ICON Newsletter #28 - Where does $ICX go in this Bull Market?

Dear ICONists,

It’s amazing to look back and see the growth of the ICON project since 2017. And when you think about where ICON is now vs. the prior bull market cycle, you can’t help but get excited. Especially with a number of exiting things in the pipeline.

July came and went quickly, but that’s not to say we didn’t make it count. Our transactions increased by 13%, and volume rose 63%. $ICX price also went up 14%. And we continue to make significant progress vs. our goals that we set out at the beginning of the year.

To recap, since our last newsletter, we announced our partnership with Band Protocol - a leading oracle solution, we released our monthly ICON Development Roadmap Update and hosted two (2) meet-ups (one virtual and one in-person at our Seoul HQ). It was also our busiest month of grant approvals - approving 9 projects.

All that was great. Although, that’s just what you saw through our official announcement channels. What’s even more exciting to me is the stuff going on behind the scenes - which we hope to share with you very soon. In the meantime, be patient, and check out all the other activities going on in our community.

For example, be sure to check out FutureICX, an $ICX prediction market, which recently launched. We were happy to help support this project via our grant program and are excited to help support many more like this in the future.

If you have an idea or are in need of resources to pursue an $ICX related initiative, please submit your request here for consideration.

Sincerely,

Min Kim, Foundation Council Member

ICON Team released a new update to the Euljiro, Yeouido, and Pagoda Testnets. These feature updates include:

The team also released an audit system tool for developers to use before deploying SCORE on the network to simplify the process.

Additionally, we released a non-fungible token (NFT) standard. IRC-3 covers the broad features of NFT use cases, including ownership representation of digital or physical assets, and consignment to third party operators for token transfers.

Check out the full details of the release below.

Last week, we announced that going forward we will be combining the grant program and the P-Rep delegation program.

We feel this change best accomplishes the goal of aligning incentives (i.e. rewards) with contribution. Additionally, it provides the greatest transparency to the community and is the simplest design to manage. It also encourages more applications for grants, which we think is a big positive for the network and its continued growth.

We look forward to seeing the results of these changes and as always will be looking to make improvements over time.

ICON is collaborating with Band Protocol to support various leading decentralized applications with customizable decentralized oracles, ensuring resistance to manipulation and the highest security guarantee for end-users.

ICON’s extensive ecosystem combined with Band Protocol’s scalable oracles bridging the highest quality off-chain data sources will allow truly reliable and decentralized applications in DeFi, gaming, prediction, betting and lottery to be built.

Band Protocol is a decentralized cross-chain data oracle that connects smart contracts with scalable real-time external data, providing the tools for developers to specify and connect to any external data source or API with custom aggregation methods. They are backed by world-class investors such as Sequoia Capital and the top cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.

We are extremely excited about this partnership and are currently exploring more ways to align our respective communities and interests going forward. In addition, we’ve learned that the Band team is a huge fan of ICON which makes this partnership even more exciting!

Last week we hosted two great meet-ups. The first was a virtual event moderated by data analytics company, Messari, and included representatives from MakerDAO and Tezos. The topic of discussion focused on governance and what it means in blockchain projects. Check it out here and follow Daeki Lee for more thoughts on ICON’s governance and ecosystem activities.

The second meet-up was held onsite at our Seoul HQ where we hosted MakerDAO and Chainlink. See the awesome thread below (by Marcus) for more details.