Millions of dollars worth of ICON tokens are now on the move - as the cryptocurrency project begins its token migration.
Designed to connect independent blockchain communities with a variety of governance strategies, the ICON protocol first launched its crypto token, ICX, on the ethereum blockchain, but – in what has become an increasingly popular process – is now moving those tokens over to its very own blockchain.
More specifically, the project, which launched its mainnet in January, is tasked with swapping around $42,750,000 worth of ERC-20 tokens with an equal amount of native ICX tokens from now until September 25.
And according to the ICON Foundation, the organization in charge of development, so far it's been smooth sailing.
Speaking to the process that started June 20, a representative for the foundation told CoinDesk:
"No issues have been reported and we haven't had any on our end."
As previously reported by CoinDesk, only supported exchanges – Binance, Upbit and Bitthumb – can currently shift ICX tokens to the new blockchain.
Therefore, according to the foundation, token holders must transfer their tokens to one of those exchanges in order to start the migration process. Later this month, on June 25, token holders will also be able to use the ICONex wallet to migrate their ICX tokens.
As soon as the migration is complete, users will be able to resume ICX deposits and withdrawals, the foundation said, although an estimated completion date was not provided. However, supporting exchanges indicated that they will wait to reopen deposit and withdrawal services until the ICON mainnet has proven safe.
"We will open ICX deposits and withdrawals again once we deem the ICX mainnet to be stable," Binance said on its website.
For now, ICX token holders must trust the ICON Foundation and the supporting exchanges to execute the swap successfully. However, the foundation stated it may yet provide users with oversight of the migration.
"As of now there is no place to watch the process, however, we are exploring ways to make this possible," a representative for the foundation told CoinDesk.
ICON, a crypto with a collective market capitalization of about $800 million, is only one of the top thirty cryptocurrencies to attempt a token migration in recent weeks. Tron, which aims to use its blockchain infrastructure create a "truly decentralized internet" kicked off its token migration on Thursday. Likewise, the scalability-focused EOS protocol underwent a token migration earlier in June.