Hello, ICON Community! We are here to provide you with a recap of recent news and updates that have happened within the ICON Ecosystem over the past two weeks. So, let’s have a brief overview before going deeper into the details!
First, a proposal to increase the step price now has a status of approved with 68% of voters’ agreement. At block height 21,789,395, the ICON Foundation submitted a Step Price Proposal to adjust the step price to 12,500,000,000 loop (0.00000000125 ICX). However, at block height 21,809,081, the proposal was passed, and the step price changed to 1,258,425,417,728 loop (0.000001258425417728 ICX). This resulted from an issue with the core Governance contract, and more details about the issue and how it was solved can be found in the post-mortem inside our update. In addition, the Foundation is now officially putting out an RFP to develop the Contribution Proposal System. The work will involve smart contract development, backend development, and front-end development. The deadline for submissions for proposals is Friday, August 7th.
What’s more, recently, a SCORE audit system was introduced. ICON Score Audit System is a smart contract audit system that makes it easy for SCORE developers to verify and deploy smart contracts to the ICON Network. This system allows SCORE developers in the ICON Network to automatically review and check their smart contracts and pre-audit them before submitting to the ICON auditors.
The recent ICON newsletter highlighted some key network statistics. It was stated that the real ICX circulating supply is 248M or 29.2% of total supply; 55.4% of circulating supply is staked vs. 38.4% at the end of 2019; ICX still offers one of the best annual staking reward yield at 13.5%; over 105M total transactions on the ICON network; average daily transaction number is approximately 150K. It was also mentioned that the main P-Reps lowered the global commission rate to 17.3% down from ~17.5%.
Another thing to notice — FutureICX.io went live with high rewards, weekly dividend, award pools, and affiliate bonuses to provide a new trading experience to all ICONproject traders.
In July, the Foundation announced that they approved nine grants. These ranged from service integrations, public relations, DApp development, developer tools, and analytics. Among them are PICONBELLO, ICON Forge, ICON DAO, ICON Pilipinas, and more!
Furthermore, a significant event happened on the partnership side — ICON has strategically partnered and chosen Band Protocol to provide secure and verified data oracles for its rapidly growing decentralized application ecosystem. Both teams have been working together to integrate Band Protocol’s decentralized oracles that have been fine-tuned for the needs of numerous leading DApps in the ICON ecosystem. These include DeFi, prediction market, sports/esports betting, and RNG/VRF applications.
For more news and media highlights, please, check the update below! See you soon!
Development
The ICON Foundation is officially putting out an RFP (Request for Proposal) to develop the Contribution Proposal System as outlined in the most recent paper. You can find a more specific outline of the UI/UX of the CPS here.
The work will involve smart contract development, backend development, and front-end development. The deadline for submissions for proposals is Friday, August 7th 11:59pm PST. Any proposal submitted after the deadline will not be considered. ICON will consider extending the deadline if only a small number of proposals are submitted.
Based on the discussion on the forum, Transaction fees in USD was too low. Therefore, the ICON Public Representatives began to increase the Step Price to reach a more reasonable transaction fee. More details can be found on this discussion at the forum.
At block height 21,789,395, the ICON Foundation submitted a Step Price Proposal to adjust the step price to 12,500,000,000 loop (0.00000000125 ICX). However, at block height 21,809,081, the proposal was passed and the step price changed to 1,258,425,417,728 loop (0.000001258425417728 ICX). This was the result of an issue with the core Governance contract, and more details about the issue and how it was solved can be found in the post-mortem:
[Problem]
The original design of the Step Price Proposal was to convert the value entered in the “Value” parameter to decimal. The Value parameter on the Network Proposal is generally designed to support the String format to process various types of proposals. Therefore, the Step Price Proposal was supposed to convert the input “String” to decimal. However, the Step Price Proposal converted the value to hexadecimal as opposed to decimal, resulting in a 1,258,425,417,728 loop proposal instead of the intended 12,500,000,000 loop.
