New Dark Horse? Distributed Computing Platform Sparks Follow

Recently, the cryptocurrency market has once again welcomed a surge, with Bitcoin breaking its historical high, surpassing the $64,000 mark. Mainstream coins and altcoins have also risen, and after more than a month of consolidation, the bull market has returned.

In this round of crazy上涨, a project called ICP has attracted widespread 关注. Its market capitalization ranking suddenly jumped to third place, surpassing many well-known projects, leaving many people puzzled.

In fact, ICP is not a new project, but rather evolved from the established project Dfinity. Dfinity was initiated as early as 2015 and was once considered one of the "four kings" in the blockchain field. However, after six years of development, its mainnet has yet to launch as scheduled, earning it the nickname "king of the pigeons."

Dfinity's vision is to create a global distributed internet computer system, reshaping the internet infrastructure and becoming a distributed cloud computing platform. With the continuous iteration of the project, its token name has changed from DFN to ICP.

In 2021, several established projects made substantial progress. With the mainnet launches of Polkadot and FileCoin, the first phase of Ethereum 2.0 has started, and Dfinity is also about to reach an important moment. In April, as the Mercury network transitions from Alpha to Beta, the Dfinity mainnet is expected to officially launch.

Dfinity's Positioning and Vision

In the future Web 3.0 ecosystem, Dfinity will become one of the three major underlying infrastructures, together with blockchain public chains and distributed storage, to build a new generation of internet ecology. Dfinity is not aimed at replacing Ethereum, but rather at jointly creating a new world as a parallel ecosystem.

After years of development, Dfinity is now officially positioned as the "Internet Computer" ( Internet Computer Protocol, abbreviated as ICP ). Founder Dominic Williams claims that ICP is the world's first blockchain operating at network speed, capable of unlimited scalability, supporting any number of smart contract computations and data storage, significantly enhancing blockchain performance and efficiency.

This means that ICP has the potential to support high-traffic applications like WeChat, Taobao, and Douyin, which may change the current situation where blockchain has long lacked large-scale implemented applications.

The Operating Mechanism of Dfinity

Dfinity mainly ensures the stable operation of its global distributed computing platform through the following modules:

Neuron Network System ( NNS )

ICP is a giant computer network composed of globally distributed data centers and nodes. Unlike traditional cloud platforms, ICP achieves decentralized governance through NNS, which can be simply understood as:

Tokenization + DAO governance + Cloud services = ICP

The ICP platform is jointly owned and governed by token holders through NNS, consisting of sub-networks formed by data centers located in various parts of the world, providing operational infrastructure for smart contracts and generating revenue. NNS acts as the "administrator," deciding on the operational mechanisms and ecological benefit distribution of ICP through proposals.

容器(Canister)

ICP is a general cloud computing platform that can run various applications. Canister is the most basic element on ICP, similar to a smart contract but with some differences.

No matter what language the software is written in, it will be compiled into WebAssembly modules and deployed to ICP replicas. The execution environment for running these modules is called a container.

Containers are independent of each other yet can connect with one another, creating an execution environment for software computational logic. Compared to traditional public chains, containers are easier to replicate, fork, and self-organize, which is beneficial for ecological expansion.

Calculation Cycle ( Cycles )

To prevent resource abuse, ICP uses Cycles as the unit of measurement. Cycles are similar to Ethereum's gas; they cannot be circulated and are only used to pay transaction fees.

Cycles adopts a developer-paid model, and users do not need to pay fees. Developers need to exchange ICP tokens for Cycles as fuel for program operation. 1 Swiss Franc is equivalent to 1 trillion Cycles, and the price fluctuations of ICP do not affect the operating costs of the contract.

Dfinity Ecosystem Overview

The representative projects in the Dfinity ecosystem currently include:

• Capsule: a decentralized social media platform, raised $1.5 million in seed funding.

• Fleek: plans to migrate tens of thousands of Ethereum applications and NFT projects to Dfinity.

• OpenChat: The first decentralized encrypted communication application on Dfinity, where users have ownership and decision-making power.

With the mainnet about to launch, global investors and developers will pay more attention to this innovative project. The implementation of Dfinity means that the underlying infrastructure of the decentralized world has basically been completed.

Ethereum and Polkadot have built a mature ecosystem of smart contracts and DeFi, FileCoin achieves decentralized storage, and Dfinity, as the world's largest distributed supercomputer, is expected to bring blockchain applications to the same level as traditional internet.

The era of decentralization centered on user interests and personal data has arrived. Whether Dfinity can truly realize its vision and change the world is something we should look forward to together.