The ultimate blockchain may have arrived. The internet computer! For about a month now, I have been diving into this conspicuously ignored blockchain and wow. Just wow!
Where do I even begin? If you've been into blockchains you know the merit they can provide – data on-chain is auditable, unalterable and transparent. It enables users to sign transactions without relying on a third party or centralized point of control.
But thus far, blockchains have been one-trick ponies really. There is a blockchain for purpose A, another blockchain for purpose B but it all seems reserved for the few nerds on Earth, and apart from the artificial Bitcoin hype people largely don't care about crypto. The space seems to stagnate as there is no apparent benefit to the masses.
Blockchain projects are plentiful, the claims are often glamorous but really it’s mostly all noise and hype.
Why “noise”? Platform risk!
"Noise" because you soon find out when researching the internet computer, that most of the internet is not decentralized as you may have thought. Instead, the internet runs on large computing clouds owned by a handful of companies.
You have heard of them; Google, Amazon Web Services and a few other players not only have access to most people’s data on the internet... they can also decide on a whim to turn off your website, your favorite app or even: your favorite blockchain.
You read that right!
Where I used to think that blockchains run on independent servers and cannot easily be taken down, it has become painfully apparent that most blockchains merely handle the token layer on-chain – as that is the general maximum of what they can handle in terms of computation. The rest of the computing is taking place where computing resources are cheap and available. At the large tech companies.
This in effect means that any blockchain is only as reliable as its weakest point of failure. If Amazon Web Services decides to take down a service that is computing and running on their platform – they can. You as a user have agreed to their terms and conditions without reading them. And you really have no choice if you do not want to run your own hosting infrastructure at home.
It means that if you are using a blockchain whose infrastructure depends on these big tech computation clouds, you may get rug pulled in that the blockchain simply stops working when Amazon decides so. Ouch.
But EVERYTHING on-chain? Come on, how?!
Well, I don't know how, but somebody did it!
The idea has been around for a while: Can’t we put EVERYTHING on the blockchain then? Like, not only text and tokens, but also pictures, videos, websites, apps and everything else we normally use on the internet today? And the answer was: OF COURSE NOT! That is way too much data for a blockchain to handle… how would that ever be possible? Stop kidding around!
Well, I don’t know how to tell you this but the DFINITY foundation - the engineers behind the internet computer - have done it!
Infinite scalability. WTF!
We may as well call it alien tech.
Since 2014 or so they have worked on this, and since 2021 the internet computer is a thing: A place where users can store, compute and manage their own data, apps and other cloud functions and integrate them into the existing internet without ever leaving the blockchain or relying on large tech behemoth monopolies to host their stuff!
It wouldn’t be a shock if this was merely a vague notion or developer's fantasy. But the thing is: It is up and running and has been for three years now. You can go to www.internetcomputer.org and start using it TODAY.
ICP is growing by leaps and bounds and while the information embargo holds up it has mostly been kept quiet. If this is all news to you you may be wondering how on Earth this could have escaped you... Nobody is talking about it, except for a handful of small channels.
Seems like we are in drastic accumulation phase where some people would like this to stay quiet while the market is continuously manipulated down on perpetuals until everybody who may at one point heard about it simply forgets this thing even exists...
Mothership of blockchain
While ICP is conspicuously ignored in the AI and the blockchain community at large, the people that have started to get into the awe-inspiring depth of the project seldom want to leave again, nevermind sell their tokens. Talk about HODL! Jesus! I haven't seen this many maxis since the 20K BTC bullrun.
The prospects this tech offers are hard to overstate. The tech is by far the most advanced in the entirety of the crypto world and the blockchain space, and if the project keeps growing the way it has been, it will not only make most other blockchains completely obsolete but turn most of the current internet upside down and inside out within the next decade or so.
Rather than solving for a single use case, the internet computer provides a novel architecture for running the internet itself, and with it, everything on the internet.
What Bitcoin did for decentralizing monetary transactions, ICP is doing for the internet as a whole. It's just that nobody is supposed to know or use this thing yet.
Not your keys, not your bitcoin data
What this means for the internet and the resulting implications for the future of humanity is simply enormous and - quite frankly – a bit spooky!
It means that users can not only host their data on their own private, anonymous, decentralized and programmable cloud, but that that data is cryptographically secured against tampering and outside manipulation. It means that you no longer have to rely on AI models trained on biased and manipulative data or by dodgy big tech companies.
