Sharing with you a brief overview of the ICON project- What they do and the utility of the ICX token

What is ICON trying to solve?

Protocol wars. Since the launch of Ethereum, many protocols have emerged to stake their claim of being the “best protocol” for projects and enterprises to build their blockchain products on.

However, little has been said about building a complete ecosystem of blockchain networks where blockchains become inter-operable. This is what project ICON is working to solve, by building a network where different blockchain with different consensus mechanisms and tokens can operate and interact with each other. Think of an ecosystem where the BTC and ETH network can co-exist. In essence, that is what the ICON project is trying to build.

Solution Provided By ICON- Inter-Connected Communities

ICON is planning on implementing blockchain solutions to industries such as finance, universities, health care and insurance. These industries are typically inefficient or handles highly sensitive personal data, and as such will benefit from implementing blockchain technology.

Each industry is referred to as a “Community” in the ecosystem and can be run based on their own consensus model. The community is represented by “C-Rep”, a component of governance in ICON Republic that is selected by the community themselves. The ICON republic functions as a communication channel between different communities, and its governance is determined by C-REP votes. However, ICON republic does not govern individual communities, and that is still left to the communities themselves.

NEXUS and Loopchain

The different blockchains of individual communities will be connected by NEXUS, a multi-channel blockchain comprised of light clients of the respective blockchains. NEXUS is powered by Loopchain, a high performance blockchain that provides real time transaction.

Loop Fault Tolerance(LFT) is the consensus mechanism of Loopchain. Under this model the nodes are separated under leader and validation nodes, whereby the validation nodes send to the leader node transactions that need to be executed, the leader node creates a block with the transactions and sends the block to all the verification nodes with its own signature. This presents a solution to the scalability and speed issue that many blockchain ecosystems face.

Tokenomics- Essential points about ICX Token

The ICX token is primarily used to transfer value from one community to another. This is done through the Decentralized Exchange (DEX) provided by ICON, and the exchange rate is determined through reserve based on the Bancor Protocol. The price of the ICX token is calculated as follows according to the ICON Whitepaper: