ICON Ecosystem (ICX) – DeFi space “small” but still has main Players

The ICON ecosystem, a DeFi space, is quite “small” but still has the main players. Does the ecosystem have potential???

In recent times, ecosystems have continuously alternated with strong growth, especially in the context that transaction fees on the Ethereum network are already too high.

Therefore, Layer 1 solutions have recently emerged strongly, as an alternative to the Ethereum platform.

Today, I will join you to set foot in a relatively young ecosystem but with a strong and developed community, which is the ICON ecosystem.

In order to help you keep up with what is happening in the ICON ecosystem, I will go through the various segments in this ecosystem in turn, to get the most overview of the system, thereby looking for investment opportunities. .

Does DeFi on ICON really have potential? And what stage is DeFi on ICON at? We will find out through the next article!

ICON Ecosystem

Brief about ICON blockchain

What is ICON Blockchain?

ICON Blockchain is a Public Blockchain platform, allowing multiple Blockchains to interact with each other through Smart Contracts without the need for an intermediary 3rd party.

ICON aspires to create a new decentralized world through a worldwide decentralized network.

Learn more about ICON and ICX coin now: What is ICON (ICX)?

Highlights of ICON blockchain

The outstanding features of ICON’s Blockchain include:

The community of this ecosystem is relatively strong, and is mainly Korean.

• Loop Fault Tolerance: ICON has developed its own consensus algorithm called Loop Fault Tolerance (LFT). LFT is a consensus algorithm based on BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) algorithm, with the ability to promote faster consensus by creating a group of nodes with high trust.

• Loopchain: Allows to link other Blockchains together and is compatible with smart contracts.
• ICON SCORE: SCORE (Smart Contract On Reliable Environment) is Loopchain’s advanced smart contract feature that ensures high-performance contracts run directly in the node’s operating environment without the need for a Virtual Machine ( VM) separately.
• Nexus & ICON Republic: Nexus runs on Loopchain with transaction scalability and Smart Contract integration. Meanwhile, C-Rep is the gateway for other Blockchains to connect to Nexus.

Outstanding parameters

Outstanding parameters of ICON (October 27, 2021):

• Consensus algorithm: Loop Fault Tolerance (LFT);
• Platform programming languages: Python and Java;
• Total platform transactions: 151,746,301;
• Block height: 41,428,139;
• Verified smart contract number: 912;
• fungible token standard: IRC2;
• fungible tokens: 153 tokens;
• Number of wallets operating regularly: 617 thousand wallets;
• Average transaction fee: 0.02 – 0.1 USD;
• Marketcap: 1,373,423,608.

You can see more parameters of the platform here.

Puzzle pieces on ICON

Currently, the ICON ecosystem is still relatively rudimentary and has few applications.

However, each array has also had major applications. In total on ICON, there is a TVL amount of 315 million USD, of which the two main protocols, Balanced and Omm Finance, account for 177 and 138 million USD respectively, and these two projects are jointly built by ICX Station – a development labs products on ICON.

I will go through each category with you right below.

Overview of the ICON ecosystem

DEX

Currently, on the ICON ecosystem, there is a DEX called Balanced. This is the largest AMM DEX in the entire ecosystem, with a leading number of TVLs in the system, built by ICX Station – a team with many DeFi products on ICON.

Currently, this project has launched a token and has a market capitalization of $ 26 million. In addition, there are currently no other AMM DEXs on ICON.

Identify

Currently, there is only one AMM DEX on ICON, which is Balanced, with an unknown amount of TVL (less than 174 million, because the project’s TVL $174 million includes lending and AMM DEX).

If the ICON ecosystem grows, there will certainly be more AMM DEX puzzle pieces in the ecosystem.

And if this ecosystem attracts users to the platform, Balanced will certainly be the first project to receive attention, growth and cash flow.

Lending Protocol

The ICON ecosystem has the following Lending puzzle pieces:

• Omm Finance: Money Market allows borrowing and lending on the app, and farming OMM tokens for interacting with the protocol. Currently the protocol has a TVL of $138 million, with $24 million borrowed from the protocol.
• Balanced Lending Protocol: Lending protocol allows using ICX as collateral to borrow other assets in the ICON ecosystem. In total, Balanced has a combined two-protocol TVL of $174 million.

In general, with these two lending protocols, users have been able to access basic lending features such as ICX collateral to borrow the platform’s stablecoin.