It can now instead be trained by you or people you trust, on the data you prefer. An AI that will always be exactly how you left it, where no updates can be pushed by google or openAI and where all inputs and outputs of the AI can be audited directly on-chain. Since smart contracts (“canisters”) on ICP run completely isolated from one another and are fully programmable by the individual user ONLY – it means that for the first time a user can trust that his AI model has not been manipulated, updated or tampered with by a third party.
It also means that as long as you keep your login information secure – much like on Hive – there is no possibility for your account to be broken into (provided the blockchain isn't decrypted or your computer hacked). If there ever is unauthorized access – you will know because it’s all on-chain and visible.
Data goldmine
But it goes further!
Since canisters are fully programmable by the end user, the user can decide to keep or sell their data, and if so to whom. It would effectively end the passive data collection and selling to third parties of companies like fakebook and google, because now the canister will only give out what you allow it to give out. The architecture of ICP makes possible a fully sovereign data cloud that can seamlessly integrate with other clouds or even other blockchains. Natively.
The native Bitcoin integration has been achieved, other chains like Eth and Solana will follow. This means that smart contracts on ICP can manage computations for other blockchains. You could - for instance – link native Bitcoin addresses to a decentralized exchange running on ICP and ICP would do the heavy computation the grandmotherly Bitcoin network could never achieve on its own.
DFINITY have called this blockchain singularity - a network that no longer requires oracles or bridges but that seamlessly integrates blockchains, the internet and web applications into a decentralized system architecture.
Yes but… what?!
I know, it’s all a bit much! But it doesn’t end there either!
ICP does not use a gas fee model like Ethereum or most other blockchains.
On ICP developers and app creators pay for the computation – for which ICP is burned. This means that anybody on Earth could visit a website or download an application and not even realize they are using the internet computer. To them it just looks like a regular website or app.
Because ICP is a giant blockchain, it means that tokenomics and governance are a huge factor to consider.
Growing up with companies doing everything, we can now see a world where everything is democratized radically. On ICP, a startup could create a project – say a social network like Hive – and over time the project would leave their hands and become governed by a DAO, i.e. the community itself. The community would then decide how to change or maintain the app or website, rather like people on Hive vote for proposals and block producers.
A future is now thinkable where communities own their project or software, and not some CEO of a large company.
Tokenomics
As is common with blockchains these days, ICP hosts a multitude of projects with their own project tokens.
You can do on-chain swaps. Use chat apps. There are social media apps being built, there are on-chain dexes with orderbooks, a physical gold trading platform, all sorts of future contenders to the current market leaders in their fields and so much more. It’s all still very small and under the radar but it is expanding every day.
People who see the potential are in it for the long haul, and incidentally you get about 13% APR from staking your tokens for the maximum duration.
But won't that become hugely inflationary? Well, it seems DFINITY has put a lot of thought into their tokenomics model. As mentioned, any computation on the ICP network effectively burns ICP. The more the internet computer is used by people, the more tokens are burned. There are currently more than 500 million ICP in existence of which more than 40% of are locked in staking with various unstaking periods.
There have been short durations where the chain became deflationary, and even with the high APR from staking it is very feasible to see it become deflationary in the long run putting further buying pressure on the price as ICP becomes more and more rare. Or that at least is what ICP holders are hoping for.
It’s sort of like Bitcoin…
...only Bitcoin does not pay you 13% APR for staking it, nor can you spend Satoshis for hosting your own website on-chain, having AI build you an android app or kickstart an heirloom seed store that accepts stablecoins or various cryptos natively. On ICP that is all a given, and it is only a matter of time until this thing will utterly eat the rest of IT and web 2.
Is it all fine and dandy then?
I have been asking myself where the catch is with ICP for a good 3 weeks now, and though I have collected a few good arguments against it, I would really like a more grounded counter-narrative. If you were to ask me 5 weeks ago now I'd say it's just too good to be true, but I have been using it, and it works like a charm.
I will make a follow-up post with the issues I see with ICP and I would GREATLY welcome your ideas and feedback on that.
But: since there is an absolute information embargo on ICP in the cryptosphere on youtube and in the AI world, (and hardly ANYTHING I could find here on Hive either!)… and since I am still hoping for a major upside in the DXY and an ensuing major crash in crypto and the stock market, there may be a golden opportunity to get in should you be so interested.
At least, it’s a great opportunity now to research this blockchain project for people interested in real paradigm-shattering technology and the connected innovations and solutions this tech can provide. And isn’t that tech innovation the reason most of us are here on Hive and not on mainstream platforms?
I will leave you with a few videos I found helpful to understand ICP a bit better if you are new.
I'm super curious, have you ever heard of ICP?
And if so, what do you make of it? Will it eat the whole internet, bitcoin and all other cryptos for breakfast, or is it all too good to be true?
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