Icon introduced itself as a “digital nation” and its goal is to build a decentralized network of blockchains.

ICON Explained

ICON’s Blockchain Components

5 different types of components collaborate in the ICON blockchain:

1. The Icon Republic: which acts as the governing structure and decision committee and is composed of nodes from the Icon Communities

2. The Icon Communities: which are a series of nodes with a single system of government and operate with their own set of rules

3. C-Reps (Community Representatives): which are nodes who are elected from each community and are trusted with power to represent them when communication with the Icon Republic. They receive compensation for their work in form of ICX

4. C-Nodes or C-Reps: which act as infrastructure for their respective communities and are responsible for its governance and blockchain maintenance

5. Citizen Nodes: which can make transactions with others regardless of their community but hold no voting power.

Governance

The Icon Republic is at the very center of ICON’s governance as it operates the process by which new ICX cryptocurrency is minted in each block.

It consists of many communities that can communicate and transact with each other through the Icon network.

A community can be anything from an organization, an institution, governments or a crypto blockchain.

Each community operates with its own set of rules and participants in each community can elect their community representative, or C-rep, much like constituents elect their congress to represent their interests.

Users can stake their coins to elect P-reps (public representatives). C-reps promote their community’s interests as representatives to the Republic

P-reps are responsible for the network as a whole. They are the republic’s governing body.

A user can vote for a P-rep by delegating an amount of their staked ICX to them and the top 100 individuals or organizations which have the most ICX delegated to them become the network’s P-reps.

The top 22 become the main P-reps and earn the responsibility of mining and validating new blocks and governing the whole network.

The subsequent 78 become sub P-reps and add further security to the network by storing a copy of the ledger and standing in to replace a main P-rep if so required.

The Loopchain

The Loopchain is the algorithm behind the Icon blockchain which integrates data transfers between all nodes which compose the Icon Republic by use something ICON calls the LFT (Loop Fault Tolerance).

The LFT employs a simplification of the algorithm reducing the number of steps needed to achieve consensus.

The History Behind ICON

Icon was founded in 2017. The Icon Foundation, an organization based in South Korea is behind its released it and soon afterwards its ICO raised around 150,000 ETH, (around $43 million USD at the time) by selling half of its token supply.