With decentralization, the ICON network is transforming into a “blockchain-complete” solution, one that promises to deliver on the full potential of the blockchain.

This transformation may not yield dramatic results in the short term, but give it time. Gartner research vice president Christophe Uzureau writes, “Though not immediate, the proliferation of blockchain-complete solutions will push organizations to explore new ways of operating with greater degrees of decentralization than they have now.”

ICON obviously sees the benefits of tokenization and decentralization. ICON’s white paper presents the network’s vision of a decentralized, tokenized future:

“ICON aims to eradicate various boundaries that have been (sic) existed in the centralized system. Imagine stock investors in Korea trading Apple stocks in real-time with US stock investors, or medical researchers at Korean university hospitals obtaining permission to work with diabetes patients’ data from Sydney and London. Crossborder connections will be accelerated through the tokenization of assets and rights, and the dynamics of the network will be maximized. Currencies, tangible assets such as real estates and automobiles, intangible assets such as patents, copyrights, and trademarks, our legal rights such as suffrage and citizenship, and even DNA data or blood tests can benefit from tokenization. This forces us to rethink everything, even obscures the space-time boundary, and makes distinguishing tangibles from intangibles meaningless. It is possible to trade 0.2 apartments with 0.8 cars, and pay insurance fee directly just by uploading 5 posts on our social media.”

As an added bonus, as decentralization brings new value to ICON, the transition could allow the network’s chief technology partner, ICONLOOP, to focus even more on developing practical applications of blockchain technology such as decentralized identification services like my-ID.

ICON’s transition to decentralization may encounter some bumps in the road, but that’s to be expected with a technological paradigm as groundbreaking as this.

“A sustainable economy is one of the great features of the ICON network. It cannot be done without decentralization and we are accomplishing the first step,” says ICON’s cryptoeconomist Changju Lee. “In the second step, we should vote for contributing P-Reps who deserve rewards and this requires distributed votes. Some P-Reps are receiving excessive rewards and contributing P-Reps need more votes. Please consider which P-Reps to vote for and this will make the ICON network better.”

Lee adds, “After decentralization, ICON will have more opportunities in various areas because it cannot be controlled by countries or companies. This could help us to get more companies to use the ICON network or get listed on more exchanges. This is a big step to interconnect the world.”

“The launch of the decentralized network is the first of many major milestones we hope to accomplish as a network,” says Ricky Dodds, ICON’s Head of Institutional Markets, “I’m looking forward to partnering with the community to build features, tools and applications that ICONists find useful and further the adoption of ICX.”