The many ways to earn passive income with ICX
Welcome to this week’s edition of the RHIZOME Wire!
Passive income with ICX
This week, I took some time to write about Balanced, the new DeFi platform coming to the ICON project.
The news was announced last week, and I touched upon the announcement in this newsletter. However, a few days later, I published a lengthier piece going through a bit more analysis of how Balanced works and how it can benefit both individual ICONists and the ICON project as a whole.
When it comes to benefiting individual ICONists, one feature in particular stood out:
Like many other platforms, Balanced provides its users an opportunity to mine its native token. In this case, ownership of Balance Tokens provides a chance to participate in governance, as well as payment in network fees (paid in ICD).
When it comes to governance, Balance Token owners will be able to weigh in on the following adjustments to the platform:
Adjustments to fees
Adjustments to the unstaking period
Adjustments to collateral ratios
Adding new pegged tokens
When it comes to network fees, “all Network Fees will be split pro-rata amongst qualified Balance Token stakers and paid on a weekly basis,” according to the white paper.
In other words, simply by holding your ICX as collateral in the Balanced protocol and borrowing ICD (the platform’s stable coin) against it, you can accrue Balanced tokens. The amount of tokens you accrue depends on the percentage of the overall collateral deposits your ICX represents—so if early on you’re one of only a handful of people using Balanced, you have a chance to capture a higher percentage of the token distribution.
Should the project continue to grow and gain momentum — and earn more fees — you’d be entitled to earning income via your Balanced token holdings.
This would be the third major mechanism for earning passive income on with ICX. The other two are ICONbet and staking.
Similar to Balanced, ICONbet rewards TAP to those who use the platform, distributing the most tokens to the users who use the platform the most (determined by betting volume). Those who hold TAP are entitled to the excess treasury, which is paid out daily.
(For more on how ICONbet’s TAP works, be sure to read the long article I wrote a few weeks back.)
Finally, of course, we have staking, which probably all ICONists are familiar with by now.
What’s nice about this is that, with the exception of staking, these passive rewards aren’t inflating the amount of ICX. In the case of Balanced, the holder is gaining ICX as a result of the ICX fees paid by other users. In the case of ICONbet, holders are gaining ICX as a result of the profits captured by the ICONbet platform via the gambling losses of users.
And, perhaps, someday, staking too will be deflationary, should transaction fees someday eclipse reward inflation.
Not only does this create a rewarding opportunity for ICONists who wish to earn more by just sitting on their hands, but as word spreads of people who are earning passive income from the ICON platform, it will draw further attention and, hopefully, demand for ICX over the long term.
News from ICON World
J.H. Kim’s recent interview on Korean national TV has been subtitled in English
Due to popular demand from the community, ICON has translated J.H. Kim’s interview on Money Today with English subtitles.
In the past, RHIZOME has transcribed the entire interview in English in an easy to glean written format as well.
The first P-Rep governance meeting with the ICON Foundation has been released
On February 14th, several P-Rep teams attended the first ever governance call with the ICON Foundation. Min Kim, Founder of ICON and ICON Foundation Council member was present and led discussion on key topics such as i_rep, upcoming IISS changes, and ways P-Rep’s can contribute to ecosystem growth.
Props to Xr0 on twitter for providing the intro!
P-Rep weekly meetings are now underway
Thanks to CatalystNode and help from RHIZOME, the first P-Rep weekly meeting was a success! Topics discussed can be found from the relevant thread here on the icon.community forum.
If you’d like to listen to the topics discussed without having to watch the meeting, the meeting is also available in podcast form.
ICON Foundation releases it’s latest roadmap update
Key themes for 2020 extrapolated on in the latest roadmap update are network enhancement, open source enhancement, governance system update, and BTP/Sidechain.
Reliant Node has built a new ICON authentication system for website logging
Star Wars and ICON?
ICON Blockchain graphic animation is played in South Korea’s tallest skyscraper
ICONBoom hosts the very first ICON London meetup
P-Rep team “ICONBoom” recently hosted the very first ICON London meetup. Attendees were given ICX to purchase drinks and amenities during the meetup.
RHIZOME Report EP15 has been released
RHIZOME team members, Brian Li and William McKenzie sit down and discuss the latest updates within the ICON ecosystem.
Seoul Metropolitan Government to release blockchain-based voting system
Recently, we learned that the Seoul Metropolitan Government is to release a blockchain-based voting system. The blockchain that will be used is none other than loopchain which the Seoul Metropolitan Government is mandated to use for “all current and future applications”.
Blockchain Industry News
Crypto Exchange FCoin Insolvent After Revealing Up to $130M Bitcoin Shortfall - CoinDesk
Zhang said the system problem coped with these "decision errors" gave a large amount of users the opportunity to sell and withdraw more than what should have been on their account balance, causing the significant loss of FCoin's assets on its own balance sheet.
Mind the Gap: Why ETH Price and DeFi Adoption Aren't in Sync - CoinDesk
It’s also difficult to envision adoption among a wider market of borrowers not yet initiated into crypto investing. Would a Main Street borrower purchase ETH in order to obtain a cash loan worth less than said ETH? Perhaps, if DeFi lenders could accept non-crypto collateral. This would not be a trivial development.
In fighting at Cosmos leads to project split - Decrypt
On Monday, Decrypt reported that Tendermint director Zaki Manian had resigned, but will continue to work on the project. The company’s Director of Product, Jack Zampolin, subsequently told us that he had also departed. And Tuesday’s announcement adds Director of Security Jessy Irwin to the roll call of resignations.
Tron Community in Uproar as Genesis Coins Used in Super Reps Vote - Cointelegraph
The Tron (TRX) community was beside itself on Wednesday, Feb. 19 after founder Justin Sun’s address was shown to have voted in two Tron Foundation apps as a Super Representative (SR). Both Tron-Ace and Tron-Bet were voted in as Super Representatives by the Zion address, the same account which received 99 billion TRX from the coin’s genesis block.