[Solution]
ICON Foundation modified the Governance SCORE to add logic to identify both decimal and hexadecimal numbers to prevent this issue from happening again. ICX Station submitted a followup proposal after the Governance SCORE was updated. Main P-Reps approved this proposal and they are now at the intended level of transaction fees.
ICON Score Audit System is a smart contract audit system that makes it easy for SCORE developers to verify and deploy smart contracts to the ICON Network. This system allows SCORE developers in the ICON Network to automatically review and verify their smart contract and to pre-audit their smart contract prior to submitting to the auditors at ICON. Also, developers can deploy their smart contract to ICON Network via this system.
This system provides the following features:
- Smart contract self-audit
- Smart contract deployment
- E-mail notifications for the audit result
Awareness and social encounters
- A video on ICON partnership with DeFi Oracle Band Protocol to accelerate the growth of DeFI on ICON by ICONPLUS
- A breakdown of the meetup at ICON’s HQ in Seoul between ICON, Chainlink & Maker by Markus from ICON Hyperconnect
There’s a lot of details that go beyond the scope of Twitter but it was a great meetup packed with a lot of good info from all 3 parties.
“About 50ish people participated which was a pretty impressive showing considering it was held at 8PM and lasted till almost 10PM on Thursday. There were a few journalists, so I expect local coverage too. It was great to see global blockchain projects represented in Korea with further plans for growth & the potential to collaborate & learn from each other to improve. DeFi is on fire right now & was the common denominator in all presentations. Personally, DeFi is reminiscent of the growth back in 2017 fueled by ICOs. It doesn’t look to me like people fully understand the risks, but it’s not going to matter too much to people who want to invest & make money.”
Check its thread for more.
A discussion on governance between Wilson Withiam (Messari), Daeki Lee (ICON), Charles St. Louis (Maker), and Kevin Nielsen (Tezos) from Thursday, July 30th 2020.
Finance
- Key network stats
Key Highlights:
- Real ICX circulating supply is 248M, or 29.2% of total supply
- 55.4% of circulating supply is staked vs. 38.4% at the end of 2019; ICX still offers one of the best annual staking reward yield at 13.5%
- Over 105M total transactions on the ICON network; average daily transaction near 150K
- Main P-Reps lowered the global commission rate to 17.3% down from ~17.5%
With rewards up to 7x, weekly dividend and award pools, affiliate bonuses and a 3000 $ICX Launch pool boost, they are set and ready to provide a new trading experience to all ICONproject traders!
Also check FutureICX final Grant report.
Roadmap
- According to the recent Roadmap Update from 31st July:
[Loopchain]
- DB Integrations — Integrating block and state database for better management and fault-tolerance.
- P2P network enhancement — Enhancing the performance of underlying P2P network platform.
- LFT 2.0 — Enhancing the concensus algorithm for more liveness.
[Interchain — BTP Enable use of DApps on heterogeneous blockchain]
- Interchain PoC for ICON-Public Chain — DApp on heterogeneous chain can be used from ICON wallet, and vice versa
- Interchain service launch with business partner — DApp service that operates on heterogeneous blockchain is released
- Interchain SDK for public chain — Interchain SDK is used for developers to generate various interchain DApps
- Interchain SDK for private chain — Interchain SDK is used for developers to generate various interchain DApps
- C-Rep features with BTP — C-Rep is responsible to bridge between heterogeneous blockchains
[Sidechain — A new layer of the ICON Network to support a reliable smart-contract environment]
- Sidechain — Smart-contract purpose sidechain will be connected with ICON Network using BTP Technology
[Parallel Processing — Scalability solution for TPS Enhancement based on parallel processing]
- Parallel processing with manual decorator — Parallel processing raises TPS sharply with manual decorator on Python EE
- Parallel processing with automatic decorator — Parallel processing raises TPS sharply with automatic decorator on Python EE
[IISS — Measures the contribution of all Voters, P-Reps, DApps and EEPs]
- Incentive distribution function for C-Reps — C-Reps are rewarded with ICX
- Contribution Proposal System — Enables contributors to obtain funding for a project that benefits the ICON Network.
