Batang!
Welcome to this week’s edition of the RHIZOME Wire!
The arrival of ICON 2.0
A couple of weeks ago, the ICON Foundation released news that, for quite a while, the team had been working on developing a new iteration of ICON, which they are referring to as ICON 2.0, with the name of “Batang” (meaning “base” or “foundation” in the Korean language):
ICON 2.0 is a brand new software; a faster, more stable, and scalable high-performance blockchain that inherits the current ICON Network. We are completely overhauling the ICON mainnet that was launched in 2018. ICON 2.0 will come standard with interoperability features to support and power cross-chain DeFi solutions. At launch, the ICON Foundation will deploy all necessary smart contracts on high-profile blockchains and will also run the relayers.
The ICON Foundation made this out to be a big deal, although for more casual observers it was a bit harder to understand the benefits, due to the more technical nature of this announcement.
The most significant element of ICON 2.0 appears to be the fact that it was built with “Go”, a programming language developed by Google, whereas ICON 1.0 was built with Python.
Here, Brian Li of RHIZOME describes the benefits of Go:
ICON 2.0 is written in a completely different language (Python vs Go). Python has a reputation for being a language that is very fast to work with, and it's often used for prototyping and MVP (minimum-viable product) builds. However, Python does have some limitations when it comes to native multithreading due to its GIL (global interpreter lock).
At this time, we're not really seeing any bottlenecks derived from the software because the ICON network does not get heavy use. Over time, more issues may pop up when it comes to scalability due to inefficiencies from Python.
Rewriting the entire client in Go is substantial for two reasons. A complete code refactoring is very costly, so ICON moving the codebase from Python to Go shows there is enough real demand to power through with the change.
Secondly, the choice of Go is interesting because it's a very high-performance language (it was actually designed for speed) with native concurrency. The choice to go with Go may indicate that ICON sees a future where performance is a necessity – or it may just be due to the fact that Go is very popular backend programming language in 2020.
Beyond the benefits articulated above, there are added benefits for developers. Here’s Brian again:
Developers will be able to write SCOREs in Java. These SCOREs can run in JVM (Java Virtual Machine), so they won't need to be audited like the current Python contracts. This means faster deployment times. Beyond that, ICON 2.0 will reportedly ship with BTP support across a variety of "high-profile" blockchains. This combined with the high performance may make ICON a more attractive blockchain for developers.
(For those who may not be aware, SCOREs are the smart contracts that run on ICON that power the various DApps currently running on the network.)
In general, these changes — combined with other technical changes listed in the announcement — provide a more powerful, stable, and fast platform that’s easier to build on.
While it’s not the sort of business development news we’ve become accustomed to that indicates future uses, it is still exceedingly important in the fact it better positions ICON for “primetime” when the network activity really increases and more people want to build on ICON.
More than a year ago, ICON was taking some gradual steps to make the network more accommodating for developers. Providing software development kits, putting on presentations for developers, hosting hackathons, etc. None of this news was particularly exciting for the casual observer at the time, and it was hard to get excited about why it was important.
Today, however, with the number of projects being built on ICON seemingly growing by the day, it’s obvious those efforts to recruit more developers are paying off big-time. And it’s likely that the effort put behind ICON 2.0 could play out the same way (except in an even more significant manner).
So if they’ve announced the platform upgrade, and have publicly posted the presumably finished code, then why are we still so far off from launch?
Here, again, is Brian:
Most likely, the BTP integrations/relayers are not done, and I doubt they've done any significant testing – at least definitely not with P-Reps. So maybe the core loopchain software is ported to Go, but the other parts of ICON 2.0 don't appear to be done.
William McKenzie, also of RHIZOME, has additional thoughts:
I think this discrepancy by making the ICON 2.0 announcement out as predominately “done” likely stems from past announcements and not wanting to set expectations through the roof. Hence why it’s mentioned verbatim it’s gradually being rolled out.
With ICON 2.0, the only thing that will be implemented before the complete overhaul of the previous stack is CPS and we’ll be moving straight to IISS 3.1 after that. It’s likely a mix of not wanting to set expectations so high and hit development milestones in a timely manner - one that ICON has struggled with and many within the community are aware.
That being said, in crypto there’s a lot of fast-paced movement and perhaps a reach from ICON to obtain and maintain relevancy as we are witnessing the upcoming launch of several new networks, and growing interest in DeFi. To show that there’s still considerable development going on behind the scenes - even though its not 100% ready.
Regardless of whether or not you have a full understanding of ICON 2.0, it should hopefully be obvious by now that the upgrade is a significant improvement to the ICON network that will ensure it’s even more ready for “prime time” as enterprise use accelerates.
If you’d like to learn more details on ICON 2.0, be sure to read the latest development update.
News from ICON World
ICONbet has a new game coming!
The “Source of Truth”
RHIZOME team member Brian Li has been working on lowering deployment times for citizen nodes on the ICON network - a very important infrastructure improvement. Be sure to track and follow the progress.
ZenSports will be adding $ICX betting on October 13th to their sports betting platform
ICX_Station team member Scott Smiley discusses Balanced on REIMAGINE 2020
Blockmove takes a dive into the Top 10 smart contracts and DApps on ICON
OMM (Open Money Market) DeFi project has been announced for ICON
Blockchain Industry News
Crypto Trading Platform BitMEX ‘Attempted to Evade’ US Regulations, CFTC, DOJ Charge - CoinDesk
Similarly, Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Hayes, Delo, Reed and Gregory Dwyer (BitMEX’s first employee) were being charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Act and conspiracy to violate the act. Reed has already been arrested; the others remain at large, an SDNY press release said.
BitTorrent Founder Reveals Final Details on Tron Acquisition - Decrypt
As Decryptreported, Sun’s Tron acquired BitTorrent in 2018 with a $120 million bid (the price was later adjusted to around $140 million). Exactly a year later after the acquisition was officially completed, Cohen claimed that Sun was withholding the last part of the payment that the parties had agreed on.
SEC hits Salt Lending with cease-and-desist over $47 million ICO - The Block
The SEC released a court order document today concerning Salt Blockchain Inc, or Salt Lending. Salt settled with the SEC in anticipation of the cease-and-desist order, according to the statement. The SEC ruled Salt violated Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities act when Salt offered and sold tokens without having a registration statement filed or in effect with the SEC.