The Internet Computer provides the first true “World Computer” that can run any Web 2.0 system or service, and web3 services, entirely on-the-blockchain, including demanding web3 social media, without any need for centralized traditional IT such as cloud computing services. On the Internet Computer, services like social networks can be completely controlled by community DAOs, because they run entirely from the blockchain, with the aim of making users owners and part of the team, and enabling decentralized fundraising and more sophisticated tokenization. The blockchain hosts advanced smart contracts with ground-breaking new features, which include securely serving interactive web experiences directly to end users, processing and storing data with efficiency comparable to traditional IT, and directly creating transactions on other blockchains, such as Bitcoin.
The ICP token has three main utilities. Firstly, ICP provides a source of “cycles” that are burned to power computation (thus when ICP is converted to cycles, it disappears, creating deflationary pressure). Secondly, ICP can be staked in the permissionless Network Nervous System DAO that governs the Internet Computer blockchain, to generate voting rewards. Thirdly, holders can take part in tokenization events for projects in the ICP ecosystem, swapping ICP tokens for newly minted project tokens. nts).
