Data in this article is as of 4 November 2019

The ICON ($ICX) network mainnet has been fully decentralized with 22 elected Public Representatives (P-Reps) now in charge of block production. This is a big step for ICON, and we can’t wait to work together with the other Preps and community members in order to support the growth of the ecosystem.

Vote distribution among representatives

If you take a look at ICON explorers such as ICON Tracker, you might notice that voting power is very concentrated among a few selected P-Reps.

POS Bakerz Analysis, Data of 4 Nov. 2019 from ICON Tracker

Looking into the details, top 3 P-Reps hold ~38% of voting power, and top 5 P-Reps have ~53% of the voting power.

POS Bakerz Analysis, Data of 4 Nov. 2019 from ICON Tracker

Such network concentration can also be seen in other Proof-of-Stake networks. You can notice that among the 5 Top P-Reps, one is the ICON Foundation, another an Exchange, and other early community participants.

Involvement of Sub P-Reps

While decentralization had only happened a few days ago, we have noticed that many Sub P-Reps are not running nodes. If some Main P-Reps are down, these Sub P-Reps will not be able to fulfill their block production duty. We invite Iconists to expand their due diligence and eventually redelegate to Sub P-Reps currently running a secure infrastructure.

⚠️ Below, in red, we highlight the Sub P-Reps that are offline as of 4 November 2019:

POS Bakerz Analysis, Data of 4 Nov. 2019 from ICON Tracker

✅ In case you would like to diversify your voting power differently, there are some few Sub P-Reps that we appreciate for their involvement in the community or their track-record of running secure validation infrastructure. This list is not exhaustive and many other Sub P-Reps are doing an amazing job: Pocket / Figment, Chainode, Piconbello, ReliantNode, Staked, InfStones, Wetez, Metanyx.

If you want to know more about ICON staking and risks you can check this article.

Meanwhile at POS Bakerz

We’re very thankful to the Iconists who have voted for us and given us the chance to become a Prep. However, we do not take this position for granted and plan to keep on working hard for the ecosystem. If you look at our voters, you will see a high concentration among a few token holders, which means that our future as a Prep is very dependant on our capacity to work hard for the community members who trusted us.

We plan to push some of the initiatives that we are currently working on, such as ICON Europe. We believe that there is still much work to be done in order to strengthen the ICON ecosystem in Europe, and are looking forward to building a thriving ecosystem for ICON with our partners in this mission (Block42, Everstake, Blockmove, Piconbello, ICON Sweden, Chainode, Newroad Capital). To keep up to date with the latest developments in ICON Europe, you can also check this Telegram group: https://t.me/IconEurope

We are also looking forward to the next testnet in order to test various infrastructure set-ups and improve our overall connectivity and reliability. Although the job of a P-Rep goes far beyond secure validation, we still believe that having a safe and reliable infrastructure is of the utmost importance.

Finally, we would like to remind you of our long-term commitment to ICON and the Iconists. We believe in the mission of ICON to hyperconnect the world, and it is our view that in order to do so ICON will need a secure and decentralized network as well as a strong presence in many world regions. The network may look very different in the upcoming months and years, but we’re going to keep pursuing that mission.