Internet Computer Price (ICP) is Dfinity’s solution to give users more control over the internet. Research firm Messari has compiled a report, written by Mira Christanto and Wilson Withiam, on this project. Launch less than a week ago, it has managed to smash its way into CoinMarketCap’s top 10 with a $36,312,740,874 market capitalization and a $1,18 billion in trading volume.
Its developer, Dfinity, sits amongst the longest and best-funded smart contract platforms in the crypto space, claims Messari. As shown below, only Polkadot has raised more capital than the $121 million obtained by Dfinity for their project with an estimated additional $40 million for ecosystem development.
Build since 2016, Internet Computer hasn’t gained more interest due to its complexities and “abstract vision”. Its objective is to give developers the tool to create and host software without relying on big corporations.
Thus, the internet, its uses cases, data, and ecosystem will no longer be in the hands of a few big tech companies and users will enjoy more benefits. Under this platform, they will have a saying on how “a new internet” should be run. Messari claims:
The problem Dfinity is addressing extends beyond just blockchain technology. It aims to build a decentralized, scalable cloud-like platform that can store data, perform computation, and support community-driven governance. It’s addressing the issues plaguing traditional internet, such as relatively low data security and an oligopoly consisting of big tech companies.
ICP has been launched on major exchanges, such as Huobi, Binance, Coinbase Pro, OKEx, and others. At the time of its debut, ICP traded for around $506 and dropped south of the $290 price mark. Since then, it has oscillated in this range.
Internet Computer Price (ICP) And Its Unique Tokenomics
Dfinity’s platform could be defined as a project to expand internet access, eliminate the “monopoly” enforced by big tech, and offer developers, users, enterprises, and governments a mechanism to deploy “software and services directly to the public internet”. Messari adds:
It aims to not only reduce platform risk but also reduce complexity in building and maintaining systems. This would also accelerate the time it takes developers to launch a new product. Executed correctly, Dfinity hopes to offer the first blockchain that runs at web speed and can scale to support any volume of smart contract computations and any amount of data.
ICP will have a total supply of 469,213,710 with the majority distributed to seed investors, the DFINITY Foundation, team members, early contributors. 0.80% will be destined for a community airdrop and 0.48% for early community members.
As researcher Mira Christanto pointed out, ICP will have initial low inflation. As the image above shows, a large percentage of its supply will remain locked for at least 3 years. ICP will be used for 3 purposes: incentive and enable the governance model, provided validators with rewards, and produced a stablecoin called CYCLES.
The stablecoin is produced from ICPs and will have a burn mechanism to “fuel computation” for the Internet Computer.
As Christanto said, this burn mechanism will contribute to the stabilization of computation demand, maintaining low gas feed, and keep ICP’s price “independent”. The researcher concluded:
Competition among programmable Layer 1s is intense. Dfinity has luckily launched during a bull market. But creating the ultimate world computer is still at play.