We’ve heard it a million times by now: the general cryptocurrency market went through a serious tumble this year. Despite the harsh conditions, we saw ICON DApps fighting the FUD, forging new partnerships, launching token sales and so much more. As the year comes to a close, we at The Iconist picked the top five ICON DApps that accomplished the most in 2018. We based our selections on the following criteria: product launches, TGE or ICO events, partnerships and technological developments.
ZenSports is making history straight out of the gate by being the first U.S. DApp to build on ICON. A peer-to-peer sports betting marketplace, the platform is eliminating the need for a centralized bookmaker. They officially launched this past September all around the world, except for United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. CEO Mark Thomas has been travelling non-stop to talk about the project that he co-founded, and it has paid off. In November, Thomas’ pitch took first place at Balkan Gaming Expo Startup Event in Bulgaria. This month, they started their token sale which is still ongoing. ZenSports plans on integrating cryptocurrencies and smart contracts into its app early next year, proving that they aren’t planning to stop making moves.
weBloc is a protocol that tokenizes and connects the conventional digital advertising ecosystem with the blockchain-based one. In terms of partnerships, it has mainly been working with other ICON DApps such as Blue Whale Foundation and Airbloc Protocol as it is the official advertising partner of ICON. This year, we saw the company establishing their corporation in Jeju as one of the first blockchain projects to work with the government on the island. It also released the demo of their first project, weCon, a messaging app that integrates a wallet and allows users to transfer and manage IRC-based tokens. Â The beta service is planned to launch in 1Q of 2019. weBloc managed to achieve 100% of the goal of their first pre-TGE, allocating 400,000,000 WOK. They have also been realistic and communicative about their future, saying that if the market does not pick up by January, they will be pushing back their second pre-TGE.
LogisticsX offers traceable and verifiable last-mile logistics between multiple Third-Party logistics players and incorporates the use of a flexible workforce to complete the final delivery steps. The project completed their token sale in September, allocating 400,000,000 PNP. LogisticsX hasn’t seen as many partnerships as some of the other DApps in here, but it has provided more concrete details than other projects on what these partnerships will do. One example is the partnership with Blue Whale Foundation to reward its freelancers. The logistics platform also signed on to the Global Supply Chain & Logistics Alliance (GSLA) as an inaugural member. GSLA, which is headed by bitcoin-based (RSK) supply chain platform TEMCO, aims to solve the issue of localization for logistics platforms through collective expertise. For LogisticsX specifically, this alliance gives them more business connections in Korea, as TEMCO is based there.
Some may be surprised to see blockchain-based entertainment platform STAYGE on this list, but this silent giant has made some big moves this year. The team implemented STG and ACT tokens on standard IRC2 tokens and created the STAYGE Wallet API. The team released both as open sources. The platform also completed a linkage test with ICON Testnet on the STAYGE’s development server in late October, which “generate about 25,000+ wallets, create 400+ ACT contracts, occurred 10,000+ transactions.” The team will soon make transactions on the ICON Mainnet.
Nick Yang, Head of Global Business Development, says “in the past month, the traffic on the website has been boosted over 420% with the launch of our new services.” These services include their ACT Donation Project, the K-pop Star Quiz and the just-released Morning Star app, where fans can post their favorite star’s picture and the STAYGE team sends them curated pictures of that star to their phone. On top of all this, the team has updated the main page of its website.
Airbloc Protocol is a service that redefines how data is collected, monetized and utilized via enterprise and application-oriented features. They just released a detailed Q3-Q4 Business Report earlier this month, but here are some highlights:
The company had eight partnerships this year, including one with KB Kookmin Card, Korea’s largest credit card company. LINE’s blockchain venture fund, Unblock Ventures, also signed on as a strategic investor. The data service was also updated with a “Use Cases” section to clearly communicate what their service could provide to existing businesses and individuals.
In October, Airbloc Protocol also provided their community with a second version of their white paper to reflect its technical updates to build a more feasible product that can eventually be adopted. In November, they released their codes on their official GitHub. In the second half of this year, the project has also made some significant technological developments in data management and warehouse, aero sidechain, just to name a few; others are explained here.
Carboneum is, at the time of publication, on Ethereum, but it will migrate to ICON’s blockchain in Q1 of next year, so we have given it an honorable mention. Carboneum is a social trading platform, aiming to make investing in crypto easy for the masses. The Iconist’s Robin J. Wolf just interviewed the project’s founder and CEO Max Kortrakul earlier this month. The platform may not have had as many partnerships this year as the other DApps on this list (not to say they didn’t have any, it partnered with ICON and LATOKEN exchange), but Carboneum saw advancements in other areas. Most notably, it launched their app in October which analyzes the information from the market and puts it into your hands. Their main motivation behind creating this platform was to “democratize investing by making it easy for anyone to trade with the same powerful tools that experts use.” If the team’s previous  project, StockRadars, is any indication, Carboneum is sure to make waves.
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We know that there are other DApps in the ICON Republic that have achieved quite a lot this year. For example, Blue Whale Foundation launched its Shareable Asset platform which hit 100% sales in their first round of contributions. In this listicle, we chose five projects that have been consistent in the progress. The amazing amount of work these DApps have achieved in a short time only points to their bright futures. The Iconist will definitely be reporting on all of the things they manage to achieve in 2019.
