price was around $700.

One of the Internet Computer crypto project’s mission statements is to create blockchain singularity – a new kind of digital ecosystem that uses decentralized technologies for its services. It aims to be the next stage of computer evolution.

The ICP price was more volatile during the first-month post-launch. However, it went into a sudden decline soon after, falling by as many as 14 times in June 2021. This was followed by a milder volatility trend.

The asset has been generally responsive to market trends. It saw a small uptick in November 2021, when many major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) showed good market performance. However, the Internet Computer price was not strongly impacted by the crypto crash in June 2022.

What Are the Main Features of the Internet Computer?

ICP is a utility token. The protocol does not contain a hard supply cap. The token can be used to pay for the services available on the Internet Computer network. One of the ICP token’s standard features is the transaction speed, as all payments are completed at web speed.

The token can be staked in the network nervous system (NNS). This grants users the right to participate in the governance, submit new proposals and vote on protocol changes as part of the DAO. The Internet Computer is fully community-led, and all protocol decisions are made by using the ICP token to vote.

Users that stake in the NNS and participate in the governance processes are eligible for voting rewards. The reward percentage varies based on the token dissolve delay and is allocated as ICP tokens. The node providers also earn ICP tokens as rewards for their contributions to the network.

ICP tokens can also be converted into cycles. Cycles are a way to pay for canister smart contracts which developers use for their operations. However, cycles are not a cryptocurrency and cannot be converted back to ICP tokens. They can only be moved between different canisters to cover the costs of computations and other web services.