- IISS 3.0 — Add features to improve decentralized cryptoeconomy and governance stability
[Transaction Fee System — DApp provider and users can share commission and pay with Virtual Step]
- Virtual Step 2.1 — Virtual Step distribution to SCORE
[Services on ICON — Vault — Decentralized key management service]
- Launch Vault feature in ICONex Wallet — Decentralized key management feature is integrated in ICONex wallet
- Launch service with business partner — Vault feature is launched with business partner
[Services on ICON — DEX Trade heterogeneous tokens]
- DEX for trading between tokens on heterogeneous blockchain based on BTP — Token holders can trade tokens of heterogeneous blockchains with interchain protocol and DEX
[Services on ICON — Secret Vote — Enable secret vote environment in public blockchain]
- Secret vote smart contract — alpha version — Development of secret voting function in public blockchain
- Secret vote service launch with business partner — Launch of secret voting service with business partners on public blockchain
[Services on ICON — STO Provide platform for security token offering]
- STO smart contract — alpha version — Security tokens are generated on ICON smart contract
- Official STO platform launch as ICONest 2.0 — Users can generate security tokens using ICONest 2.0 equipped with GUI and legal guidance
Partnerships and team members
In July, the Foundation announced that they approved 9 grants. These ranged from service integrations, public relations, DApp development, developer tools, and analytics. This has been the busiest month of grant approvals since they launched this program late last year and they are very pleased with the programs’ growth and look forward to approving many more grants throughout the remainder of the year. Please see the article for more details on the approved grants this month.
- Infrastructure: Prime Trust Integration
- Public Relations: Transform Group
- DApp: K-Pop Content Promoter — Stayge
- Education: ICON Development Course into DevEra — ICON DAO
- Community: Growth Accelerator — ICON Pilipinas
- DApp: Tipicon integrations — Piconbello
- DApp: Project Nebula — ICON Forge
- Infrastructure: Blockchain Analytics and Data Pipeline — Insight
- Infrastructure: Developer Tooling — Yudas Lab
- Prime Trust Integration
ICON has strategically partnered and chosen Band Protocol to provide secure and verified data oracles for its rapidly growing decentralized application ecosystem. Both teams have been working together to integrate Band Protocol’s decentralized oracles that have been fine-tuned for the needs of numerous leading DApps in the ICON ecosystem. These include DeFi, prediction market, sports/esports betting, and RNG/VRF applications.
This collaboration is extendable into using Band Protocol to support ICON’s multi-faceted network of established enterprises and government agencies ranging from banks, telecommunications companies, and South Korean government agencies — expanding the use-cases for customized and scalable data oracles provided by Band Protocol.
Also read on Cointelegraph and in an article by BTCMANAGER.
BalancedDAO, the first DeFi platform on ICON, integrates Band Protocol oracles to provide secure and scalable price feeds for collateral assets and synthetic assets such as stocks, ETFs, gold, oil and more.
As for the first DeFi project on ICON, there was an extensive due diligence process evaluating several oracle options for secure data feeds for the pricing of Balanced pegged assets and collateral. They decided to integrate with Band Protocol upon launch, as their team and technology have given the confidence that Band can securely support the addition of nearly any asset in a timely manner. They have been working closely with their development team to outline an integration plan, and design a highly robust oracle with maximum security guarantee and resistance to manipulation. Band will have the capability to provide any and all data needs for Balanced.
ICON P-Reps News
Top-10 P-reps
The freshest biweekly development update on Citadel P-Rep, come around and see what we made so far!
Social media metrics
The charts above illustrate a slight decline in the number of Telegram and Twitter followers. In general, the ICON foundation experiences an average level of social activity.
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of ICON Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers, and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
