Oct 16, 2019

8 min read

ICON: A panel discussion titled “$29 Trillion Question: How to Manage Trust” and ICONLOOP to raise $8m in a Series A investment round

Biweekly update 2d October — 16th October

South Korean blockchain startup ICONLOOP has raised 10 billion won (~over $8 million) in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by venture firm Korea Technology Finance Corporation, with participation from T.S. Investment and several other firms. With the new capital in place, ICONLOOP is looking to launch a new decentralized identity (DID) service called “my-ID” in the first half of 2020. My-ID is a blockchain-based digital ID authentication service, which allows users to verify an ID via a mobile phone and therefore to more easily access services that require identification, such as financial products.
ICON Foundation will participate in the 2019 ‘Money 20/20 USA’ conference in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA). Min Kim, the co-founder of the ICON project and council member of the ICON Foundation, will lead a panel on the ‘$29 Trillion Question: How to Manage Trust’ with Alex Tapscott, co-founder of Blockchain Research Institute and best-selling co-author of ‘Blockchain Revolution’, and Pei Chen, Director of Financial Services & FinTech at ConsenSys.
More to follow!

Development

ICON P-Reps News

Ubik Capital

1. TestNet 4 is running stable, however, there are several ICON nodes in tandem with p rep nodes. Overall, the rates of production are very high. This bodes well. We are testing with ICON and they’re analyzing results to ensure no issues before stress testing.

2. Most P-Reps are participating in TestNet, which is a great sign of the commitment of the teams. We had our first chance to produce blocks yesterday and finished with a 99.98% production rate!

3 weeks until decentralization! Current staking rates are 22.5% annual

ICX Station

BLOCKMOVE WANTS TO MAKE ICON GREAT AGAIN

Paradigm

Paradigm Fund has issued new reports on the following cryptonetworks:

Social encounters

Upcoming events:

ICON Foundation to Participate in 2019 ‘Money 20/20 USA’ Event

ICON Foundation is pleased to announce its participation in the 2019 ‘Money 20/20 USA’ conference in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA). Money20/20 is the doorway to the epicenter of the Payments, Banking, Fintech, and Financial Services ecosystem. As the home of the Money Revolution, the event unites captains of industry, dreamers, trailblazers, innovative thinkers and fearless leaders that hold the keys to fundamental changes in the way the world uses, spends, borrows and moves money.

Min Kim, the co-founder of the ICON project and council member of the ICON Foundation, will lead a panel on the ‘$29 Trillion Question: How to Manage Trust’ with Alex Tapscott, co-founder of Blockchain Research Institute and best-selling co-author of ‘Blockchain Revolution’, and Pei Chen, Director of Financial Services & FinTech at ConsenSys.

Past events:

ICON Foundation Announces its Participation in the Hashnet Blockchain Conference

Finance

The number of transactions dynamics (information from tracker.icon.foundation)

ICONLOOP Announces Series A Capital Raise

ICONLOOP successfully raised ~$8m in a Series A investment round.

This Series A financing builds on a year of increased market adoption in Korea and solidifies ICONLOOP’s place as a leading blockchain company globally. With this funding, ICONLOOP, the technology lead for the ICON project, one of the largest public blockchain networks in the world, will focus on expanding the MyID Alliance with the launch of a commercialized service, my-ID.

ICONLOOP plans to launch a commercial customer service in the first half of 2020. A total of 27 organizations and companies in various fields including commercial banks, securities firms, e-commerce firms, and manufacturers have already participated in the alliance.

Starting with the financial sector, ICONLOOP will expand the MyID Alliance to other industries such as fintech, e-commerce, sharing economy, and healthcare to create a pioneering example of digital identification utilizing blockchain.

Roadmap

ICON Development Roadmap Update

IISS Updates

This month, the Foundation decided to extend the testing period for decentralization as core developers of the ICON Project continue to test software in a variety of ways to reach higher levels of stabilization. As a result, the decentralization schedule of the ICON Network was changed from September 24, 2019 to October 29, 2019. As previously announced, the Foundation will maintain reward distributions until decentralization.

Additionally, the Foundation delayed the implementation of the Slashing function, a penalty burning 6% of the delegated ICX of representatives, to one month post decentralization. This decision was made to allow for a one-month buffer period for P-Reps to gain experience operating in the early stages of decentralization.

Mobile Staking Update

ICON Foundation plans to launch mobile staking capabilities in tandem with decentralization in October. Originally, the goal was to launch mobile staking capabilities in September, but ICON team encountered several Java version issues in the development process. Unfortunately, the development schedule was too tight to resolve the issues and therefore it was decided to postpone the release to improve the stability.

ICON Development Roadmap Details

The following updates to ICON technology roadmap are below:

Block Version 0.3 — Improving block structure to support BTP (Stabilization)
Role Switch — Switching the role between Main P-Rep and Sub P-Rep (Stabilization)
Cryptography — Signature verifying function in SCORE (Completed)
Penalty function — Penalty system to penalize malicious P-Reps (Completed)
Virtual Step 2.1 — Virtual Step distribution to SCORE (Development)
Auto Sign — Ability to automatically sign transactions in ICONex, for a certain period of time (Completed)

Interoperability with heterogeneous chains launch by the end of 2019
ICON interchain protocol BTP will be available by the end of 2019
The first ICONgress will be organized in 2019

Partnerships and team members

No updates

Rumors

No updates

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.

Official channels of P-Reps:

RHIZOME (ICON P-Rep Candidate. Focused on creating and marketing content about the ICON ecosystem).

ICONVIET

Insight ICON (Insight’s Distributed Consensus Lab is building automated node deployments, advanced analysis techniques, and distributed applications for the ICON Blockchain)

POS Bakerz (a blockchain infrastructure service and node operator for different Proof-of-Stake blockchains).

block42 Blockchain Company (Unlocking blockchain technology for organizations).

Blockchain@Berkeley (focus on education, R&D, and consulting)

Gilga Capital (Blockchain Venture Capital and Accelerator)

Chainode Capital (Blockchain consultancy and validator services)

This is not financial advice.

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ICON: A panel discussion titled “$29 Trillion Question: How to Manage Trust” and ICONLOOP to raise $8m in a Series A investment round

Development

ICON P-Reps News

Ubik Capital

ICX Station

ICONation

Paradigm

POS Bakerz

block42 Blockchain Company

Social encounters

Finance

Roadmap

Partnerships and team members

Rumors

Social media metrics

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