Currently, it is not possible to find data on Balanced’s TVL Lending, so I don’t know which application’s TVL is larger, but it seems that Omm Finance is the leading application in this segment.

Most especially, both Omm Finance and Balanced projects (and a bridge project that allows buying tokens with USD) are developed by a team, called ICX Station.

I predict that this is a labs under the ICON Foundation, supported by the ICON Foundation to develop applications on the ICON ecosystem.

And it is highly likely that the applications developed by these labs themselves will be at the forefront of the ecosystem, because they receive more support from the platform than other protocol developers working on ICON.

NFT

The ICON ecosystem has the following NFT puzzle pieces:

• Craft Network: NFT Marketplace on the ICON ecosystem, built by ICX Station.
• Project Nebula: MMO Game and NFT Marketplace on ICON.
• SuperNode Racing: NFT racing game on ICON.
• Winible: The NFT project makes real-life wine bottles for sale and trade.
• GangstaBet: A game project that uses NFT tokens to interact with the game.
• PinkPunks: An NFT Punks project on the ICON ecosystem.
• NFT Bazaar: An NFT Marketplace that operates on many chains, including the ICON ecosystem.

So on the ICON ecosystem, there are 3 marketplaces for NFTs, including:

• 1 NFT Market native on ICON.
• NFT Market dedicated to the game of a project.
• 1 NFT Market works on many different chains.

You can also guess that, the strongest NFT Market on ICON currently is Craft Network, because it is developed by a strong team that is ICX Station.

The volume of this NFT exchange on ICON is not high (about 100 thousand dollars for the 10 accounts that perform the most transactions on the platform), but it is also leading the platform and is the largest NFT Market for other NFT projects. deployed here like PinkPunks, GangstaBet,…

Bridge

The ICON ecosystem currently has the following Bridges to the system:

• Orbit Bridge: This is an intermediary chain, connecting the liquidity of the systems through the bridge they deploy. Currently, the ICON ecosystem is being connected to systems including Ethereum, BSC, and soon Klaytn and a few other ecosystems.
• Nexus Gateway: A bridge that allows the connection of blockchains powered by the Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP) algorithm.
• Bridgepay money: This is an app that allows users to buy crypto assets on ICON with real-life dollars. Going forward, they are also planning to develop bridges to other ecosystems, not just a bridge from real-life assets to ICON.

As you can see, the bridge infrastructure on the system is relatively complete. My own experience with these bridges is good and there are no difficulties in using them, especially with Orbit Bridge.

Therefore, the cash flow was able to go in and out of this ecosystem relatively easily, creating conditions for the development of the ICON ecosystem.

Yield Farming/ Aggregator

The Yield farming/Aggregator puzzle currently available on the ICON ecosystem is Optimus.

Optimus is an Optimizer application for farming and staking on the ICON ecosystem. Currently the project has two strategies, that is farming sICX/ICX pairs on Balanced DEX, or using ICX as collateral to mint bnUSD to farm BALN.

In the near future, the project will launch more cooperation protocols with Omm Finance.

Currently, the project is only in the testnet stage and is opening a form to collect feedback from users.

You can try using the application and give suggestions to the protocol development team, for the opportunity to receive a retroactive project token, and also contribute to the development of the project as well as the ICON ecosystem.

Information about the airdrop you can see here.

ICON Ecosystem Projection

Currently, you can see that the ICON ecosystem is in the early stages of completion. Below is a projection of the ICON ecosystem, you can see that:

In the coming time, this platform needs more developers to develop on the platform to have more applications and projects on this platform, thereby attracting users to the platform, because the current infrastructure applications floors and basic puzzle pieces are complete.

However, with the programming languages ​​on this platform being Python and Java – programming languages ​​that are not familiar to Web3 developers – perhaps the development of the number of developers is still difficult, and More moves are needed to attract developers.

Therefore, in my opinion, in the coming time, this platform needs to organize many hackathons, grant activities for projects, … to attract developers and projects to the platform. Only then can they begin to attract more TVLs and users to the platform.

Epilogue

ICON is currently trading on exchanges: Binance

Hopefully, through the above article, you have had a better overview of the ICON ecosystem, understand the situation of the arrays on ICON, and know which areas to invest time in looking for opportunities.

Do you think the next time will be the explosion of the ICON ecosystem, the number of TVL platforms will increase sharply in the coming months?