Hello everybody, fellow Catenanites! Today, I want to do a wrap of what has been occurring within the ICON Ecosystem over the last month. It is incumbent to keep up with the news because there is so much to unravel. To begin, lets discuss what P-Rep's are working on. Staky, formally known as Sharpn, is launching an NFT marketplace known as Craft which will be in its Alpha phase in the coming weeks. Simultaneously, Spartan Node intends on releasing its NFT Bazaar within the next two-three weeks and simultaneously, they just announced that LDX holders will be given dividends. Spartan Node also intends on creating a Gentlemen's Club via the ICON Blockchain. Here at Catena, I recently had a podcast with Spartan Node and intend on going on a livestream with Brian Li of Rhizome on Sunday to discuss all the latest ICX news. ICONPLUS also intends on having an interview with Daeki Lee surrounding the intricacies of DeFi within the ICON ecosystem. Binance, has become the number one node within the ICON Ecosystem with approximately 100 million dollars in ICX staked at the time of writing this newsletter. If that isn't bullish I don't know what is.
Within the ICON Network, approximately 68% of the entire circulating supply is now staked. A peer to contract exchange protocol, Equality, has recently been announced where you can trade stable-coins via the ICON Network
ICON recently joined a consortium chain in Japan, Palette. Palette is focused on the NFT space and is looking to launch the country’s first IEO! Paycoin partners with Union Pay and outlines $ICX integration timeline!
Seoul Metro Government and ICONLOOP announce implementation of contactless reservations for over 7,000 public services using loopchain, ICON’s core engine. Exodus recently released an article surrounding the intricacies of ICX, which you can find here. Exodus It is also incumbent to look at the success of the Contribution Proposal System, a decentralized funding accelerator for projects built on ICON.
(https://cps.icon.community/) The CPS has, at the time of writing this, ten projects up for voting and 33 P-Reps are signed up to vote on these projects. The voting proposals for the totality of these projects equals roughly $160,000 USD and the CPS remaining funds as of this moment equals 250,000, about $500,000 USD. The CPS is part of the ICON Republic DAO governance. The CPS supports worthy projects through grants from the Contribution Proposal Fund (CPF), which grows through the daily accumulation of block rewards.
Now let us go to the list of d'apps and DeFi applications set to launch on ICON in the next three-six weeks. To begin, the new official ICON Website has now launched, which you can find here, (https://iconrepublic.org/). This new website is a complete overhaul of the original website and this project was spearheaded by ICON Hyperconnect P-Rep. As follows, here are numerous different updates and d'apps set to launch on ICON between Q2 and Q3: BalancedDAO, Open Money Market, Project Nebula, Stash, NFT Bazaar, Craft, Equality Exchange, BTP (with two connected chains at the start of summer), ICON 2.0, EPICx, ICX Gentlemen's Club, ICONbet Poker and much more. This is just a small list that highlights some of the releases within the ICX ecosystem: Ill leave the community to do more research on other upcoming projects :].
Now lets go to the fun part, the release of ICON's BTP Token Economics. If you're a trader, this is an arbitrage dream and an even more enticing prospect for ICX holders. ICON's BTP token economics includes a new paradigm of auctioning cryptocurrencies that are connected to the ICON Network at a discount from market price. So lets say that One Ethereum is 1,000 dollars and ICX is one dollar, an auction could happen where one Ethereum worth 1,000 dollars is sold at auction for only 800 ICX at a one dollar valuation figure. That means that a trader can arbitrage and make money on a consistent basis through ICX auctions. Note, this is only valid for ICX holders! Also, the ICON Foundation discusses how it is striving to be the first Aggregator Chain and the specifics of being a relayer are now released. To be a relayer, which in essence relays messages throughout the network and receives rewards, you must stake a minimum of 25,000 ICX, a careful note, if your relayer is not online when called upon, you can lose some of your staked stack, so don't be lazy. ICON aims to launch two connected chains by summer and desires to be the largest interoperable chain on the planet by the end of this year. This is just the beginning for ICON in this March monthly wrap up. Stay tuned for more!
BTP Architecture
ICON The Aggregator Chain
