It’s going to be a very busy first half of 2019 for ICON as it was announced in a recent medium post.

An enterprise blockchain alliance program based on the ICON public blockchain, ICON’s newly established ICON Loopchain Alliance Program a.k.a. ICON LAP100 aims to jointly develop enterprise blockchain solutions with 100 companies and startups in fields such as biometric identification, certification issuance and payment. Among the ICON LAP100 members that attended the association’s launch event were Raonsecure, Digitalzone, DataAlliance, Matrix2B, OWDIN Network, Charzin, TheVita, Liwonace, Cryptofuture and TeamK.

ICON also announced it plans to open up the Tokyo launchpad of ICX_Station, and that it would release its DEX sometime in the first half the year. Here’s what they have to say about that:

“All transactions will be executed via smart contracts to ensure security and transparency compared to centralized exchanges. Additionally, ICON’s DEX will increase the liquidity and usability of IRC2 tokens in the ICON Network, without being listed on external exchanges. ICON aims to implement DEX to connect heterogeneous blockchains in the future and bridge various blockchain communities.”

Another neat thing ICON will be releasing is a decentralized identification (DID) mobile application that allows individuals to store and manage their personal info. The DID supports user identification for DApps, rendering separate ID systems within individual DApps unnecessary.

The last two weeks in the ICON Republic: 

ICON explains what ICONSENSUS is all about. We’ll probably have more on this later.

Captain Altcoin’s Dobrica Blagojevic thinks ICONSENSUS looks a lot like Tron’s and EOS’s decentralizing efforts. Whether ICON achieves better results remains to be seen, he says.

Coindoo’s Vladimir Ciobica looks at the best wallets for your ICX.

R&D group Adevt found a potentially serious vulnerability originating in a third party library. ICON told the media that it found the vulnerability last month and that the library would soon be removed.

Wanchain has joined the Public Chain Technology Alliance, an association of 38 blockchain projects, wallets, exchanges and other entities dedicated to building an “open, cooperative and inclusive public chain alliance.”

Wanchain is integrating the decentralized governance and dispute resolution platform Oath Protocol, making the protocol’s services available to any DApp built on the blockchain.

The Aion network looks at how far it came in 2018 and shares where it’s going in 2019.

The Aion Transwarp Conduit is “a generic bridging solution connecting distinct blockchains.” Aion notes that it has followed an approach similar to that taken by TCP/IP, namely, that a bridge shouldn’t focus on any particular application, but rather provide the framework and infrastructure for developers to pass generic data between their applications.