How and Where to Buy Internet Computer (IOU) (ICP) – Detailed Guide

What Is the Internet Computer (ICP)?

The Internet Computer, developed by the DFINITY Foundation, is a cryptographic platform and a protocol aiming to create a public decentralized cloud computing resource to become the next step in the evolution of the internet. It wants to shatter the dominance of centralized cloud service providers and redesign the internet to become distributed and secure while at the same time reducing IT maintenance and deployment costs tenfold. The protocol claims to be optimised for scaling, achieving block times of a few seconds and transaction finality after only two confirmations.

The project has been in development since 2015, attracting a notable interest from the crypto community. The first presale occurred in summer 2017 and a total investment exceeded $102 million. 50,000 backers received ICP tokens in an airdrop in 2018. DFINITY launched the alpha mainnet of its “Internet Computer” on Dec. 18, 2020. The mainnet beta version public launch is announced for Mar. 30, 2021, with the release happening somewhere later in 2021.

Who Are the Founders of the Internet Computer?

The Internet Computer is founded by a team of notable cryptography scientists and business developers, by Q1 2021 consisting of 180 members.

Dominic Williams is the founder, president and chief scientist of the DFINITY Foundation and Internet Computer project. Previously, he was a CEO a venture incubator for crypto projects called String Labs and assisted crypto development in Mirror Labs, was a founder and a CEO of a MMO game for teenagers called Fight My Monster and prior to that ran several SAAS companies: System7, Airdocs and Smartdrivez. He graduated King's College London as a bachelor in computer science.

Jan Camenisch is the vice president of research and cryptography in DFINITY. He has published over 130 widely cited papers in the areas of privacy and cryptography and holds over 140 patents. He is also serving as a technical governance board member at Sovrin Foundation. Previously, he spent 19 years as a principal research staff member at IBM. He is a fellow of IEEE and IACR and has a PhD in computer science and cryptography from ETH Zurich. Camenisch is a co-inventor of Identity Mixer cryptographic protocol and holds 2010 ACM SIGSAC outstanding innovation award and the 2013 IEEE computer society technical achievement award.

Gian Bochsler is a DFINITY council member, an experienced entrepreneur who founded half a dozen companies, including such recent blockchain ventures as Bity, Archery Fund and EtherCapital.com.

It is notable that among the early backers of DFINITY were Andreesen Horowitz and Polychain Capital, who were investors in a $61 million funding round in February 2018.

What Makes Internet Computer Unique?

The Internet Computer Protocol is a decentralized network design whose protocols generate a reliable "virtual blockchain computer" running on top of a peer-to-peer network. It is aiming to revolutionize the business of cloud services providers, and sees future clients in software developers and data centers, reducing the marginal costs and facilitating software deployment for the former and creating a market and a revenue stream for the latter.

One of the novel technologies of the protocol is software canisters, a smart contract-based equivalent of containers. Like a container, a canister contains compiled software and its dependencies, but in addition it records information about the current and preceding software state and user interactions.

The Internet Computer Protocol token (ICP) is a governance token that will be used as a means of payment and managing network. It can be locked into “neurons” for staking and voting power, or can be converted into “cycles” to become a means of payment for computational and network resources, similar to Ethereum’s gas or AWS credits. Cycles’ value is constant and is tethered to the Swiss Franc (a fiat currency). Since one always needs to burn cycles to run software on the Internet Computer and the only way to buy cycles is from ICP, it will always be under some deflationary pressure. Users are allowed staking their tokens into “neurons” for a predetermined period, a minimum of six months, maximum of eight years, the longer the period - the higher the gains. Staking tokens will allow them to participate in a distributed governance mechanism called Network Nervous System (NNS), sharing principles of liquid democracy.

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How Many Internet Computer Tokens (ICP) Are There in Circulation?

There will be 469,213,710 ICP tokens, once they enter the circulation. Currently, the undisclosed majority of tokens is in hands of the DFINITY foundation, a not-for-profit organization based in Zurich, Switzerland. At network launch the distribution is planned to be as follows:

52.93% — foundation endowment, team and partnership tokens, 9.5% — early contributor tokens, and 24.72% tokens in the hands of seed fundraise contributors, 6.85% — strategic fundraise contributors with a three-year vesting period, 4.75% — presale fundraise contributors and 1.25% — airdrop for 50 000 community members.

ICP token (fka DFN) is not yet in open circulation as of Mar. 2021. It’s evaluation on CMC currently takes the form of an IOU.

How Is the Internet Computer Network Secured?

Given the promise of enormous scalability and speed, a crypto enthusiast would be especially concerned about security in the Internet Computer network. In short, it is a variation of a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism without a full Byzantine agreement, optimized for speed and short block times. The Internet Computer protocol consensus consists of four layers:

1. Identity layer, which provides a registry of all clients. Unlike typical proof-of-work protocols, it uses permanent identities, so in case of misbehaviour a malevolent client risks losing not only one block reward, but his entire deposit. \
2. Random Beacon layer, which provides the source of randomness via a unique verifiable random function (VRF) for all higher layers including applications (smart contracts). It is the cornerstone of the Internet Computer security. \
3. Blockchain layer: builds a blockchain from validated transactions via the Probabilistic Slot Protocol (PSP) driven by the random beacon. Each cycle it ranks clients for the height of their chain, assigning corresponding block weights, so the consensus gets resolved in favor of the client with the highest accumulated block weight, just as proof-of-work consensus is based on highest accumulated amount of work. \
4. Notarization layer, which approves blocks for publication. It works basically as a timestamp. Once the highest-ranked client was chosen and approved for publication two times plus a certain delay time passes, it is added to the blockchain. Unlike traditional PoS, it does not guarantee a full Byzantine agreement at every block. It is not a full consensus mechanism, but — as the authors call it — an optimistic consensus.

Another notable detail is delegation, achieved through Threshold Relay. To ensure infinite scalability, Internet Computer consensus is resolved by a small subset of randomly chosen miners, called a committee. After the committee does the work and adds a block to the blockchain, the duty relays to the next randomly preassembled committee.

In order to understand the sacrifices that were made one may try to view it less as a traditional blockchain for store of value and asset transfer, but more like TCP/IP.

Where Can You Buy the Internet Computer token (ICP)?

The ICP utility token is not yet traded per se before its public release, but given the high expectations crypto community has about it, there is some trading here and there in the form of IOU.

The top exchanges for trading in the ICP (IOU) are currently GX.com, MXC.COM and TOKOK. You can find others listed on our crypto exchanges page.

New to crypto and want to know how to buy Bitcoin (BTC) or any other token? Find out the details here.

ICP has been listed on a number of crypto exchanges, unlike other main cryptocurrencies, it cannot be directly purchased with fiats money. However, You can still easily buy this coin by first buying Ethereum from any fiat-to-crypto exchanges and then transfer to the exchange that offers to trade this coin, in this guide article we will walk you through in detail the steps to buy ICP.