ICON commits $200M to interoperability incentive fund

January 14, 2022 Coin Telegraph

ICON commits 0M to interoperability incentive fund

The South Korean blockchain hopes to fund its interoperability technology to create new cross-chain applications.

The ICON Foundation announced plans to launch an interoperability incentive program for 200 million ICX, or approximately $200 million at the time of publication. The foundation supports the development of the ICON network, South Korea’s largest public aggregator chain. The foundation said that it hopes this program will incentivize the ICON community and its partner networks to adopt ICON’s blockchain transfer protocol, or BTP.

The incentive program aims to distribute up to 200 million ICX tokens over a period of five years, primarily funded by the ICX reserve allocation raised during the 2017 token sale. ICON intends to attract development teams in other ecosystems to explore BTP’s cross-chain communication opportunities.

The majority of the proceeds are planned to go towards developing new high-quality use cases for the BTP technology, while a share of it will go towards incentivizing the long-term adoption of BTP within existing protocols and communities, according to the company.

BTP integration is currently underway with many blockchains including Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Kusama, Moonriver, Astar Network, Edgeware, Acala, NEAR and Harmony.

ICON claimed that their incentive program is the first fund dedicated entirely to interoperability. Min Kim, founder of the ICON Project, said in a statement that the goal is "not to fragment existing development communities," but rather to create collaboration opportunities between them within the layer 2 ecosystem.

Scott Smiley, Head of Strategy at ICON Foundation, told Cointelegraph that security and decentralization are not alone in leading adoption, statin:

“We’re confident that once users and developers interact with BTP, they’ll recognize the value of a chain-agnostic, scalable, and uniquely secure protocol. This incentive fund will give the market the ‘nudge’ it needs in order to start the snowball of adoption.”

ICON recently launched ICON 2.0, introducing an upgraded core blockchain engine, support for Java smart contracts, the interoperability technology BTP and updated tokenomics.

Analyst Michaël van de Poppe Unveils Massive Price Target for Litecoin, Outlines Bullish Scenarios for Two More Altcoins

November 10, 2021 The Daily Hodl

Altcoins take the next leg up after Bitcoin price holds $47.5K

October 1, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Price

ROSE, AXS and ICX notched 20% gains after bulls took control of the market and sent BTC price above $47,500.

Bullish sentiment returned to the cryptocurrency ecosystem on Oct. 1 after a 10% spike in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) lifted it above the $47,500 level and resulted in the liquidation of more than $270 million in short positions.

The altcoin market quickly followed suit with a majority of the tokens in the top 200 registering double-digit gains for the day.

*Top 7 coins with the highest 24-hour price change. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were Oasis Network (ROSE), Axie Infinity (AXS) and ICON (ICX).

The allure of privacy draws traders to Oasis Network

The Oasis Network is a privacy-enabled blockchain designed for open finance and the creation of a responsible data economy.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for ROSE on Sept. 30, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

*VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. ROSE price. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for ROSE began to pick up on Sept. 29 and climbed to a high of 74 on Sept. 30, around three hours before the price increased 60% over the next two days.

The spike in price for ROSE comes as Ethereum (ETH) compatible networks that offer better scalability rise in prominence with the Oasis Network, outperforming many competitors thanks to its built-in privacy features.

Axie Infinity launches staking and sends airdrops to early adopters

Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based play-to-earn battling game that allows players to collect, breed, raise, battle and trade token-based creatures known as Axies, and earn an income in the process.

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, market conditions for AXS have been favorable for some time.

*VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. AXS price. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for AXS spiked into the dark green zone on Sept. 26 and reached a high of 87 around 35 hours before the price began to increase by 55% over the next three days.

The surge in price for AXS comes following the implementation of staking capabilities for AXS holders as well as a community Airdrop which distributed 800,000 AXS tokens to early adopters of the game.

ICON rallies ahead of its mainnet upgrade

ICON is a general-purpose blockchain protocol and aggregator chain designed to host decentralized applications and facilitate interoperability between separate networks.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $1.38 on Sept. 29, the price of ICX rallied 45% to a daily high at $1.93 on Oct. 1 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 385% to $362 million.

*ICX/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView*

The jump in ICX price comes after the release of wrapped ICX, which is compliant with the ERC-20 standard and can be used interoperably with decentralized finance on Ethereum. The upgrade is part of the protocol’s final preparation before implementing the ICON 2.0 mainnet upgrade.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.079 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 43%.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Man who minted 14M ICX tokens due to a bug can pursue lawsuit to keep them

August 11, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

A flaw in an upgrade to the ICON blockchain in 2020 allowed a user to repeatedly mint millions of ICX tokens.

A cryptocurrency enthusiast who exploited a bug in the ICON network to mint a large amount of its native ICX token can pursue entitlement claims according to a California federal judge.

On Monday, Aug. 9, U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick said that the case raises novel questions about digital property. He added that plaintiff Mark Shin had adequately alleged that the ICON Foundation was wrong to freeze his crypto asset accounts after he took advantage of its flawed code.

According to Law360, the allegations were enough to allow the case to go forward, with Judge Orrick denying the bulk of ICON Foundation's motion to dismiss the claims.

According to court filings, Shin discovered a bug in the ICON Network's code after a software update in August 2020. When attempting to transfer staked tokens, Shin discovered that 25,000 new native ICX tokens had appeared in his wallet.

He thought that there was a “visual bug with the wallet software” and attempted the process again whereby another 25,000 ICX tokens were generated.

The code flaw allowed Shin to create a total of 14 million new ICX tokens worth around $7.8 million at the time. Many of those tokens he then transferred to the Kraken and Binance cryptocurrency exchanges.

According to the court order, Shin acknowledged that “the authors and developers of the [software update] may not have intended for the network proposal to behave as it did,” but argued that he was the new lawful owner of the tokens since the code changes had been adopted.

He claimed that ICON disagreed and asked Binance and Kraken to have his accounts frozen, saying that he had attacked the network. The judge agreed with the plaintiff’s claims of possible token ownership rights allowing the case to proceed, stating:

“The inquiry at this stage, however, is whether Shin has plausibly alleged possessory interest in the ICX tokens. I find that he has.”

Ted Normand of Roche Freedman who is representing Shin added that the case raises questions over decentralization claims some networks make:

“If you're a DeFi company issuing assets… you can't have a decentralized ecosystem only when it's convenient.”

The South Korean blockchain project has fallen from its previous lofty positions in the market capitalization charts as ICX tokens have tumbled in price and largely missed out on this bull market. Today, ICX trades at $1.12, down 91.5% from its January 2018 all-time high of a little over $13.

Bitcoin price hits $41K, then rejects after sellers defend the 200-MA

June 15, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Price

A breakout above $41,000 provoked selling near a key moving average but the move could just be a lower support retest.

The overall mood of the cryptocurrency ecosystem is muted on June 15 with most altcoins trading flat while Bitcoin (BTC) bulls look for a daily close above $41,000 as a sign that the market could be shifting in favor of bulls.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that within the last few hours Bitcoin price rallied to $41,330 but the breakout was swiftly met by selling at overhead resistance levels.

*BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:* *TradingView*

Another gauge of investor sentiment as highlighted by Rekt Capital is the 200 exponential moving average (EMA), which Bitcoin attempted to surpass on Tuesday but was firmly rejected.

The 200 EMA (black) is a long-term gauge of investor sentiment

When #BTC is above the 200 EMA - investors are bullish on Bitcoin$BTC is attempting to break past the 200 EMA right now#Crypto #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/uOlDfBoB0i
— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) June 15, 2021

Bitcoin's rejection at the 200 EMA was followed by a rapid sell-off to $39,500, showing that a possible move lower is not out of the question.

A few altcoins rally on positive news

*Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source:* *Coin360*

While most of the altcoin market saw muted price action on June 15, Shiba Inu (SHIB) rallied 33% following the revelation that trading for the token would be supported on Coinbase Pro on June 17.

Inbound transfers for CHZ, KEEP & SHIB are now available in the regions where trading is supported. Traders cannot place orders and no orders will be filled. Trading will begin on or after 9AM PT on Thurs 6/17, if liquidity conditions are met. https://t.co/r2L6N477Uj
— Coinbase Pro (@CoinbasePro) June 15, 2021

Following the announcement, Chiliz (CHZ) and KEEP also rallied 18% and 10% respectively.

Icon (ICX) also received a boost following the release of a new Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchain called ICE. ICE is expected to become the application hub for the Icon project and it will have its own native token.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for ICX on June 13, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

*VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. ICX price. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score began to turn green on June 12 and eventually reached a high of 75 on June 13, 10 hours before the price increased 35% over the next two days.

Other notable altcoin performances include a 22% jump from Amp (AMP) and a 20% gain for iExecRLC (RLC) and Ultra (UOS).

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.685 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 44.6%.

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May 13, 2021 Bitcoin.com

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