INTRO: The Iconist is running a nine-part series dedicated to fundamental analysis of ICON, exploring how ICON is a fundamentally strong project and how it can be improved.
Fundamental analysis of a blockchain project such as ICON provides a lot of information in terms of strength, how it compares to competitors, the value of ICX and its potential in terms of future growth. This analysis can prove useful to all ICON stakeholders, including the development team, investors, partners and traders.
In Part 3 of the series, we take a look at some ICON’s major use cases. Use cases, especially those that have future revenue opportunities, can help demonstrate how strong a business is. With a relatively young network like ICON, current market expansion and future revenue opportunities are especially important.
NOTE: This page will expand over time.
DeFi
Omm Finance
Omm Finance is a DeFi money market where anyone can lend and borrow assets, earn interest and own a share of the protocol. It includes Bridge wallet as an easy sign-in option and fiat on/off ramp. You can stake their native tokens, OMM, to receive daily rewards or provide liquidity on Balanced to earn more. Anyone can use Omm as a high-interest savings account by supplying ICX, sICX, USDS or IUSDC to a liquidity lending pool. The platform secured over USD 50 million in total staked assets in its first two days.
Balanced
Balanced Network is a DeFi collaboration between four Public Representatives (ICX Station, PARROT9, Galen Danziger of Mousebelt and Dan Brehmer of iBriz-ICONosphere) in the ICON Network. It is a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) / decentralized bank of ICON, where ICX holders can take out a loan, swap assets and supply liquidity. It incentivizes people to deposit their ICX as collateral and borrow tokens pegged to real world assets.
DeFi usually has high fees, slow transactions and complex interfaces. However, Balanced makes Defi accessible by being fast (can handle 1,300 transactions every 2 seconds and 2 second transaction times), cheap ($0.005 transaction fees), and not requiring advanced technical skill to use. Compared to Ethereum, ICON is more than 3,200x cheaper, completes transactions 150x faster, and can process 45x more transactions per second.
Optimus
Optimus is a yield optimizer web-app that connects to the other two ICON DeFi options, Balanced and Omm. A yield optimizer is a service that invests your funds on DeFi platforms for you and continually adjusts your position to keep your level of risk at an acceptable level. It also helps actively balance your liquidity pool contributions and the amount of funds you have lent, borrowed and reinvested to ensure you get the maximum possible return. For borrowers, Optimus will continuously monitor your borrowing position to make sure it’s always within a safe risk-threshold, ensuring you never get liquidated.
For liquidity providers, Optimus supports ICX/sICX pools. Whenever deposited ICX is converted to sICX, as it is wont to happen on Balanced, Optimus will auto-magically unstake the sICX, reclaim your ICX and deposit it right back into the pool for you.
ICONFi
ICONFi is an application service giving you compound yields in crypto without difficult or complicated steps. All you need to enjoy the high reward rates is to buy and send cryptocurrencies to ICONFi. This will give you high compound yields – up to 8.33% on BTC, 7.25% on ETH, 11.67% on USDT and USDC (APY).
High yield rates are not the only advantage ICONFi has. ICONFi fixed savings provide compound yields whopping 6 times a day – that is once every four hours, or 2,190 times a year. ICONFi offers the highest compounding frequency in the market on top of already amazing yield rates.
In addition, ICONFi does not decrease the yield rate when the seed money increases. The decreasing yield rate system based on the amount of deposited crypto is being applied to most crypto savings platforms, while ICONFi is an exception. For example, if you deposit 1 BTC for 1 year, the yield rates plummet to about 0.77% (APR) compared to 8% (APR) of BTC Fixed savings rate on ICONFi.
Gaming
ZenSports
ZenSports is a peer-to-peer sports betting marketplace that runs on ICON smart contracts where anyone can fund, bet and trade in ICX without a central figure. You can use its SPORTS utility token to place bets and enjoy discounts and bonuses. It currently operates in about 100 countries, though dependent on limitations on devices. It boasts an average betting volume of over 4,000 USD.
It is ZenSports’ goal to eventually integrate SPORTS into other access points within the sports ecosystem, such as online merchandise, event ticketing, in-game food and beverage, and professional sports leagues, thereby creating an entire payment ecosystem from beginning to end for sports enthusiasts. With social features such as group chat, instant messaging, live streaming, and sharing stories, ZenSports is removing the stigma around sports betting, and helping to simultaneously expand the market.
The WSJ featured ZenSports and its founder Mark Thomas in August 2021. Meanwhile, the Nevada Gaming Control Board approved ZenSports for a non-restricted gaming license in Nevada.
Project Nebula
Project Nebula is a sci-fi strategy game with valuable collectables where players can explore a vast universe, colonize planets, build up their industry and learn new technologies while advancing their space empires and competing with other players. Players can create new consumables, upgrade spaceships and even create new spaceship NFTs, which are tradable in the NFT Project Nebula Marketplace (ICON’s first NFT marketplace).
Project Nebula is a visually aesthetic and immersive game drawing from cinematic and gaming inspirations. Just within two weeks of launch, players created 609 ships and claimed 705 worlds
SPERA
ICONLOOP has signed a strategic partnership with the ICON Foundation and Korean game services startup 2bytes Corp. to establish a new blockchain-based interchain NFT game platform. The platform, named SPERA, will connect NFTs issued on different blockchain networks and platforms, making them interoperable using ICON’s BTP technology. For example, you might be able to bring an NFT from, say, CryptoPunks into a game, and this would boost the skills or item acquisition rate of your in-game character. Or you could bring into games NFTs from other networks like Ethereum, Klaytn or Solana.
