ICPUSD
ICP / United States dollar
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The Internet Computer (IC) is a blockchain network built by the DFINITY Foundation that aims to support smart contract development at scale. It's an attempt to reinvent how users interact with internet applications as its nodes run on specialized hardware housed by various independent data centers. The IC lets developers deploy and run applications through the use of canisters, which are akin to smart contracts. Each canister has a storage capacity of 4GB. The IC features two core tokens: ICP is the network's governance token, and Cycles (created by burning ICP) are a form of stablecoin that allows users to pay for computational resources and network transactions. The purpose of the Internet Computer (IC) is to extend the public internet. The current internet is a network that connects everybody and everything, but systems and services run on infrastructure managed by private companies. The IC aims to upend this model through the creation of Chain Key Technology, which includes several complementary components like a new consensus model (Threshold Relay), Non-Interactive Distributed Key Generation (NI-DKG), an on-chain governance system (the Network Nervous System or NNS), and decentralized identity (Internet Identity). Chain Key Technology consists of a set of cryptographic protocols that orchestrate the nodes that make up the Internet Computer. It enables the IC to have a single public key, which is small enough (in size) to allow any device, like smartwatches and mobile phones, to verify the authenticity of artifacts from the Internet Computer. Chain Key Technology is the engine that drives the Internet Computer and makes its operation possible. It allows for: Adding new nodes to form new subnets to help scale the network Replacing faulty or crashed nodes with new ones without stopping Reviving subnets even if too many nodes within have failed Upgrading the Internet Computer Protocol, allowing the network to fix bugs and add new features The DFINITY R&D team has also invented a new noninteractive key resharing protocol. Each of the old signers only needs to broadcast a single message to the new signers. To ensure that this is done securely, many concepts from advanced cryptography are utilized, including encryption with forward secrecy and noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs. Because it is noninteractive, the way the key resharing protocol operates is ideal for an asynchronous environment, and the benefits include key preservation. Throughout the lifetime of a subnet, it is known by a single public key, and the other parties on the Internet Computer do not have to keep track of changing public keys.