ICON | Coin Introduction

Altcoin Magazine
Sep 2, 2018 · 4 min read

ICON is more than just a coin, it is the native currency of the ICON Foundation, a blockchain technology firm based in South Korea. The primary goal of the ICON Foundation is to promote blockchain technology solutions to major industries, such as banking, education, health care, and insurance. They are trying to create the world’s largest blockchain network by connecting smaller networks together with smart contracts.

The ICON blockchain integrates some well thought out features including using interchain connectivity for seamless transactions between different types of blockchains, modular architecture for scaling resources to different hosts, and separate payment channels to increase transaction speed to near real-time. It is secured by their own proprietary consensus mechanism, called Loopchain Fault Tolerance, which is an optimized version of Distributed Byzantine Fault Tolerance.

The ICON ecosystem consists of the ICONex wallet, the ICONest token launch platform, the decentralized exchange, the SCORE smart contract platform; all which are powered by the ICX token.

The importance of Interchain is crucial to ICON’s ecosystem. It makes it possible for two different blockchains, built on different platforms and in different languages, to talk to one another and make transactions in both directions. This flexibility allows compatibility across the blockchain world, and can be utilized as a “3rd party translator” by projects built on competing blockchain platforms if they do not have their own similar function natively built in.

Partners of the ICON foundation have access to a smart contracts platform called SCORE. They are able to use this to build and test custom solutions for their corporation’s internal processes. SCORE stands for Smart Contract on Reliable Environment. The platform was created by ‘theloop’ and is written in Python.

In order to execute a smart contract, there are fees that must be paid in ICX, making their token important.

The ICX coin is used in the ecosystem as an intermediary, when transferring one currency to another, across interchain transactions. It is also a main pairing of tokens in the decentralized exchange. In order to create your own token on the ICON platform, you will need ICX tokens to pay for this. It is also required to execute smart contracts on the platform. As you can see, there is quite a bit going on that requires ICX.

The ICON Foundation is funded by ‘theloop’, a Korean company that was founded in 2015 and has $100 million dollars in venture capital backing, comprised of DAYLI Financial Group and three Korean universities. ‘theloop’ is the leader of the Korean Financial Investment Blockchain Consortium with 25 other major Korean companies.

Interesting Facts:

● ‘theloop’ is the market leader in Korea with the largest blockchain network, with over 40 organizations in the financial services, insurance, education, and hospital space. ‘theloop’ is now valued at $4 billion.

● DAYLI Financial Group has over 100 employees, while ‘theloop’ itself only has 11 full-time staff members.

● There are already real-world apps using this platform. The first app to go live was in August 2017, a KYC authentication platform, with 25 securities firms.

● Having interchain capability makes ICON able to benefit, regardless of which competing blockchain becomes the dominant platform. As an intermediate between different blockchain, ICON will only benefit from the success of others.

Website: https://icon.foundation

Whitepaper: https://icon.foundation/resources/whitepaper/ICON-Whitepaper-EN-Draft.pdf

Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/icon/

Like what you read? Give CryptoFinance 24 a round of applause.

___________________________________________________________________

Before moving on, make sure to press follow, leave a clap or 46, share today’s highlight and if you missed my last, click here.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and join our Discord

The purpose of ALTCOIN MAGAZINE is to educate the world on crypto and ultimately to bring it to the hands and the minds of the masses. Brought to you by the best writers in the world. This article was composed and written by CryptoFinance 24 published on: https://medium.com/@CF24/what-is-icon-72d92f80d988. All credit goes to CryptoFinance 24.

#decentralization #security #iot #internetofthings #investing #crypto #cryptocurrency #cryptocurrencies #blockchain #altcoin #altcoins #currency #cryptocurrencynews #cryptoexchange #trading #cryptotrading #coin #coins #portfolio #investment

Subscribe to our newsletter.

The best damn place to read and write about crypto and blockchain.

Altcoin Magazine

Written by

The best darn place to read and write about crypto and blockchain

ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The best damn place to read and write about crypto and blockchain.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade