Image courtesy of coinreviews.io.

Intro

$ICX by Icon Foundation is often touted as Korean Ethereum. Their motto of “hyper connecting the world” seems quite a bold statement at first. Their vision is to build a decentralised network that can host multiple blockchains with different governance models that can function without any middlemen. They aim to be the blockchain of blockchains.

Although ICX is usually associated with South Korea, their aim is to be a global market for every kind of asset and every project. For example, they want users in Korea to trade in Apple stocks with an investor in the US or use medical data from Sydney or London for research in another country.

Ecosystem

Their emphasis is not only on creating a blockchain but an ecosystem. They aim to bring whole communities onto the ICON network. ICON’s specifications on how communities will function and be governed are pretty clear in their white paper. While at a community level, there will be a C-Node and a C-Rep for each community, they will all be a part of ICON Republic which will be the parent community.

Use case(s)

It has clear use cases and even adoption in the following areas:

· Capital Markets

· Insurance

· Education (Universities)

· Healthcare

While these use cases are already being worked on, ICX’s decentralised world would ideally affect E-Commerce and banking.

Team

ICON is founded by Dayli Financial Group, which is one of the largest FinTech companies in Korea with over 25 companies under their umbrella. The company also owns Coinone, a large Korean crypto exchange.

They have been developing a technology they call “loopchain” with three Korean universities for over two years now.

Their team involves more than 50 well respected and experienced drivers of the project. The team is comprised of Advisors, Developers, Data engineers, Business analysts, AI experts and marketing gurus.

Apart from the team, what peaks our excitement in ICX is the list of partners. Apart from the obvious benefits of being a Dayli group company and being a sister concern on Coinone Crypto exchange, their partnerships with Pantera capital, Kinetic capital and various investment firms show the strength and belief in this project. They have also partnered with Crypto Bazaar, which is the largest crypto community of Russian speaking countries.

ICON forged a partnership with Line, one of the largest messenger services in the world in May.

They have an inter-operability alliance with Wanchain and AION. They work with universities, hospitals, capital market firms, insurance and various businesses to pilot the use cases of blockchain in their vertical.

Development

The team has been consistent in delivering and testing use cases with real world clients while the line up of partnerships is nothing but stellar. In Q2, their released the Android wallet while successfully conducting the token swap.

The loopchain platform is being tested extensively and we hope by Q4, we will see the results of these tests.

Market

At the time of writing this, it is ranked #31 on Coinmarketcap with a market capitalisation of approximately 532 million USD. Valued at $1.37 or 0.00021619 BTC, it is resting on a nice support. It is far from the ATH and we believe this year it could see monstrous gains when market conditions improve.

This is one of foremost coins in terms of market sentiment and reviews. While there is buzz, as the team delivers, this coin is a top pick for 2018.

Community

ICX has a huge community and the support has been overwhelmingly positive. However, the social media could be handled better. One of the few negatives is non-availability of the roadmap on their website.

Conclusion

The idea behind this project came from the word rhizome, which means a world with no center point and where every point is connected with every other point. This aptly represents what they aim to create — a blockchain of blockchains.

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