More information about SPERA will come sometime after late March, when a second teaser page is launched. Additional game studios are expected to join the project as partners, too, and will be announced later.
ICONBet
ICONBet is a fully decentralized gambling platform — there is no single entity that gets richer off the woes of others when the house wins. Instead, ICONBet issues daily TAP tokens to everybody who gambles on their site — the more you gamble each day, the more TAP you claim — and when people lose at the games, the ICX is divided up and paid out to those who have staked TAP.
NFTs
Craft Network
Craft is an NFT marketplace allowing you a smooth and low fee NFT trading and minting experience. Users can earn $CFT tokens for each of their trades (based on their buying and selling activities) on Craft and discover the best NFTs in the ICON ecosystem. $CFT tokens also allow votes for platform development and governance decisions.
As an artist you can create collectibles to sell on the marketplace and continue to earn royalties from each secondary sale. As an investor, you can purchase collectibles from the marketplace, or even simply show off your collection to the community.
Every collectible on Craft is digitally signed by the creator and permanently recorded on the ICON blockchain. Proof of ownership and authenticity can easily be verified on-chain without the possibility to tamper with the records.
NFT Bazaar
ICON’s other big NFT marketplace is NFT Bazaar, which has tons of the standard style of JPEG NFTs you can find on Ethereum-based marketplaces across the internet. Audio NFTs are also available. Prices are comparable to Craft Network.
One unique aspect of NFT Bazaar is that they’ve committed to donating one percent of every sale to charity. They choose their charities democratically, based on how their community members vote — charities they’ve donated to so far include Sole Hope and Women Here and Now.
Another difference is that NFT Bazaar artists must use Spartan Node’s own token — LambdaX ($LDX), purchasable in a number of ways — to mint NFTs at a cost of 250 LDX per NFT. Customers purchase NFTs using ICX, however.
GangstaBet
GangstaBet is a digital collectible where people can evolve their characters for an eventual permanence on the blockchain. Every character has a unique appearance, name and varying properties like classes & skills. GangstaBet takes a unique approach to distribute GangstaBetToken ($GBET) to its holders on a daily basis. The token can be used to change the name and skills of the GangstaBets. The supply of $GBET will decrease periodically and it will stop after 9 years.
One day, all the 5,555 Gangstas will be engraved in the blockchain with their character profiles for the future generations to behold.
Projects developed by ICONLOOP
ICONLOOP is a private blockchain company that develops blockchain solutions for enterprises, but it’s also the ICON network’s chief technology partner and the developer of ICON’s general-purpose blockchain protocol.
Though many of ICONLOOP’s projects are private enterprise solutions, it has also developed several projects that operate on ICON’s public chain.
VisitMe
VisitMe provides a smart and integrated visitor management solution covering the entire process from invitation and check-in to speed check-in and one-touch gate pass. Administrators can immediately respond to visitors with previous data and notification, and can set up the system so that individuals have different rights based on their roles. Visitors on the invite list can scan the mobile visit card from the VisitMe application to check in or open the door directly.
Digitalization reduces the number of stages in the visit process and generates real-time visit data, making the management easier. By scanning the displayed QR codes, users can have a quick check-in while reducing the time for the visiting process and waiting. One-touch gate pass is a technology using Bluetooth to control the gate and visitors can open the gate after unlocking it with their smartphones.
VisitMe can be linked to various services such as KakaoTalk, Slack, Google Calendar and SAML. One of South Korea’s biggest coffee shop franchises, Paul Bassett, uses VisitMe to track Covid-19 contact.
Broof
Broof is a service issuing blockchain-based certificates, supporting fraud-free, safe certificates and permanent record of the certificates. Any institution can issue blockchain-based certificates via broof and the recipient can get and manage the certificates in an easy and safe manner. There are many options to generate certificates and the list of recipients can be registered on Excel, making issuance easy.
Users can tap into all the functions of broof with a simple log-in. All certificates issued can be managed on the dashboard and recipients can receive certificates from the issuing institution or upload existing certificates to use integrated management on broof.
POSTECH issued diplomas stored on blockchain using broof in 2020. ART n GUIDE issues art ownership on blockchain for safety. Fast campus issues online lecture certificates through broof, saving time.
Zzeung
Zzeung is an authentication service (centerpiece) using ICONLOOP’s “MyID” decentralized ID service that provides real-name authentication, QR authentication and certificates (you can register, collect and manage scattered certificates in Zzeung).
Zzeung stores certified personal information on users’ smartphones and prevents forgeries via blockchain technologies.
NH Bank uses the mobile app Zzeung to issue IDs, while Shinhan Bank launched a Zzeung-based ID service in 2020, making it the first financial company to commercialize DID. There is a Zzeung-based COVID-19 vaccination service, and Jeju Safety Code — the ubiquitous contact tracing app of South Korea’s resort island of Jeju — is also available with Zzeung.
The MyID alliance — the network of partners pledged to use or promote MyID — has 86 members, including major commercial banks, securities firms, local governments, e-commerce companies and manufacturers.
The services based on the mobile Zzeung app use ICON’s public chain for the initial DID issuance.
