ICON (ICX) Monthly Report August 2020
ICON network’s focus has been on DeFi for the past month.
Not only was the integration with Band Protocol announced, but also Balanced will be the first DeFi project on the ICON network to integrate with Band as its oracle solution.
Additionally, we have seen a network update. ICON has released a new update to its mainnet and the Euljiro, Yeouido, and Pagoda testnets.
Let’s take a deeper look at what has been happening around the project.
Recent News
Integration with Band Protocol
The ICON Foundation has announced a strategic partnership and successful integration of cross-chain data oracle Band Protocol. Unlike the vague announcement by the ICON Foundation to have “plans” to integrate with ChainLink as an oracle solution in January this year, this is a concrete confirmation. Any ICON developer interested in leveraging real-world data already has the ability to integrate Band Protocol into their application via the ICON Developer Portal.
Balanced will be the first DeFi project on the ICON network to integrate with Band as its oracle solution.
SCORE Audit System
ICON SCORE Audit System is a smart contract audit system that makes it easy for SCORE (Smart Contract On Reliable Environment) developers to verify and deploy smart contracts to the ICON Network. This can be considered a “pre-audit” prior to submitting to the auditors at ICON.
Mainnet and Testnet Updates
To read about the changes introduced by the network update access the Monthly Roadmap Update by the ICON team.
MyID Release
Based on teasers found on Twitter and Telegram by ICON Foundation representatives the release of the first commercialized service based on MyID can be expected within this month. We are not aware of an official statement by the ICONLOOP team.
FutureICX Release
As mentioned in the ICON (ICX) Monthly Report July 2020 August outlook Sharpn’s FutureICX, a trading-related price prediction game, was close to its launch date and the dApp has now successfully launched on July 20th.
Network Highlights
Transaction Volume
Over the months of June and July, daily transactions have been relatively continuously hovering above the 100k mark averaging about 137k transactions per day.
However, we can see a dip in transaction volume on July 24–26 presumably because of an issue that happened by introducing a step price increase on the ICON Network. You can read the Post Mortem by the ICON Foundation here.
The main driver regarding transactions on the ICON network has been ICONbet for a while now with three of their four dApps (DAOlette, DAOdice, and DAOblackjack) covering about 61% of all daily transactions.
That is about 29.6M ICX transaction volume ($15.7M USD worth of transactions) brought to the network just by ICONbet in the last 30 days (date of posting this article: August 14, 2020).
dApps
Also seen in the top 5 regarding network transactions are ICONSwap, an open-source service to trade IRC2 tokens against each other, ICONLOOP’s #broof, a certificate issuance service, and K-pop community platform Stayge, and newcomer to the list: FutureICX.
ICON Governance has had the highest number of interacting wallets of any dApp on the ICON network with over 8.25k wallets, followed by Stayge with 4.34k wallets (a decrease of more than 70%). ICONBet is ranked third by a huge margin with only 404 interacting wallets in the past 30 days.
Token Metrics
Total and Circulating Supply
The total supply is 851,825,250 ICX.
291,147,563 ICX is being held in “Internally Controlled Addresses” and are not counted towards circulating supply.
In the last 30 days, 4,309,144 ICX has been minted by reward inflation (I-Score distribution).
From July 15 to August 14 the percentage of the network staked went from 36.22% to 37.86% and the percentage of delegated votes went from 34.70% to 34.76%.
This is a consistent increase in staking and delegation and simply caused by a compounding effect.
In other words, 4,309,144 ICX have been minted, but about four times the amount (16,144,251 ICX) has been staked to the network, clearly showing the demand for ICX outpacing supply.
Token Holders
There have been no changes in regards to the biggest ICX holders and considering these are Binance and the Foundation itself, this is also unlikely to happen any time soon. However, 5M ICX has been transferred out of Binance cold storage on July 16 (just a day after posting our prior Monthly Report).
- hxcd6f04b2a5184715ca89e523b6c823ceef2f9c3d — 128,073,500.44 ICX — no tx has been done outside the initial wallet setup on March 8, 2018.
- hx1729b35b690d51e9944b2e94075acff986ea0675 — 100,000,000 ICX — last tx 53,553,054.33 ICX out on April 2, 2020.
- hx9f0c84a113881f0617172df6fc61a8278eb540f5 — 43,553,054.33 ICX — last tx 5,000,000 ICX out on July 16, 2020.
Address (1) is being controlled by the ICON Foundation. Address (2) and (3) are both Binance cold storage.
Bull vs Bear
Bull
DeFi applications are moving to ICON following the trend in the space.
FutureICX, Liquid ICX, and Balanced are three promising dApps that either just launched or are about to launch with the potential to bring a functioning DeFi ecosystem to the ICON Network.
Considering the fact ICON Network is faster in transaction speed than Ethereum and does not face the same congestion issues causing high volatility debt positions not being able to get liquidated, we can see the cornerstones of a flourishing DeFi ecosystem in the future.
Based on these facts users may remain very bullish on the upcoming developments.
Bear
Even though multiple promising dApps and governance changes have been announced and introduced within the last 6 months, the token price has essentially been moving sideways with BTC.
Users may remain cautious about the upcoming developments as barely any announcement had a significant impact on the token price in the former months.
The opinions expressed during the Bull vs Bear series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Multi.io and its employees. The goal is to present a view from both sides of the market.
Upcoming News & Events
Multiple grants to build dApps on top of ICON have been approved this month again by the ICON Foundation.
FutureICX is moving to its second phase which is meant to expand the price prediction concept from a single game to a full-scale gamified trading platform. A grant has been approved for a 4-month timeframe to launch.
The ICONTROL will be building a mobile wallet solution named “WalletX” aiming to improve user experience by applying new ideas to existing wallet product features and providing a user-friendly mobile banking service experience.
WalletX will have features such as biometric authentication and an ICON Naming Service. A grant has been approved for a 5-month timeframe.
Information & Data Sources
ICON Newsletter — The official Newsletter by the ICON Foundation.
dApp.com — dApp ranking on the ICON network.
ICON Community Dashboard — Dashboard providing network statistics and metrics.
ICON Community Forum — ICON’s official discussion forum.
ICON Block Explorer — Block explorer built by the ICON Foundation.
Interview with Soravis Srinawakoon — ICONPLUS journalist Layah Heilpern interviews Band Protocol CEO Soravis Srinawakoon about Balanced being the first DeFi application on the ICON Network to use Band Protocol as its oracle solution.
ICON DeFi Solutions — Gisele Schout from Stakin is taking a look into ICON’s DeFi applications, namely Liquid ICX, Balanced, Stakin Lottery, FutureICX, and Hylian ICON Price Oracle.
