Greetings from the ICON Team,

Spring has come, and we are now facing the last day of March. The ICON Team has been sharing regular development status updates at the end of each month and today will be no different. Please see our recent achievements and plans below!

IISS (ICON Incentives Scoring System)

Before the election of P-Reps in September, ICONists will be able to obtain I-Score starting in the third quarter through staking & delegating to P-Reps. ICX holders will receive I-Score as an incentive by staking their ICX and voting to delegate authority to registered P-Rep candidates. During this pre-voting period, however, the nodes themselves will still be operated by the ICON Foundation. I-Score accumulated throughout the delegation period can be exchanged for ICX whenever the ICX holders want. The ICX rewards will come from the ICON Foundation’s existing treasury, not from the creation of new ICX. When decentralization occurs in September, ICX rewards will come from newly created ICX, not the ICON Foundation existing treasury.

Transaction Fee System

There are two major updates to the transaction fee system. The fee sharing feature, allowing DApp providers (instead of users) to pay the transaction fee, and fee payment using Virtual Step, which is obtained through staking (different type of staking than IISS), are both entering the stabilization phase. These features will undergo a stabilization period starting in April and will likely be released during the second quarter.

DEX (Decentralized Exchange)

The ICON Team is currently working on integrating the DEX SCORE with ICON’s wallet service, ICONex. ICON’s DEX will provide liquidity between ICX and IRC tokens based on reserves without any need for a bid-and-offer style order book. This functions similarly to Kyber Network and Bancor. With the release of the ICON public network-based DEX, ICON DApps’ IRC tokens that are not yet listed on exchanges will still be able to be traded through ICONex.

DID (Decentralized Identifier)

ICON’s DID will be released in May and will be called ‘DPASS,’ a new decentralized identity service available to all users. Users will be able to get access to multiple existing services and apps with just one authentication procedure (KYC) without repeating the registration process.

Enhancement in Mobile Accessibility

Most DApps hardly work on mobile devices. The importance of mobile integration has become apparent over the last few years, and we realize the necessity of mobile support to further the adoption of blockchain technology. The ICON Team plans to enhance DApps’ mobile accessibility using two methods. First, we will update Mobile ICON Connect to support the integration of mobile apps with ICONex and the ability to call SCORE functions through the app. Secondly, we are preparing the interface for mobile web browsing to communicate with ICONex via relayers to call SCORE.

The ICON development team has moved one step further in the development of the core blockchain platform, and through a recent reorganization, we are more actively pursuing service-level projects for end users. We have been organizing teams dedicated to creating more user-friendly services on top of the ICON platform. We look forward to sharing our new project releases!

-ICON Development Team